SLT Audition
Auditions: Cold Water
By Philippa Lawford
Audition one
Date: 25 May 2025
Time: 10:00 - 12:30
Location: SLT - SE27 9NS
Audition two
Date: 26 May 2025
Time: 20:00 - 22:00
Location: SLT - SE27 9NS
Cold Water presents 11 snapshots of six months of Emma and Matt’s relationship as they sing and dance, play games, perform scenes from The Seagull, chat about acting and being a grown up, and try to live their aspirations. It has moments of tenderness and longing, uncertainty and bravado, and humour and desire, with a shared kiss.
Our production will give the play a Brechtian treatment, which will show the audience believable characters and behind the scenes, too. For the actors this means that they will switch between the characters of Emma and Matt, characters in The Seagull and actors who are putting on a performance of Cold Water. This will all be done in view of the audience through physicality, voice and simple costume addition like putting a dress or jacket on over clothes. There will be few technical aspects, but all of them and all scene changes will be delivered by the actors. None of this requires any prior knowledge of Brecht’s or Chekhov’s ideas, but it does require actors who can cleanly and clearly present different characters and who want to collaboratively create an engaging theatrical event that is different from the norm.
As well as having the opportunity to explore acting choices, in rehearsal the actors will be led in devised theatre techniques and encouraged to draw on their own creativity in order to create moments of devised theatre that will intersperse and support the scripted scenes. It is a play as much about acting as it is about love and finding oneself.
Director: Elliot Archer
Performances: 2 - 6 Sep 2025
First Rehearsal: 22 Jun 2025
Characters:
EMMA: Emma (22) has just graduated from university and moved back home. She has taken a job at her old school as a teaching assistant but is keen to go to drama school and spends increasing amounts of time with drama teacher Matt. She is finding her way in the world and is brave and fearful about doing so. She develops haltingly over the course of the play in a way that progresses with setbacks. Her development is closer to how we actually develop in real life, rather than being the sudden change of a fairytale.
MATT: Matt (35) is charismatic and charming, and for his greater life experience perhaps lacks the honesty about himself that Emma possesses. He also has weaknesses and vulnerabilities but, adept at teaching and performing, these are seen only in glimpses. Sometimes he can be self-involved and sometimes he can entertain or entirely focus on others. Over the course of the play we see that he is not as in control of things as he would like to think and we see more of the real man. He learns about himself too but after the audience has done so.
Please fill in this form to book an audition slot.
Callbacks, if required, will be on Sunday 1 June 2025 at 1000 – 1230.
