Love Unpunished Performers (Live Theater)

Pig Iron Theatre Company is looking to cast four performers for our upcoming movement-theater production of LOVE UNPUNISHED. Experience in physical theater and devising, or in contemporary dance, are a plus.

Performer-creator must be comfortable improvising – both scenes and movement. Performers can be of any race and any gender. The ages to be played on stage range from 25 to 55.

Pig Iron is committed to building diversity and inclusion, onstage and throughout the organization. We encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to audition.

LOVE UNPUNISHED is a remount of Pig Iron’s 2006 dance-theater meditation on grief and panic. Set on the escape stairs of an imagined World Trade Center, the piece imagines the moments of fear, confusion and human contact as the denizens of the skyscraper descend many flights of stairs, unaware if it is a drill or an emergency. The piece is almost entirely wordless, and features a unique movement style, based on choreographer David Brick’s long investigation of falling bodies. The 2021 production, restaged to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the events on 9/11, will feature most of the original creative team, members of the original cast, and some original and new material to be co-created by the ensemble.

Conceived by Dan Rothenberg (Direction), David Brick (Co-director and Choreographer) and Mimi Lien (Scenic Design).

AUDITIONS:
Preliminary auditions will be solo and remote – just a ten-minute encounter over Zoom. We will be doing short movement exercises with prompts given over Zoom. There is nothing specific to prepare – just be ready to walk, jump, and fall to the floor. If you have a chair you can stand on / step up on, that is ideal.

We ask that you wear comfortable clothes and have a good internet connection. A small or mid-sized studio space is ideal, but we are happy to work with people zooming in from their homes; the best space will be one you can work in barefoot and extend your arms fully in all directions, with a floor you can lie on / fall down on. The webcam of your computer should be arranged in such a way we can see your whole body in the frame.

** We understand that everyone is working with different home situations, so please know these are only guidelines: we will work with you where you are at, in the space you can find. **

Zoom Auditions will be held Thursday April 8 from 4pm-10pm and Friday April 9 from 10am – 5pm EDT.

Callbacks will be held at FDR Park in South Philadelphia. They will be held at the “South Philly Meadows,” located just within the Park entrance at 20th and Pattison. More specific location for the parking lot at the entrance to the Meadows can be found at this pin on Google Maps, and detailed instructions will be given to anyone who is called back. These sessions will be 45-60 minutes, outdoors and socially distanced. Please see Pig Iron’s COVID protocols here. They are also listed at the end of this document. Callbacks will be held on Saturday April 10 and Sunday April 11 from 12pm – 3pm EDT.

If you would like to be considered for an audition, please send a resume and headshot to casting@pigiron.org​. Short reels of performance work are welcome too. When applying for consideration, please also send any existing conflicts or time preferences during the audition and callback times.

Rehearsal / Creation Periods: All work in Philadelphia / Philly Area
First Rehearsal July 19 – August 1
Rehearsal on Set – August 16 – 26
Tech – August 27 – September 2
Performances – September 3 – 12
Additional Performances – September 18-19 (Swarthmore, PA)

More about what we are looking for in the auditions:
Cast members of Love Unpunished each play several roles — ordinary people descending the stairs of a large skyscraper: office workers, bike messengers, caterers, businesspeople. Some play firemen ascending the stairs.

We are looking for actors who move and dancers who act, movement-based improvisers and non-dancers who are comfortable moving. We are looking for performers who bring a lot of presence to everyday activities. No need to come to auditions well-coiffed or with lots of make-up –The touchstone for these performances is “ordinary.” Movement artists who have idiosyncratic movement vocabulary and all sorts of body types are more than welcome.

Similarly, while there is a fair amount of skill involved to repeat “ordinary” movement with precision, and to fall down repeatedly on a wooden deck, we are not looking for the beauty and virtuosity associated with ballet, acrobatics, or modern dance. So if you have those skills, great, but you gotta be able to “turn it off,” you know?

More about Love Unpunished:
“In depicting a world knocked off its axis, Pig Iron discovers a tranquil, ethereal plane within the chaos–a place existing somewhere between life and death, remembrance and renewal,” a reviewer in Philadelphia Weekly wrote in 2006.

Love Unpunished does not make any explicit reference to the World Trade Center or to the events around it that day, but rather aims to highlight the ordinariness and confusion of the evacuees and firemen inside the building. This presentation asks audiences to contemplate the space of grief in response to collective tragedy; to reopen the possibility of tenderness in the face of politically-charged catastrophes; and to reimagine the sensation of time itself as we face the possibility of our own individual and collective vulnerabilities.

There are plans to premiere this remount at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2021, with a brief tour to Swarthmore College. Pig Iron hopes to continue to tour this work sporadically over the next 2-3 years, with potential dates in Houston, TX, and Essen, Germany.

Creative Team:
Concept and Direction: Dan Rothenberg
Choreography and Co-Direction: David Brick
Scenic Design: Mimi Lien
Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau
Costume Design: Oana Botez
Original Sound and Music: Troy Herion and Sean Mattio