Supernatural: The Play
Auditions
Below are audition sides for SUPERNATURAL: The Play. Please scroll down to find your character's sides. If you would like to be considered for an audition, send your picture and resume to supernaturalauditions@gmail.com.
Writers, Producers and Directors: Candace O. Kelley, Audrey Kelley and Gilda Rogers.
FOR AN APPOINTMENT TO AUDITION PLEASE SEND YOUR PICTURE AND THEATRICAL RESUME TO supernaturalauditions@gmail.com. PLEASE SPECIFY WHICH ROLE(S) YOU WOULD LIKE TO AUDITION FOR.
KEE KEE:
[KEE KEE] Age 25-35. This charismatic, African American woman from Brooklyn is an entrepreneur and YouTube rock star who hosts her own natural hair events. Wears her hair natural – the bigger the better. Vivacious and colorful yet down to earth. A stand-up comedian. (Seeking Understudy)
[DR. JENKINS] Age 35-70. An anthropologist who is on a mission to educate black women around the world about their ancestral history. Is currently an Associate Professor at Columbia. Wears her hair natural/in an Afro centric hairstyle. Look up Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary.
[HANNAH] Age 25-40. A light-skinned, mixed race woman. Her father is black and her mother is Jewish. Wears her hair natural. From New York.
[CONSTANCE] Age 50-65. A lesbian writer with a deep voice who looks like a man. Sensual. Wears her hair natural. From San Francisco.
[NIECEY] Age 25-35. A fashionable, educated woman who is the Assistant to a successful politician. Self-righteous. Wears her hair bone-straight relaxed and long.
[BERTINA] Age 35-45. A dark-skinned woman from Jamaica. She is concerned that her little sister uses skin lighteners with dangerous chemicals and perms her hair. Speaks with a Jamaican accent.
[DORIS] Age 35-45. A southern preacher’s wife who is a cancer survivor. Wears her hair natural.
STORYLINE: Set at a natural hair event, Supernatural: The Play is about Natural Hair journeys. It explores the lives of seven black women who are forced to confront their hair and themselves. Filled with testimonies of triumph. Think For Colored Girls meets The Vagina Monologues but the subject of discussion is natural hair.
SIDES
[KEE KEE sides]
Raise your hands in the air! Raise ‘em if you like your hair!!!!! Raise your hands in the air! Raise ‘em if you like your hair!!!!! It’s me, Kee Kee. Sit down. Sit down. Turn up the lights. Is Ms. Clarkson out there? My third grade teacher, Ms. Clarkson, who said I wouldn’t be nobody cause of my attitude? Cause I ain’t have no Dad and live in the projects? Look at me now hosting my own Supernatural Hair Event in New York City! And all y’all came!!!!!! So, you are probably wondering how I got here at this Supernatural Event with such a big audience. Wasn’t nobody but God. Cause God gave me this here natural hair and those people who looked at my YouTube videos of me testing hair products and seeing how to do my hair. Please, I set up the camera, get out my products and twist and tease and pop it just for you. I was sitting doin’ nothin’ but being a secretary at this publishing house. Being bored ‘n shit. Then one day this woman, Sheila, says to me, “How did you get here?” I was like “The Train.” She said, “No, I’ve seen you on YouTube. What are you doing being a secretary? You need to be out having an affair.” And I was like an affair? With who? Then she told me she was talkin’ about a Hair Affair where women could come out and see me.
KEE KEE audition tip: Wear your hair big and natural. Have fun! A stand-up comedian.
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[DR. JENKINS sides]
Thank you, Kee Kee. I promise to be as brief as possible no matter how long it takes. Who can tell me what natural hair is? (quick interaction with audience) It’s the hair that grows naturally out of your head without chemical relaxers that remove the kink from your hair and make it straight. Who has kinky hair? (wait for response from audience) Mostly black people – people of African descent. Is kinky hair beautiful? In the 18thcentury, a group of men from the Western World set out to scientifically prove that things associated with white culture were more valuable than things associated with black culture. This practice was called ‘scientific racism.’ These men and countless others pontificated these negative ideas about blackness in books and “scientific papers.” Because if you write something down that makes it true… But look at us now. Today black women are changing that narrative and come together to share their marvelous hair journeys and learn about their own hair on their own terms. We are freeing ourselves from centuries of mental, as well as physical, bondage. Women who reject relaxers are really all political activists. Defying the status quo. So, go on, Sistas! Rock your ‘fro!
