THE WESTERN RESERVE PLAYHOUSE IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE AUDITIONS FOR THE FINAL TWO PLAYS IN OUR 2025/2026 SEASON

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR

A Play by Bernard Slade

Full-Length Play, Comedy 

Directed by Joe Soriano

One of the most popular romantic comedies of the century, Same Time, Next Year ran four years on Broadway, winning a Tony® Award for lead actress Ellen Burstyn, who later recreated her role in the successful motion picture. It remains one of the world’s most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers.

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THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES

A Play by John Guare

Full-Length Play, Dark Comedy

Directed by August Scarpelli

Artie Shaugnessy is a songwriter with visions of glory. Toiling by day as a zookeeper, he suffers in seedy lounges by night, plying his wares at piano bars in Queens, New York, where he lives with his wife, Bananas, much to the chagrin of Artie’s downstairs mistress, Bunny Flingus, who’ll sleep with him anytime but refuses to cook until they are married. On the day the Pope is making his first visit to the city, Artie’s son Ronny goes AWOL from Fort Dix, stowing a homemade bomb intended to blow up the Pope in Yankee Stadium. Also arriving are Artie’s old school chum, now a successful Hollywood producer, Billy Einhorn, with starlet girlfriend in tow, who holds the key to Artie’s dreams of getting out of Queens and away from the life he so despises. But like many dreams, this promise of glory evaporates amid the chaos of ordinary lives.

Audition Dates: 

Thursday, August 28th, 2025 - 630pm-1030pm

Monday, September 1st, 2025 - 630pm-1030pm

Audition Location:

The Western Reserve Playhouse 

3326 Everett Road 

Bath, Ohio 44286

Callbacks: 

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 - 11am-4pm (as needed)

Performances: SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR: 11/14/25-11/23/25 (Fridays and Saturdays @ 8pm, Sundays @ 2pm, Thursday 11/20/25@ 8pm)

THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES: 01/16/26 - 01/31/26 (Fridays and Saturdays @ 8pm, Sunday 01/25/26 @ 2pm)

Rehearsals: SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR: Will begin near the week of 09/22/25. Rehearsals will typically run Sunday-Thursday based on cast availability

        THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES: Will begin  the week of 11/16/25. Rehearsals will typically run Sunday-Thursday based on cast availability. There will be breaks over the holidays

What to prepare: 

• A short speech that you find might be thematically related to either of the plays. Feel free to prepare your own or choose one of the following (below).

• Cold reading from the script will also be provided

• Please bring all conflicts for the rehearsal and performance process

How to sign up:

• You may sign up here (https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C4BA5AB2FABF8C52-57819732-auditions)  for a 15-minute audition slot. Please bring a headshot and resume if you have one. We also are asking for all conflicts at this time.  Please note tech week for SAME TIME NEXT YEAR will be November 9-13 , 2025. THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES will be January 11-15

• Video submissions are also accepted. Contact the Artistic director, august@thewrp.org for instructions.

• Any questions or concerns may be directed to august@thewrp.org. We welcome actors of all backgrounds and encourage everyone to audition.

• IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE on the prescribed dates but would still like to audition in person, or would like ANY clarification  please reach out 

No equity contracts available at this time. All positions are volunteer. 

Roles are open to all races, ethnicities, gender/gender identities, ages, and abilities, unless directly specified by the playwright as integral to their storytelling.  None of these parts are precast.  All levels of actors wanted!

Roles Available:

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR:

• DORIS 

• GEORGE 

THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES:

• ARTIE SHAUGHNESSY - 45 years old

• RONNIE SHAUGHNESSY - 18 years old

• BUNNY FLINGUS - 39 years old

• BANANAS SHAUGHNESSY - 44 years old

• CORRINNA STROLLER - 22 years old

• BILLY EINHORN - 45 years old

• THREE NUNS

• A POLICEMAN

• THE WHITE MAN

SPEECHES:

DORIS. Oh, no, he’s gentle as a puppy. Anyway he tries to do different things with each of the kids, you know? So he was having a hard time finding something special to do with Tony, our four year old. Then he gets the idea to take him out to fly a kite. So this one Saturday last winter they go out but there’s no wind and they have trouble getting the kite to take off. Well, after a while Tony who’s pretty bored by now, he’s only four years old, asks if he can go sit in the car. Harry said “okay.” (She starts to laugh.) About an hour later I come by on my way home from the laundromat and I see Tony sound asleep in the car and Harry all alone in the park, all red in the face and out of breath pounding up and down with this huge kite dragging along behind him. (She sees that George is not laughing.) Well, it really got to me.

