2026-2027 SEASON AUDITIONS

SEAT OF THE PANTS announces auditions for our 2026-2027 season. Please read the below information thoroughly, and feel free to reach out to craig@seatofthepants.org with any questions.

GENERAL AUDITIONS
This season, there are two options for general auditions; you may submit through video or audition in person.

  • If you’ve auditioned for or worked with Seat of the Pants before, you do not have to do a general audition, though you may opt to if you have new material you’d like to share. If you opt not to, proceed directly to the SHOW-SPECIFIC AUDITIONS section below.

  • If you’ve not auditioned for us before, please prepare two contrasting monologues (total length of 3 minutes or less) and then do one of the following:

  • Submit your headshot, resumé, and a video of these monologues to submissions@seatofthepants.org by end-of-day on Wednesday, May 6th. Videos can be sent via YouTube (or other video platform) links or as files. We’ll either set up a show-specific audition or let you know that we won’t be requiring your talents.

  • Alternately, if you prefer to perform your monologues live, e-mail submissions@seatofthepants.org, requesting an audition time on Saturday, May 9th between 2-5 PM, and letting us know if you have any accessibility needs that we can help accommodate in person.

SHOW-SPECIFIC AUDITIONS
Our show-specific auditions will take place in person, so that we have the opportunity to watch you play with others in the space and experience aspects of our rehearsal process.

If you’ve auditioned for Seat of the Pants before, we invite you to send us your headshot, resumé, and Equity status to submissions@seatofthepants.org, also letting us know if you have any accessibility needs that we can help accommodate in person. We’ll follow up to either set up a show-specific audition time or let you know that we won’t be requiring your talents this season.

During these sessions, you:

  • do NOT need to bring another headshot and resumé,

  • should bring along your calendar,

  • should arrive 10-15 minutes early to fill out an audition form,

  • can expect to hang out with us for 1-2 hours, depending on what you’re being considered for, and

  • will, we hope, feel relaxed and comfortable to just play with some other actors in a room around a given text.

Audition sessions will be as follows:
SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER: Date Coming Soon
THE NATIVITY VARIATIONS: Date Coming Soon
ALL THE EMILIES IN ALL THE UNIVERSES: Date Coming Soon

All audition sessions will be held at Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ, located at 2592 West 14th St, Cleveland.

OTHER THINGS TO KNOW:

*We’re an itinerant theatre company, rehearsing and performing around Northeast Ohio. Be thinking about how far you’re willing to drive for both rehearsals and performances - and we’ll give you a chance to answer that question on your audition form. We’re usually in Canton, Akron, and Cleveland.

*Our rehearsal processes vary in length, but are longer than the typical 4 weeks and as long as 3 months; we do this because we relish the chance to build an ensemble and really live with a play for a season before mounting it for an audience. What does this look like? For the first portion of time, we rehearse just once or twice a week to play and experiment together. During this time, we’re learning technique, experimenting with tools that may or may not make their way into the final process, and building a common vocabulary together as an ensemble. The final 5 weeks are a more traditional rehearsal schedule of five or six times a week. While monetary compensation begins in this last leg of the rehearsal process, our actors receive other forms of compensation through getting to work with guest artists who teach technique during the earlier process weeks and gaining an arsenal of new tools to enhance their craft. Will we ask you to work differently? Yes. Will it be a rewarding experience? Also yes.

*All roles are paid. We hire both Equity and non-Equity actors. Equity contracts will utilize the Category 1, Tier A Single Engagement Agreement. Non-Equity compensation will be $700.

*The auditions will be observed by Seat of the Pants directors, producers, and assistant directors: Craig Joseph, Michael Glavan, Jeannine Gaskin, Scott Esposito, Katherine Nash, and Lisa Wiley.

*Unless you elect not to be, all non-equity actors who audition will also be considered for our Salon Series of new play readings we’ll be doing over the course of the year (paid) and a special Fourth of July reading we’ll be doing for the City of Westlake at Clague Playhouse (unpaid).

*Seat of the Pants is committed to fostering creative spaces that are accessible, inclusive, and equitable. There are some roles in this season that necessitate a specific cultural or racial life experience; those are noted in the breakdown. Beyond those specific roles, we want to acknowledge that, while all the characters in these shows present on a cis-gendered binary, this is not at all a mandate for the actors we hire. Please submit for any and all roles you are comfortable with and interested in portraying.  

Read this far? Congrats! Here are the plays:

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER by Tennessee Williams
Process: 2 times a week, beginning August 16, 2025
Rehearsals: 5-6 times a week, beginning September 13, 2026
Performances: October 16 - November 1, 2026

Synopsis: Get ready for a battle royale between two powerful nemeses! Catharine Holly has witnessed the murder of her cousin Sebastian, which has sent her to a psychiatric hospital. When Sebastian’s mother, Mrs. Venable, invites a psychiatrist to question Catharine about her story, the young woman paints a picture so graphic it’s almost unbelievable. Mrs. Venable would rather not believe it and wishes to have her son’s secrets remain hidden, but how far will she go to preserve her son’s memory in one of Tennessee Williams’ most haunting pieces of writing? Find out in this pulpy, salacious period piece from an American icon.

