Audition: Klimt, Schiele and Freud – The Art of the Id
Written by Jim Blythe
Directed by Simon West
AUDITION DATES
All day and all evening on Monday 25th July, Sunday 31st July
AUDITION VENUE
Matter of Act Studios, 220c, Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff, CF5 1GY
VENUE AND PERFORMANCE:
15 – 17 September, Tobacco Factory, Bristol
REHEARSALS:
Rehearsals will begin in the last week of August and on into Sept; exact dates/times tbc.
TO BOOK AN AUDITION
Email: casting@matterofacttheatre.com(Please specify preferred date and time)
SYNOPSIS
The play revolves around three men: the artists Klimt and Schiele, who were unlikely friends in fin-de-siecle Vienna, and the pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud, a contemporary of theirs.
Schiele was a young firebrand as an artist, famous for his eroticism and his scandalous lifestyle: Klimt was an established artist in his fifties, catering for the wealthy Viennese patrons of the day including the Emperor himself. Freud, also in his fifties at that time, was interested in sexuality as a driver of human behaviour, and in their different ways all three men were focused on sex in their work.
The play runs for approximately an hour and ten minutes, and is illustrated by the paintings of the two artists. The action takes place between a Viennese cafe and the artists’ studios.
CHARACTERS
Gustav klimt: artist, who ages from 40 to 55 in the course of the play. He is slightly balding, and has an untidy beard. In his studio, he wears only a long smock and some sandals. He is a mild, rather shy man who doesn’t reveal much about himself.
Egon Schiele: artist, a young man in his twenties. Energetic and nervy, full-on enthusiastic, slightly manic. Can be petulant and impatient: he is quite self-centred.
Sigmund Freud: a scholarly, middle-aged man, measured in his speech and actions, friendly and interested in people.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Simon H West trained at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and is a freelance actor and director. Appearances as an actor include Lost In The Stars (Battersea Arts Centre); Postman Pat (National Tour); Suddenly At Home (National Tour); Flipside (Soho Theatre); Casualty (BBC TV), Broadchurch (Kudos Film & TV); Pobol Y Cwm (BBC TV); Now Is Another Time (CineCentrum GmbH); commercials and cabaret appearances. He holds an MA in Directing from the University of London and has directed over 50 plays including 84 Charing Cross Road, Marking Time & Veronica’s Room (Connaught Productions); Elsie and Norm’s Macbeth (Matthew Townsend Productions); Closer & After Miss Julie (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick); Me And My Friend (On In 5 Productions); Confusions, The Flint Street Nativity and Bouncers (GO Productions); Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, HMS Pinafore and The Railway Children (Cardiff Open Air Theatre Festival) and has directed TV comedies Fawlty Towers, Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third, Blackadder Goes Forth, ‘Allo ‘Allo and Hi-de-Hi on the stage. Other productions include Habeas Corpus, Womberang, Two, Edward Bond’s Lear and Yerma. He has worked as an Assistant Director to Helena Kaut-Howson on Summerfolk (RADA), to Ian Forrest on Strangers on a Train (Keswick) and to Giles Havergal on Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican Theatre). He is a regular Director at Simply Theatre, Geneva where he has directed Academy productions of Macbeth, The Railway Children, The Tempest, The Crucible and Twelfth Night.