Jane Austen’s

Pride and Prejudice

Directed by Kelly Larson

 

Auditions

May 15^th, 2010 1-5 PM at VPA in the theatre

May 22^nd, 2010 1-5 PM at VPA in the theatre

 

Performances

September 10^th - October 3^rd, 2010

 

I am so excited to be directing Pride and Prejudice.  I absolutely love the book and the movies!  The casting of this show is critical for its success.   You could be the perfect Elizabeth Bennet or Mr. Darcy; you never know until you try!

 

The audition will be painless.  I promise.  Basically, I want to see how comfortable you are on stage as well as your body movement, voice projection, and facial expressions.  There will be a copy of the script available for a 3 day loan in the VPA office beginning April1st.  Please be considerate of others and return it promptly. 

 

We will be rehearsing over the summer just a couple times a week, increasing the frequency as we near our performance, so please consider your summer schedule when auditioning. By beginning early we can work around summer vacations, jobs, etc.   Please note there will be one daytime performance during our run for middle and high school students.

 

 

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.  Friend me on Facebook or email me at vpadirectorKRL@gmail.com. 

 

 

Pride and Prejudice Roles

5+ Men and 10-11 Women

 

Mr. Bennet, an easygoing man

Mrs. Bennet, his flighty wife

Jane, their gentle daughter

Elizabeth, their independent daughter

Mary, their bookish daughter

Catherine, their fretful daughter

Lydia, their flirtatious daughter

Mr. Collins, their pompous, young clergyman cousin

Mr. Bingley, a friendly young man

Miss Bingley, his haughty sister

Mr. Darcy, a proud young man

Lady Catherine de Bourgh, his overbearing aunt

Lady Lucas, a neighbor

Charlotte, her plain daughter

Mr. Wickham, a young officer

Hill, a maid or butler (can be either a man or a woman)

 

Download an audition form here

 

Character Synopsis

 

Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet (19-21)

The protagonist of the play and the second oldest of five sisters, Elizabeth is lively, quick-witted, sharp-tongued, bold and intelligent. She is a beauty who has brains and is especially distinguished by her fine eyes. She has pride in her abilities to perceive the truth of situations and of people's characters. However, her perceptive abilities fail her frequently because she is influenced by vanity and judges people rashly. Elizabeth overcomes her prejudice through her dealings with Darcy. She is concerned with propriety, good-manners, and virtue, but is not impressed by mere wealth or titles.  Elizabeth is like her father and his favorite child.  She is least favored by her mother.

 

Mr. Darcy

An extremely wealthy aristocrat, Darcy is proud, haughty and extremely conscious of class differences at the beginning of the play. He does, however, have a strong sense of honor and virtue.  He is tall, handsome.   He is secretly as attracted to Elizabeth as Bingley is Jane.  Elizabeth's rebukes after his first proposal help him to recognize his faults of pride and social prejudice. It is, in fact, precisely because Elizabeth is not so awed by his high social status as to be afraid to criticize his character that he is attracted to her. The self-knowledge acquired from Elizabeth's rebukes and the desire to win her love spur him to change and judge people more by their character than by their social class.  He is older than Mr. Bingley.

 

Jane Bennet (20-22)

Jane is the eldest of the daughters; scarcely older than Lizzy.  Beautiful, good-tempered, sweet, amiable, humble and selfless, Jane is universally well-liked. She refuses to judge anyone badly, always making excuses for people when Elizabeth brings their faults to her attention. Her tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt leads her to be hurt by insincere friends such as Caroline Bingley, although in the end, her judgments seem to be more accurate than Elizabeth's overall.   She is basically a model of virtue. Though docile and under her mother’s thumb, Jane is by no means lacking in spirit.

  

Charles Bingley

The catch of the county - handsome, charming, well-mannered, and moderately rich.  Mr. Bingley, much like Jane, is an amiable and good-tempered person. He is not overly concerned with class differences and Jane's poor family connections are not a serious deterrent to his attachment to her.  Bingley is very modest and easily swayed by the advice of his friends, as seen in his decision not to propose to Jane as a result of Darcy's belief that Jane is not really attached to him. Also like Jane, Bingley lacks serious character faults. His character and his love for Jane remain constant; the only thing that changes is the advice of Darcy, which leads him not to propose to Jane in the beginning but to propose to her in the end.

 

Mr. Wickham

A handsome, young dashing officer in the regiment stationed at Meryton, Wickham is quickly judged to be a perfectly good and amiable man because of his friendliness and the ease of his manners. He has undeniable charm, but he is untrustworthy and insincere.  He initially shows a preference for Elizabeth and she is pleased by his attentions and inclined to believe his story about Darcy. Yet while Wickham has the appearance of goodness and virtue, this appearance is deceptive. His true nature begins to show through Darcy's exposition of his past and through his elopement with Lydia, deceiving her to believe that he intends to marry her.

