National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
New York, NY
Notice: Audition Call Type: EPA
AUDITION DATE
Friday, June 20, 2025
9:30 AM - 5:30 PM (E)
BREAK: 1:00PM - 2:00PM
CONTRACT
Off Broadway
$1,049 weekly minimum (Tier 5)
SEEKING
Equity actors for roles in HANNAH SENESH - A PLAY WITH MUSIC (see breakdown).
PRODUCER is committed to diversity and encourages performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to submit.
PREPARATION
Please prepare a short (two minutes or less), dramatic monologue from the contemporary theater. Bring a headshot and resume stapled together.
LOCATION
Actors' Equity New York Audition Center
165 W 46th St
16th Fl
New York, NY 10036
PERSONNEL
See breakdown for production-specific personnel.
EXPECTED TO ATTEND:
Writer/Director: David Schechter (all day)
NYTF Artistic Director: Zalmen Mlotek (select times)
NYTF Producer: Motl Didner (select times)
Casting Director - Jamibeth Margolis (all day)
Casting Associate - Meredith Hoddeson (all day)
OTHER DATES
Rehearsals begin: Approximately September 19, 2025
Performances: October 19 - November 9, 2025
Possible extension of up to three weeks
OTHER
Venue: Theatre Row Theatres (NYC)
EPA Procedures are in effect for this audition.
An Equity Monitor will be provided.
Equity鈥檚 contracts prohibit discrimination. Equity is committed to diversity and encourages all its employers to engage in a policy of equal employment opportunity designed to promote a positive model of inclusion. As such, Equity encourages performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to attend every audition.
Always bring your Equity Membership card to auditions.
BREAKDOWN
HANNAH SENESH -A Play With Music
PERSONNEL:
Producer: National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director
Joseph Mace, Managing Director
Motl Didner, Producer
Writer: David Schechter
Based upon the diaries and poems of Hannah Senesh
Translated from the Hungarian by Marta Cohn and Peter Hay
Developed in collaboration with Lori Wilner
Music composed and arranged by Steven Lutvak
Director: David Schechter
Casting: Jamibeth Margolis Casting
SYNOPSIS:
Adapted from Hannah Senesh's diary, the play tells the true story of Hannah, often referred to as Israel's Joan of Arc. The play begins in 1934. Hannah is a precocious 13 year old Jewish girl living in the culturally sophisticated city of Budapest. She aspires to being a writer like her late father. As she matures, she experiences the growing wave of anti-Semitism and becomes passionate about the dream of building a Jewish state in the land of Palestine. Against her mother's wishes, Hannah emigrates to Palestine to work on an agricultural kibbutz. She is restless there, feeling her intellectual and artistic gifts are not being utilized. Then, she hears reports of the concentration camps in Eastern Europe where Jews are being murdered. She decides that she cannot stay in Palestine when the Hungarian Jews, particularly her mother, who has stayed behind, are in such grave danger. She joins an elite group of Jewish paratroopers who drop behind Nazi lines, first to work with the Partisans in the forests of Yugoslavia and then to cross the border into Hungary to try to save the Jews at risk of deportation to the death camps. Hannah is captured trying to cross the border from Yugoslavia into Hungary and taken to a fascist prison in Budapest. She is severely beaten and tortured when she refuses to cooperate with her fascist captors. At the last gasps of the war, she is executed at the age of 23. Her compelling diaries and poems were left behind, tracing her evolution into a Jewish heroine. In the play, her poems are set to music and sung by the actress playing Hannah as part of the storytelling.
SEEKING:
HANNAH SENESH/CATHERINE SENESH:
HANNAH SENESH (pronounced SEHnish) 鈥� Female identifying. 20 -35 with a wide emotional range. Has a strong singing voice, with strong upper register. Very physically fit and moves well. Hannah ages from 13 -23. Starts the play as a precocious, intellectual, insightful and resilient Hungarian Jewish teenager with a strong moral compass. She feels things very deeply. She can also be headstrong and impulsive. When she sets her mind to something, she is determined to carry it through. As she grows, so does her sense of mission. She is torn between wanting to be a writer and a poet and the responsibility she feels to the wellbeing of others. She is majorly brave, becoming the first female paratrooper in World War Two. The one place she lacks confidence is in personal romantic relations.
CATHERINE SENESH (HANNAH鈥橲 MOTHER, doubles as HANNAH. Catherine speaks with a Hungarian accent.): Catherine is a well-educated, culturally sophisticated, upper-class Hungarian in her mid-fifties. She carries herself with enormous dignity. She does not show her emotions easily, but one can sense a deep well of them. She dedicates herself to keeping the memory of her martyred daughter Hannah alive by proudly speaking about her to gatherings all over the world.
OFFSTAGE UNDERSTUDY FOR HANNAH SENESH/CATHERINE SENESH: SEE ABOVE
GUARD/GEORGE SENESH: Male identifying.. 25 - 40 Imposing, frightening fascist border guard. Barks out orders like an attack dog. In addition to the Guard, the male role also appears as the offstage voice of George Senesh, Hannah's older brother. He is an intelligent, compassionate man of about 25. He cares deeply about the wellbeing of his younger sister and sometimes is concerned about her impetuousness.
Off Broadway $1,049 weekly minimum (Tier 5)
AEA