Mary Ann Alice (The Beginning of the End)
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Auditions
Audition Information & Submission Instructions
Actors will be auditioning for Director Janet Irwin and Skeleton Key’s Artistic Director and Assistant Director Caity Smyck. Auditions will take place at the Shenkman Arts Centre (245 Centrum Blvd, Orléans) in the Ottawa School of Theatre Studios on October 7th & 9th, 2026. Actors must be able to work locally within Ottawa during the production, professional actors whose artistic practice is based in the Ottawa area will be prioritized. Rehearsals will run April 19th - May 12th, 2027 followed by 5-7 possible performances from May 13th-16th, 2027 in Ottawa. AUDITIONS: Actors will need to prepare 2 contrasting monologues or 1 monologue and 1 song excerpt no more than one minute in length, preferably from the musical theatre canon. If you can play a hand held instrument to accompany your song we would encourage you to do so. If you are invited to audition we will also have you read sides from the play during your audition. These will be sent to you in advance to prepare. If Ottawa actors are interested in working with us but cannot attend the audition dates, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you. Please note that we will not be accepting self-tapes. TO SUBMIT: Please email your headshot and CV in one PDF with the file name in the format of “LAST Name, FIRST Name - CV & Headshot” to info@skeletonkeytheatre.com by Friday, October 2nd at Midnight. Please indicate in your submission email if you are an Equity member. We appreciate your interest in working with us. Please note that only candidates selected for an audition will be contacted. Audition appointments will be sent out by Monday, October 5th.
Casting Breakdown
We are casting a total of 10 actors to play a track of characters as well as part of the total ensemble. The characters in this production reflect a variety of gender expressions and ages and therefore no character tracks are available at this time as they will be assigned based on the ensemble casted.
Accessibility Information
Skeleton Key Theatre in partnership with Easy Street Productions is holding auditions for our May 2027 production of Mary Ann Alice (The Beginning of the End) by Janet Irwin adapted from Brian Doyle's novel, Mary Ann Alice. THE SHOW: Mary Ann Alice is hovering on the brink of adolescence – she is the smartest girl in her class and she wants to be the First Girl Poet on the Gatineau River. She is our storyteller, and her own coming of age story coincides with the coming of the end of the world. Her world, anyway. Mary Ann Alice’s family farm is upstream of the village of Low, Quebec, an area settled by Irish Catholic immigrants in the mid 1800s. Low is a quiet agricultural community in the early 1920s but it’s about to explode into the biggest construction site in the world. Government and Serious Money want to exploit the tumultuous flow of the Paugan Falls for hydro-electric power, and that is going to happen no matter what anybody thinks about it. Mary Ann Alice is the human bridge from the time before the harnessing of the Falls to the massive dam of the late 1920s that we still see today. She watches her personal world collapse and morph into modernity with all the loss and pain and consequences. She loved the old river, and she knows it’s down there somewhere, but the challenge is to make peace with the new one.
Ethnocultural Mandate
Skeleton Key Theatre encourages submissions from artists of all backgrounds, regardless of culture, race, colour, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
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