Auditions will be held on Sat 3 and Sun 4 July from 1pm to 6pm in the Bradley Studio, UWA by appointment. Non-graduates are welcome.

Rehearsals will commence on Sat 4 September

Production dates are 30 October, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13 November

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , Tennessee Williams' gripping, intensely moving play, first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of untethered and repressed sexuality. In spite of the public controversy the play stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. It has been restaged several times since, and was adapted into an acclaimed 1958 film. Williams rewrote the play several times.

The version GRADS is presenting was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway and in the West End.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship of a husband and wife, Brick and Maggie (‘The Cat’) Pollitt, and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of one evening gathering at the family estate in Mississippi, ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of patriarch and tycoon ‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt.

Maggie, though witty and beautiful, has escaped a childhood of desperate poverty to marry into the wealthy Pollitt family, but finds herself suffering in an unfulfilling marriage.

Brick, a past football hero, has neglected his wife and further infuriates her by ignoring his brother's attempts to gain control of the family fortune. Brick's indifference and his near-continuous drinking started after the recent suicide of his friend Skipper.

Big Daddy is unaware that he has cancer and will never live to see another birthday; his doctors and his family have conspired to keep this information from him and his wife.

His relatives are in attendance and attempt to present themselves in the best possible light, hoping to receive the definitive share of Big Daddy's enormous wealth.

Characters:

Margaret – 20s. The play's cat. Maggie's loneliness and Brick's refusal to make her his desire, has made her hard, nervous, and bitchy. The woman constantly posing in the mirror, Maggie holds the audiences transfixed. The exhilaration of the play lies in the force of the audience's identification with its gorgeous heroine, a woman desperate in her sense of loneliness, who is made all the more beautiful in her envy, longing, and dispossession.

Brick - The favourite son and mourned lover. Brick, 27, embodies an almost archetypal masculinity. At the same time, the Brick is also an obviously broken man because of his repressed desire for his dead friend Skipper.

Big Daddy - Maggie's father. 60’s. Affectionately dubbed by Maggie as an old-fashioned "Mississippi redneck," Daddy is a large, brash, and vulgar plantation millionaire who believes he has returned from the grave. Though his coming death has been quickly repressed, in some sense Daddy has confronted its possibility. In returning from "death's country," Daddy forces his son to face his own desire.

Big Mama – 60s. Maggie's mother. Fat, breathless, sincere, earnest, crude, and bedecked in flashy gems, Mama is a woman embarrassingly dedicated to a man who despises her and in feeble denial of her husband's disgust. She considers Brick her "only son."

Mae - 30s. A mean, agitated "monster of fertility" who schemes with her husband Gooper to secure Big Daddy's estate. Mae appears primarily responsible for the burlesques of familial love and devotion that she and the children stage before the grandparents.

Gooper - 30s. A successful corporate lawyer, Gooper is Daddy's eldest and least favored son. He deeply resents his parents' love for Brick, viciously relishes in Daddy's illness, and rather ruthlessly plots to secure control of the estate.

Reverend Tooker – any age -A tactless, opportunistic, and hypocritical guest at Big Daddy's birthday party. As Williams indicates, his role is to embody the lie of conventional morality.

Doctor Baugh – any age - Daddy's physician who delivers Daddy's diagnosis to Big Mama and leaves her with a prescription of morphine.

Lacey– any age – A servant who appears occasionally.

The play is available in most libraries and bookshops.

For the audition, please prepare a short piece from any American play, preferably in a southern American accent.

To book an audition timeslot, please phone or email the production manager using ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Audition’ as the subject heading.