CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE ANNOUNCES AUDITIONS FOR Showin’ Up Black

Written by Jeanne Madison 

Directed by Jimmie Woody

LOOKING TO CAST THE FOLLOWING ROLEs: 

CLAIRE HOPEGOODE: Affluent, elegant, African American, early 50s, member and Cotillion Ball Chair of the elite African American sorority, Gamma Zeta Epsilon. Married to Louis since college.  

LOUIS HOPEGOODE: Affluent, elegant, African American, early 50s, attorney and partner in the prestigious law firm Minor Gray and Carter, married to Claire since college.  

EVVIE HOPEGOODE: African American, 17-year-old debutante, senior at Boston Preparatory Academy, an exclusive boarding school affiliated with Boston University, and daughter of Claire and Louis Hopegoode.  

MARIE DEADWYLER: Affluent, elegant, African American, early 50s, Claire’s friend, neighbor, and sorority sister.  

KWAN RICHARDSON: African American, 19 years old, sophomore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and grassroots organizer from The Points, a fictional low-income neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, the “hood.”

*Accepting auditions from any equity & non-equity actors 

ABOUT THE PLAY 

Louis and Claire Hopegoode, an affluent African American couple, see their plans for their daughter Evvie’s perfect debutante ball collide with a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the cotillion hotel. Claire, the debutante ball chair, insists that her influential husband have the protest moved so as not to interfere with the debutante ball, nor disrupt her climb into the upper echelon of society. Her husband, Louis, a prominent attorney is conflicted by his role behind the scenes of the protest that may compromise whose side he’s really on.

Evvie, has other sentiments about the protest and in particular, one of the organizers of the protest, that cause her to reject her parents’ goals for her life, and subsequently endanger her safety. And Kwan, a young Black organizer who has beat the odds and is enrolled in an exclusive East Coast college, finds himself dodging the clutches of the police that could send him to jail for years.

When forced to take action on the competing desires, obligations and violence crashing through their world, will the Hopegoodes be able to hold their family together, and restore the safety they thought they had achieved by living in an elite gated community?

ABOUT THE PROCESS 

Rehearsals begin January 16, 5-6 a week in the evenings, with tech between February 9-19. There will be two previews on February 20 & 21, with opening night on February 22.  Performances run February 20 – March 8, 2025, including Sunday matinees and a Monday performance.

CONTENT DISCLOSURES ABOUT THE PLAY 

Showin’ Up Black includes descriptions and narration of police brutality, racism, and classism. 

AUDITIONS 

Saturday, November 16, 12-3pm

Monday, November 18, 7-10pm

Auditions are by appointment only and will be scheduled in 90-minute increments.  

Sides will be provided at the audition for actors. 2-minute monologues are accepted but not required. Actors should be prepared to stay for the entire 90-minute slot to potentially read in group scenes. Plan to stay at the audition for up to two hours, though you may be released sooner.

WHAT TO PREPARE 

• Headshot and resume 

• All actors will read sides from the script

• One 2-minute monologue (comedic or dramatic) is accepted but not required

To schedule an audition appointment, please email auditions@cptonline.org. Please include [Showin’ Up Black Auditions] in your subject line. Be sure to include: your name, email address, phone number, role you’re auditioning for & preferred audition date. Send a copy of your headshot and resume as an attachment to our email.  No phone calls or walk-ins please.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: 

Jeanne Madison, a member of The Dramatists Guild, is the 2022-23 Nord Family Foundation playwright fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT), which includes a mentorship with prolific playwright, Eric Coble. Through Test Flight at CPT, a new play development program, she co-produced her play Showin’ Up Black in workshop at CPT, where it sold out every night.
 
Her play, Eyes of the Bridge, which presents another side of the story of sexual relationships between white women and black men, and offers a reckoning for the bloodshed that resulted from one such liaison, was one of only 20 new plays selected for the A-list of the Garland Lee Thompson, Sr. Readers’ Theatre of New Works at the National Black Theatre Festival, where the play’s staged reading enjoyed a standing-room-only crowd.
 
Other plays have had staged readings at the Ensemble Theatre of Cleveland, where she is a member of the Stagewrights Unit, and her short play Black Coffee was licensed to Karamu Theater of Cleveland as part of their diversity, equity, and inclusion corporate training program. Fortune Cookie—a ten-minute play—was produced at Station Hope, a celebration of the ideals of freedom and acceptance embodied in the Underground Railroad.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: 

Some of his most recent directorial credits include: Jitney by August Wilson (Beck Center); Election Day by Lee Chilcote (BorderLight Festival); Brownsville Song/B-Side for Tray (Dobama Theatre); Art of Longing by Lisa Langford (Cleveland Public Theatre); To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, and Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (Weathervane Playhouse); Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky and The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks (University of Akron); The Split Show, How Blood Go, and The Bomb by Lisa Langford (Tri-C, Convergence Continuum & Cleveland Public Theatre); Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, For Colored Girls… by Ntosake Shange, Jitney, Two Trains Running, Gem of the Ocean & Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson (Cuyahoga Community College [Tri-C Metro]); 365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks (Cleveland Public Theatre); MLK Day by Jimmie Woody, The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe & When the Chickens Came Home to Roost by Laurence Holder (Karamu House); Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman (Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library, and the Cleveland Botanical Garden); Underground Griots by Natalie Parker & Keith Josef Adkins (Cleveland Public Theatre, The National Black Theatre Festival and Here Café NYC); Wilberforce & Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish by Keith Josef Adkins (Cleveland Public Theatre, The National Black Theatre Festival & New York Hip Hop Festival); The Bacchae of Euripides by Wole Soyinka (Cleveland Public Theatre and Columbia University); Song by Daniel Gray Kontar and InCogNegro by Lisa Langford (Cleveland Public Theatre).