MRS. VENABLE: Female-presenting, any race, 50s-70s - a wealthy aristocrat, unhealthily obsessed with her dead son
DR. CUKROWICZ: Male-presenting, any race, 20s-50s - an ambitious doctor, navigating the tension between pleasing his benefactor and uncovering the truth
MISS FOXHILL: Female-presenting, any race, 20s-60s - Mrs. Venable’s anxious and awkward secretary
MRS. HOLLY: Female-presenting, any race, 40s-60s - Catharine’s simple and simpering mother
GEORGE HOLLY: Male-presenting any race, 20-30s. - Catherine’s avaricious and conniving brother
CATHARINE HOLLY: Female-presenting, any race, 20s-30s - a young socialite whose reputation has been sullied by charges of madness
SISTER FELICITY: Female-presenting, any race, 30s-60s - a nun from the asylum, alternately gentle and combative


THE NATIVITY VARIATIONS, by Catherine Trieschmann
Process: 2 times a week, beginning October 4, 2026
Rehearsals: 5-6 times a week, beginning November 1, 2026
Performances: December 4-20, 2026

Synopsis: In a small midwestern town, auteur and hyper-liberal theater director, Jules, leads her experimental community theater troupe in tackling their biggest and most ambitious production yet – staging the Christmas pageant at St. Ignatius Episcopal Church. As their adventurous vision for the “greatest-story-ever-told” evolves to include Shakespearean comedy, avant-garde surrealism, high-action fight scenes, and foul-mouthed hand puppets, Jules – with a gentle nudge by the parish priest – is left to consider the purpose of her art and the true meaning of the holiday season. Modern cynicism meets emotional tenderness in this hilarious and heartfelt holiday offering - a first for Seat of the Pants!

MATEO: Male-presenting, 20s-30s, Latino - a PE teacher who reads Grotowski in his spare time; doubles as FATHER JUAN, an Episcopalian priest of Cuban descent
VANESSA: Female-presenting, 20s-30s, flexible ethnicity - college admissions assistant by day, community theater star by night
PEGGY: Female-presenting, 50s-60s, white - very Midwestern, desperate to be liked; this is her first play, but she can already hear the applause; former elementary school teacher fond of the recorder
KARL: Male-presenting, 40s-60s, Black - the best actor in a two-hundred mile radius; an expert puppeteer; children’s librarian; pastor to the other actors
HANK: Male-presenting, 50s-60s, white - as midwestern as his wife Peggy but not sure how he ended up cast in a play; currently unemployed
JULES: Female / non-binary, 20s-30s, flexible ethnicity - director, willing to bleed for her art
DEVON: Female-presenting, 20s-30s, flexible ethnicity - the stage manager / lighting designer / production assistant - may be played by our actual stage manager


ALL THE EMILIES IN ALL THE UNIVERSES, by Ian August
Process: 1-2 times a week, beginning January 31, 2027
Rehearsals: 5-6 times a week, beginning March 7, 2027
Performances: April 9-25, 2027

Synopsis: Emilie is struggling with the devastating loss of her stillborn child in four distinct parallel timelines. But when an unexpected bend in the space / time continuum brings these four grieving versions of herself together, they realize that infinite possible realities mean that somewhere, somewhen, their lost son was born alive. Emilie, Emilie, Emilie, and Emilie vow to travel through infinite dimensions, risking permanent erasure from the multiverse, to find the baby boy they thought they’d lost forever. All the Emilies in All the Universes is a play about coping with grief, the act of pursuing self-acceptance, and finding the truth hidden in yourself in the ever-expanding multiverse around you.

EMILIE BLUE: Female-presenting, 40s, flexible ethnicity - an accomplished (and blocked) fiction writer
EMILIE RED: Female-presenting, 40s, flexible ethnicity - a fanatical exercise junkie
EMILIE YELLOW: Female-presenting, 40s, flexible ethnicity - a scatter-brained baking show enthusiast
EMILIE BLACK: Female-presenting, 40s, flexible ethnicity - deeply depressed and rarely leaves the safety of the sofa
JEFF: Male-presenting, 40s, flexible ethnicity - Emilie’s husband
THE PRESENTER: Female, ageless, flexible ethnicity - popular baking show host (possibly also God), may appear onstage, or in voice over, or on video - TBD

EMILIE is portrayed by four actresses in four different possible timelines: RED, YELLOW, BLUE, and BLACK. The actresses should be approximately the same age, but do not need to resemble one another. In fact, more diversity is better.


Read Suddenly, Last Summer HERE.
Read The Nativity Variations HERE.
Read All the Emilies in All the Universes HERE.