CASTING BREAKDOWN
SHAKESPEARE IN HIGH PARK 2017
Tanja Jacobs (Twelfth Night); Alistair Newton (King Lear) are the 2017 MFA candidates from York
University’s Graduate Program in Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage. Plays are
rehearsed and presented in repertory; all actors play roles in both productions. This is an exclusive 16
week contract which rehearses and performs outdoors in all safe weather conditions. Pay scale is CTA
“E” house.
TWELFTH NIGHT – directed by Tanja Jacobs
A modern dress production sets the enchanted and stalled world of Illyria in a Hotel. Using soul music
and a 70’s inspired world of insomniacs, lovers and damaged hearts, Shakespeare’s most erotic and
subversive play begins in sorrow and ends in a minor key, but ultimately fortifies us with humility in the
face of love.
KING LEAR – directed by Alistair Newton
Through a stylized period aesthetic the play is reimagined as a death-bed fever-dream of the dying
Queen Elizabeth I, exploring a female Lear’s journey from tyrannical patriarchal rule to the cathartic
reconnection to the essential vitality of the feminine aspect.
Please e-mail headshot and resume to [email protected] (no phone calls). Indicate desired
role in subject line. We thank all applicants; only audition candidates are contacted.
All roles also include “As Cast”. Twelfth Night listed first
Actor 1 (FEMALE): Viola/Cordelia - Young
Viola is a young noblewoman: shipwrecked, lost, bereaved, yet resourceful, articulate and talented.
Viola is fearful but brave. Ambushed by passionate love.
Cordelia is the favored daughter of a powerful matriarch whose purity of heart is both a source of great
moral resolve, and crippling indecision.
Actor 2 (MALE): Captain, Antonio/Oswald - Any Age
A Captain who aids Viola in the disaster at sea and immediately afterwards. He gives Viola hope. Viola's
reason to believe in the nobility of human beings.
Antonio, is the self-appointed guardian of Sebastian, whom he has rescued. A survivor. In love with
Sebastian. Emotional. Has secret problems. Capable of passionate loyalty.
Oswald is a steward of Goneril, a cunning, obsequious, and resourceful sycophant, physically desirable,
flirtatious, and a bit of a dandy.
Actor 3 (MALE): Sebastian/Edmund - Young
Sebastian is a young nobleman. Viola's twin. Shipwrecked, believing his sister drowned. Alert, brave,
active. An orphan. Inquisitive. Practical. Decisive. Extroverted.
Edmund is the bastard son of Gloucester, an atheist in a religious world with a sharp and agile mind. He
possesses great manipulative charm and an inflated sense of justice.
Actor 4 (MALE): Orsino/Cornwall - Mature
Orsino is the Duke of Illyria. Wealthy. Idle. In love with the Countess Olivia. Obsessed and driven. His
sexual longing has brought him to his knees. He seeks escape from pain in the very substance that gives
him pain. He sometimes appears helpless and impulsive.
Cornwall is husband to Lear’s middle daughter Regan; a violent man of action, ruthless and decisive,
virile and physically fit.
Actor 5 (MALE): Valentine, Officer/Albany - Mature
Valentine is a gentleman attending the Duke. Noble. Discreet. Loyal to the government. A musician.
Twin brother to an Officer, a government agent who discovers and arrests Antonio.
Albany is husband to Lear’s eldest daughter Goneril: a man of conscience wrestling with the daily moral
compromises of his political station, and beginning to break under their weight.
Actor 6 (MALE) Sir Andrew Aguecheek/Edgar - Young
Sir Andrew Aguecheek is a knight. He is timid, anxious, lonely and rich. A poorly disguised coward. Kind
hearted. Low libido. Suffers from allergies. Would like to be popular.
Edgar is the favored legitimate son of Gloucester. He is indecisive and naively trusting, possessing of the
potential for acts of both abject cowardice and great personal heroism.
Actor 7 (FEMALE): Olivia/Regan - must believably play a young woman and mature (40’s)
Olivia is a Countess. She is young, guarded and complex. Capable of keeping many things in her mind at
once. She is ambushed by her erotic feelings. Intelligent. Gifted. Capable of tremendous concentration.
Regan is the middle child of a powerful matriarch, conventionally beautiful, with a mask of manipulative
sweetness that conceals a violent sadism; a moral abyss that one can get lost in.
Actor 8 (FEMALE): Maria/Goneril - Mature
Maria is the loyal handmaiden to Olivia. Witty, brilliant, realistic and resourceful. Might be running an
organization in a more progressive society. Politically astute. Practical. An amateur actress. An excellent
planner. A sound sleeper. Has cultivated a deep connection to Sir Toby.
Goneril is the neglected eldest child of a powerful matriarch, ambitious, resourceful, vengeful,
manipulative, with the capacity for both indifference and cruelty, and subject to a persecution complex
that has poisoned her against all those she may once have loved.
Actor 9 (MALE): Sir Toby/Gloucester - Mature
Sir Toby Belch is the Countess Olivia's uncle. A knight. An alcoholic. A reveler. A singer, carouser; a
permanent party guest. Perhaps an experienced soldier. Sentimental but perhaps cynical. Exploits Sir
Andrew's weaknesses readily. Is sometimes a bully.
Gloucester is a powerful Earl with close ties to the Queen, a victim of his own Romantic world-view
which renders him especially susceptible to paranoia and the guile of others.
Actor 10 (FEMALE): Feste/Kent - Mature
Feste is Olivia's fool. Talented. Imaginative. Doomed. Addicted. Libidinous. Afflicted by injuries. Selfdefeating. A brilliant and soulful musician. Mature. Cannot hold on to personal property. An outsider. An
insomniac. Charming. A gambler.
The widowed Countess of Kent, fiercely loyal to the Queen who she views as a mentor and an older
sister, a strong sense of justice and dedication to a personal moral code, androgynous/masculine and
hungry for the agency denied to her by her sex; stage combat experience a major asset.