 

Mrs. Bennet (40’s)

Mrs. Bennet is a foolish, irresponsible and frivolous woman. She lacks all sense of propriety and virtue and has no concern for the moral or intellectual education of her daughters. From the beginning, her sole obsession is to marry off her daughters; an inveterate matchmaker. She is a hypochondriac, who when thwarted in any way, takes refuge in imaginary ailments and complains piteously of her “nerves”.  Her voice is shrill.   She is perfectly happy with Lydia's marriage and never once censures her daughter for her shameful conduct or for the worry she has caused her family. Her impropriety is a constant source of mortification for the Elizabeth and the inane nature of her conversation makes her society so difficult to bear that even Jane and Bingley decide to move out of the neighborhood a year after they are married. She is somewhat of an embarrassment to Lizzy. She is still pretty in a plump and florid way.  It is easy to see why, twenty-five years ago, Mr. Bennet found her irresistible. 

 

Mr. Bennet

An intelligent man with good sense and good taste, Mr. Bennet made the mistake of marrying a foolish woman. His sense of humor has helped to carry him through his twenty-five years of marriage and fathering his three silly youngest daughters.  Though he loves and is devoted to his family, he takes refuge in his books and seems to want nothing more than to be bothered as little as possible by his foolish daughters and wife.  Even when Elizabeth warns him not to allow Lydia to go to Brighton because of the moral danger of the situation, he does not listen to her because he does not want to be bothered with Lydia's complaining and whining.  Lizzy is most like him and thus, his favorite. 

  

Lydia Bennet (15)

The youngest of the Bennet sisters, Lydia is foolish, frivolous and flirtatious, given to indolence and the gratification of every whim. She is the favorite of Mrs. Bennet because the two have such similar characters. Lydia is constantly obsessed with the officers in the regiment and sees no purpose to life beyond entertainment and diversion. She lacks any sense of virtue, propriety or good-judgment, as seen in her elopement with Wickham and her complete lack of remorse afterward.  She is not as beautiful as Lizzy and Jane, but is very pretty and pert.

 

Catherine (Kitty) Bennet  (16-17)

Kitty seems to have little personality of her own, but simply to act as a shadow to Lydia, following Lydia's lead in whatever she does. The end of the novel provides hope that Lydia's character will improve by being removed from the society of Lydia and her mother and being taken care of primarily by Jane and Elizabeth.  Slight and delicate in appearance, she is a handsome Bennet daughter, but not as beautiful as Lizzy and Jane.

 

Mary Bennet (17-18)

The third oldest of the Bennet sisters, Mary is plain, strangely solemn and dull.  She dislikes going out into society and prefers to spend her time studying. In conversation, Mary is constantly moralizing or trying to make profound observations about human nature and life in general.  She is likable, but is prepared to lecture on practically any subject.  You are amused by her than annoyed by her.

 

Mr. Collins

A clergyman and an extremely comical character because of his mix of obsequiousness and pride, Mr. Collins is fond of making long and silly speeches and stating formalities which have absolutely no meaning in themselves. For Mr. Collins, speech is not a means to communicate truth but a means to say what he thinks the people around him want to hear or what will make the people around him think well of him. He is in line to inherit Longbourn once Mr. Bennet dies and wants to marry one of the Miss Bennets to lessen the burden of the entailment. When Elizabeth refuses him, he considers his duty discharged and transfers his affections to Charlotte Lucas.  He is a portly, pompous, absurdly formal man.

 

Charlotte Lucas (late 20’s)

Charlotte is Elizabeth’s sweet and reasonable friend.  Charlotte acts as a foil to Elizabeth by embodying the opposite view of marriage. She realistic, but not romantic, when it comes to marriage.  Charlotte makes no attempt to find a husband whom she loves and esteems, but simply gives in to the necessity of acquiring financial security through marriage. She deals as well with Mr. Collins as is possible, but Elizabeth doubts their long-term happiness.

  

Miss Caroline Bingley (20’s)

Miss Bingley is a superficial and selfish, fashionable lady. She is proud and conceited.  She has all of Darcy's class prejudice but none of his honor and virtue. She panders to Darcy in an attempt to win his affections, but to no avail. She pretends to be a genuine friend to Jane but is extremely rude to her when she comes to London. She also tries to prevent the marriage of Jane and Bingley and to prevent Darcy's attachment to Elizabeth by constantly ridiculing the poor manners of Elizabeth's mother and younger sisters. Her surface good manners scarcely hide her contempt for provincial society. 

 

 

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Lady Catherine is expensively dressed, formidable, and superior in manner.  She is extremely wealthy and likes to let others know of their inferiority to her. She loves to give people advice about how to conduct their lives down to the minutest detail, loves to hear flattery from others, and hates to be contradicted. Extremely conscious of class differences, she attempts to prevent Darcy from marrying Elizabeth but actually unwittingly gives him the courage to propose a second time.  Elizabeth dares to defy her.  When Lady Catherine walks, she sweeps; when she sits, it is as if she took her place on a throne and she expects everyone to scurry at her command.

 

Lady Lucas (40’s)

Friend and rival of Mrs. Bennet.  She is also a matchmaker and is determined to marry off Charlotte.   Lady Lucas has a pleasant and matter-of-fact manner.