PYGMALION

A romantic comedy by George Bernard Shaw | the original play version of My Fair Lady

​📅 Audition Date: Saturday, June 20th
🕘 Time: 9:30am to 4:15pm (4 separate hourly blocks -- please click the link below to choose your audition time and be prepped to stay the full 75 minutes)

Ages: Adult (appearing 21 to 70s)

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This production will be directed by Tre Zijuan Tyler.

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Note: *Willing to work around some conflicts, but excessive conflicting schedules may result in not being cast or dismissal from the production.

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• Rehearsal & Performance Schedule

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Rehearsals begin Monday through Friday, July 13th through 31st from 7:00pm 10:00pm.

Tech Week: (mandatory, will not accept conflicts during this time period) August 3rd-5th. 

Performances:

First weekend: August 6th, 7th, & 8th @ 7pm. The 8th will have a matinee, as well, at 2pm. 

Second Weekend: August 13th, 14th, &15th @ 7pm. The 15th will have matinee, as well at 2pm. 

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• Our Production:

Our production of Pygmalion places Shaw’s classic within the American South of the 1910s, in a world where sophistication and the reach our it shapes class, opportunity, and identity. Blending Southern elegance, sharp social expectations, and a rapidly changing cultural landscape, this production explores what it means to reinvent yourself in pursuit of acceptance, independence, and a better future.

This production will lean into the humor, warmth, tension, and humanity of Shaw’s writing while grounding the play in the language and culture of the early 20th-century American South.

We are looking for actors who are excited by strong collaborative storytelling, physicality, and character-driven work. This world should feel vibrant, lived-in, musical, and alive—full of charm, wit, social performance, and the pressure of constantly being seen and judged by others.

Ability to perform with an American Southern (General) accent is preferred. 

 

• What to prepare: 

Please select and prepare one of the attached monologues for your audition. All auditioning actors will be considered for all available roles, regardless of which monologue they choose to prepare. Auditions will begin with group-based ensemble work before moving into individual monologue auditions. No preparation is needed for the group portion—just bring yourself, be open to collaboration, and come ready to play.

 

Please come dressed in attire that you will be able to move in. 

 

• Character Breakdown

Eliza Doolittle - She is an “uneducated”, “uncouth” flower girl whom Higgins (for a dare) decides to mold into a lady of esteem. This role has been cast. All other roles are available.

Professor Henry Higgins - A bachelor in his 30s - 40s who specializes in phonetics and who is an acclaimed authority on the subject of dialects, accents, and phonetics.

Alfred Doolittle - Eliza's father; he is a refuse collector, who proudly believes in his position as a member of the "undeserving poor."

Colonel Pickering - A courteous, polite, and distinguished retired military officer and authort.

Mrs. Higgins - Henry Higgins' mother

Mrs. Eynsford-Hill - A lady of the upper-middle class who is in a rather impoverished condition but is still clinging to her gentility.

Clara Eynsford-Hill - Her daughter; she tries to act the role of the modem, advanced young person.

Freddy Eynsford-Hill - Her son; he is a pleasant young man who is enchanted by Eliza upon first meeting her.

Mrs. Pearce - Professor Higgins' housekeeper of long standing.

 

Monologue Selections from the Script:

Please choose one of the following to bring with you & prep for auditions. This does not need to be memorized, but we hope that you will take the time to work the material before coming into audition. If you do not see the character you are auditioning for below, that is alright. Please select (1) of the materials below to showcase your best work. It does not have to be based on age, gender, or role you are auditioning for. 

HIGGINS

There! That’s all you get out of Eliza. Ah—ah—ow—oo! No use explaining. As a military man you ought to know that. Give her her orders: that’s what she wants. Eliza: you are to live here for the next six months, learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist’s shop. If you’re good and do whatever you’re told, you will sleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you’re misbehaved and idle you will sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be struck by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you shall go to the Governor's Estate in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the Governor finds out you’re not a lady, you will be taken by the police to the jail, where you will be confined for life as a tale of warning to other presumptuous flower girls. If you are not found out, you shall have a present of a significant dollar amount to start a life with as a lady in a shop. If you refuse this offer you will be a most ungrateful and wicked girl; and the angels will weep for you. [To Pickering] Now are you satisfied, Pickering? [To Mrs. Pearce] Can I put it more plainly and fairly, Mrs. Pearce?

 

MRS. PEARCE

Mr. Higgins. That’s what I mean, sir. You swear a great deal too much. I don’t mind your damning and blasting, and what the devil and where the devil and who the devil— but there is a certain word I must ask you not to use. The girl has just used it herself because the bath was too hot. It begins with the same letter as bath. She knows no better: she learnt it at her mother’s knee. But she must not hear it from your lips. Only this morning, sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter, and to the brown bread. And if you would be so good as not to eat everything off the same plate, and to remember not to put the porridge saucepan out of your hand on the clean tablecloth, it would be a better example to the girl. You know you nearly choked yourself with a fishbone in the jam only last week. Thank you, sir. That’s all.

ALFRED DOOLITTLE.

What am I, gentlemen? I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the “undeserving poor”: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up against middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage of a man’s nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he’s brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she’s growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.

HIGGINS

Oh, that’s what’s worrying you, is it? I shouldn’t bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won’t have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn’t quite realized that you were going away. You might marry, you know. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you’re not bad-looking; it’s quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes—not now, of course, because you’re crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you’re all right and quite yourself, you’re what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won’t feel so cheap.

MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn’t she? Very tender-hearted. She takes after her father just so, doesn’t she?. She had become attached to you both. She worked very hard for you, Henry! I don’t think you quite realize what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! I should have thrown the fire-irons at you.