ORLANDO — Freeline Productions is hosting auditions on Sunday for “Murder Sleep,” an original play that will make its premiere at the Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival in May.
The production is casting three roles, for two men and one woman. These are paid positions.
“Murder Sleep” is an original thriller written for the stage by Michael Freeman, and it will be presented at the 2016 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, performing May 18-30, specific dates and times to be determined.
ALL ROLES ARE PAID (A set $200.00 stipend will be paid to each performer following the final performance).
Auditions will be held at Sleuths Mystery Dinner Theater, 8267 International Drive, Orlando, on Sunday, Jan 24 from 4-7 p.m. by appointment only. Auditions will consist of cold reads from the script. Call Director Laurel Clark at 407-924-8792 to schedule your audition time. Please bring one copy of your current headshot with attached resume.
ROLES:
RT– Late 40’s-50’s, Sarcastic and long suffering. He is desperate to succeed in his new job opportunity. RT’s attraction to his best friend Ryan allows him to be continually used and abused.
Ryan– 20’s -30’s Hot headed and hard bodied, Ryan is a slacker and hedonist. Easily manipulated by beautiful women, his love of sex and drugs are his undoing. NUDITY REQUIRED.
Francesca– 20’s Beautiful and mysterious, she has an agenda that she uses to manipulate Ryan to a surprising end. PARTIAL NUDITY REQUIRED.
The 25th annual Orlando Fringe runs May 18-30 2016, at several venues, including the Lowndes Shakespeare Center, the Orlando Repertory Theatre, The Venue, and the Orlando Museum of Art.“Murder Sleep” is an original play set in an aging hotel in Fort Lauderdale.
After two years struggling to find work in a bad economy, R.T. Robeson gets a break and lands a dream job. His new employer even puts him up in a hotel for two weeks of training.
But the nondescript R.T. makes one error in judgment: he decides to bring along a young friend, Ryan, who uses the two weeks to get high on Ecstasy and spend his days looking for alluring women at the pleasure palace’s pool. But Ryan doesn’t sleep at night, and he makes it nearly impossible for R.T. to, either, putting his new job at risk.
The situation gets even more bizarre when Ryan meets the drop-dead gorgeous Francesca at the hotel’s bar and invites her back to the room while the increasingly neurotic R.T. is at work. Francesca makes a strong impression on Ryan – perhaps too strong, since her motives appear to go well beyond orgies in bed. Francesca is obsessed with a rich, older gentleman staying at the hotel who had mistreated her – and she seems intent on motivating Ryan’s Alpha Male side to help her enact revenge. The more Francesca talks, the more she appears to envision a hideously blood revenge. Is Ryan likely to succumb to her naked hostility?
And yet …. is any of this really happening? Do the characters have an impaired sense of reality, or a collapsing depth perception? What exactly is going on in the room within that historic hotel in Fort Lauderdale, where a wet spot mysteriously reappears on the desk, and where shadowy figures move through the room in the pitch darkness of night?
And by the end, is the audience exposed as more than simply voyeurs to the macabre happenings?
Welcome to “Murder Sleep” … a play likely to stab brutally at you in your dreams long after you’ve seen it.
As the author notes, there are some biographical elements to an otherwise fictional piece.
“Murder Sleep” is a product of Freeline Productions, which also produces novels like “Bloody Rabbit”, the Freeline Media online news site, and theatrical productions.
Previous Freeline Productions shows have included “Hooked” at the May 2009 Fringe Festival, starring Orlando’s great actor and cabaret singer Kevin Kriegel, and the comedy “Copping a Craigie,” starring actor Michael Colavolpe, who recently completed an impressive run in the touring production of the Broadway hit “Mamma Mia!”, and is now starring as Sheriff Reynolds in the Gen Y production “Bat Boy: The Musical” at The Abbey.
Matthew J. Palm, the theater critic at The Orlando Sentinel, wrote of “Coppie a Craigie”: “It’s a show that (thankfully) doesn’t have much deeper to say than people are fundamentally lazy, shallow and greedy. And who could argue with that? Things get off to a slow start, but the laughs amp up as all the characters inevitably converge, British farce style, in a single apartment for the funny conclusion.”
Both “Hooked” and “Copping a Craigie” were directed by Orlando’s talented and famed director Laurel Clark, the executive director of the Sleuth’s Mystery Dinner Shows on Orlando’s International Drive.
Contact Freeline Media at Freelineorlando@gmail.com..