George. Look, I know how you feel, I really do, and I wouldn’t even suggest it if you weren’t a mother . I mean I wouldn't even think of it if this crisis hadn’t come up. (He moves his suitcase to the bed and starts packing through the following.) Oh, it’s not just the tooth-fairy, but she could have swallowed the tooth. It could be lodged God knows where. Now I know this leaves you up in the air but there’s no reason for you to leave too. The room’s all paid for - have you seen my hairbrush? Anyway, I’m probably doing you a favor . If I did stay I wouldn’t be very good company. (Doris throws the hairbrush at him. It sails past his head and crashes into the wall. There is a pause.) You feel somewhat rejected right? I can understand that but I want you to know my leaving has nothing to do with you and me. Doris, I have a sick child at home. This is an emergency.

ARTIE. I didn’t tell you this, Bunny. last week, I rode out to Long Island. (to Bananas, taking her hand) You need help. We — I found a nice hosp … By the sea … by the beautiful sea … It’s an old estate and you can walk from the train station and it was raining and the roads aren’t paved so it’s muddy, but by the road where you turn into the estate, there was a tree with blue leaves in the rain — I walked under it to get out of the rain and also because I had never seen a tree with blue leaves and I walked under the tree and all the leaves flew away in one big round bunch — just lifted up, leaving a bare tree. Whoosh…It was birds. Not blue leaves but birds, waiting to go to Florida or California … and all the birds flew to another tree a couple of hundred feet off and that bare tree blossomed — snap! like that — with all these blue very quietleaves… You’ll like the place, Bananas. I talked to the doctor. He had a mustache. You like mustaches. And the Blue Cross will handle a lot of it, so we won’t have to worry about expense … You’ll like the place … a lot of famous people have had crackdowns there, so you’ll be running in good company.

BANANAS:

I see a scene that you wouldn’t see in your wildest dreams. Forty-second Street.

Broadway. Four corners. Four people. One on each corner. All waving for taxis.

Cardinal Spellman. Jackie Kennedy. Bob Hope. President Johnson. All carrying

suitcases. Taxi! Taxi! I stop in the middle of the street – the middle of Broadway – and I

get out of my Green Latrine and yell, “get in.”

They keep waving for cabs. I run over to President Johnson and grab him by the arm.

“Get in.” And pull Jackie Kennedy into my car and John-John, who I didn’t see, starts

crying and Jackie hits me and I hit her and I grab Bob Hope and push Cardinal Spellman

into the back seat, crying and laughing, “I’ll take you where you want to go. Get in!

Give me your suitcases” - and the suitcases spill open and Jackie Kennedy’s wigs blow

down Forty-Second Street and Cardinal Spellman hits me and Johnson screams and I hit

him. I hit them all. And then the Green Latrine blew four flat tires and sinks and I run to

protect the car and four cabs appear and all my friends run into four different cabs. And

cars are honking at me to move.

I push the car over the bridge back to Queens. You’re asleep. I turn on Johnny Carson

to get my mind off and there’s Cardinal Spellman and Bob Hope, whose ski-nose is still

bleeding, and they tell the story of what happened to them and everybody laughs.

Thirty million people watch Johnny Carson and they all laugh. At me. At me. I’m

nobody. I knew all those people better than me. You. Ronnie. I know everything about

them. Why can’t they love me?

And then it began to snow and I went up on the roof…

BUNNY:

Oh, I love you! You said you’ll come with me to see the Pope! That’s tantamount to a promise. Tantamount. Tantamount. You hear that? I didn’t work in a law office for nix. I could sue you for breach of promise. (Near tears) I know what you’re going to say--- I won’t cook for you—You bend my arm and twist my heart, but I got to be strong. Now rinse your mouth out to freshen up and come on, let’s go. It’s really cold out so dress warm—look, I stuffed the New York Post in my booties—plastic just ain’t as warm as it used to be. I won’t cook for you! I cooked veal parmigeena for me last night. It was so good I almost died. But I won’t cook for you till after we’re married. I’m no that kind of girl. I’ll sleep with you anytime you want. Anywhere. In two months I’ve know you, did I refuse you once? Not once! You want me to climb in the bag with you right now? Unzip it—go on—unzip it—Give your fingers a smack and I’m flat on my back. I’ll sew those words into a sampler for you in our new home in California. We’ll hang it right by the front door. Because, Artie, I’m a rotten lay and I know it and you know it and everybody knows it—I’m not good in bed. It’s no insult. I took that sex test in the Reader’s Digest two weeks ago and I scored twelve. Twelve, Artie!! I ran out of that dentist office with tears gushing out of my face. But I face up to the truth about myself. So if I cooked for you now and said I won’t sleep with you till we’re married, you’d look forward to sleeping with me so much that by the time we did get to that motel near Hollywood, I’d be such a disappointment, you’d never forgive me. My cooking is the only thing I got to lure you on with and hold you with. Artie, we got to keep some magic for the honeymoon. It’s my first honeymoon and I want it to be so good, I’m aiming for two million calories. I want to cook for you so bad I walk by the A&P , I get all hot jabs of chili powder inside my thighs...but I can’t till we get those tickets to California safe in my purse, till Billy knows we’re coming, till I got that ring right on my cooking finger...Don’t tempt me....I love you...