DR. JENKINS audition tip: Wear your hair natural or in an afro centric style. The teacher with a purpose.
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[HANNAH sides]
I always had to work at this hair because my Jewish Mom doesn’t have this hair, just me. My white cousins don’t have this hair, and my Black father is an only child so I had no cousins on his side with this hair. It was only this hair - on me. In 1976, when I was eight, hair meant everything. So me, caught between black and white and wrong and right, I meant nothing and everything all at once. As I grew, my hair outgrew my head. It was big, huge, and wiry in some places and my Mom didn’t know how to tame it! Then one morning my mother gave me a necklace. From it hung the symbol for the Hebrew word, chaim, which means “life.” Later on that same day, Mom took me to the Right On hair salon. Right in Brooklyn at the corner of Hasidic Jews in black coats and Black people; gefilte fish and chitlins at a crossroads just like me.
HANNAH audition tip: Wear your hair natural. Live in the moment.
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[CONSTANCE sides]
When I cut off my hair that’s when I found the love of my life – a woman – in France. “Bonjour!” All of a sudden, I was happy. How’s that for a hair journey? If it weren’t true, I’d think it was the craziest thing. But that’s me. I’ve always been crazy and impulsive like that. Yep, just like that I took myself to the barbershop and said, “Cut it all the way down. Real, real short something close to a Caesar,” and caught a flight to France all in the same day. My hair has always been one of my biggest nemesis—the other one, men. When I was a little girl, my momma would pull the kitchen chair up close to the stove. I’d watch her place the straightening comb right on top of that blue flame until the comb was smokin’. She’d blow on it like she was making a birthday wish and run it through a wad of toilet paper to wipe off all the charred debris, before pulling it through my hair.
CONSTANCE audition tip: Wear your hair natural. If it’s long, cover it with a cap. Bring out your masculine side in dress. If you are a man auditioning for this role, you should be clean shaven at the audition.
[NIECEY sides]
I know what you’re thinking right now. When I came in the front door today with my relaxed, yes relaxed, straight hair, some of you looked at me like I was crazy. Then you (pointing to a woman in audience), yes, you right there with the afro-puff, asked me did I blow dry my hair straight? When I told you I was relaxed, then there came the look. You all threw daggers at me with your looks. You looked at me as if I had done something wrong. I relax my hair because it’s a choice, my choice. I work for a local politician. Whenever we have a rally to change a law, I would love to get just half of you to show up out there the way that you all show up here. There are hundreds of women at this event. It makes me wonder - if this were a seminar about how we can grow our finances or do better in our relationships, would we all be here? Would we all stand up for something more than our hair?
NIECEY audition tip: Wear your hair bone-straight and long. The longer the better. Niecey dresses with upscale style.
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[BERTINA sides]
We Jamaicans export Blue Mountain Coffee and our so, so divine Jamaican Rum and we import America’s easy, breezy, beautiful colored girls with straight hair. Oh yes, I had the Anita Baker cut, and “pushed it real good” with Salt ‘n Pepper. Them three with their shaved off heads on one side in America means millions of shaved off, wanna-be women around the world, man! We are kindred spirits. My sister pays attention to how you nominate Viola Davis for an Oscar and then poke the fun at her own hair that grow out of the child’s head? You see my sister got that Viola hair and my sister got that exact Viola rich, dark skin. So she collect all of your beauty madness. As they say in my country “shit in, shit out.” Becka, see, got confused as so many of our young girls out there - in a cesspool of beauty. When my mother let her relax her hair two years ago, Becka died and fried it every color. She does the weav-a-licious walking around with crazy colored hair. You know platinum blond not for everyone. Imagine her and her beautiful dark skin walking around Kingston looking like a cheeseburger.
BERTINA audition tip: Wear your hair natural. Speak with a Jamaican accent.
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[DORIS sides]
Preachers Wives don’t get paid. Just paid attention to. And this isn’t going to be popular with some of you out there, but we ought to get paid a little something. I have to have perfect children, the perfect house, perfect clothes, perfect make-up and, of course, perfectly long, straight hair. We’re the secretary, the pianist, the Sunday School teacher, the choir director and the custodian. But Preachers wives don’t get paid and we are not perfect. Do you know after church, I slip into a rather imperfect orange sweat suit and sometimes drink a beer? I finally got the capacity to see that God’s work is bigger than the couples we counsel, Women’s Day details or those women who want to take my place. Married to the pastor and the church. Everyone’s confidant and no one’s friend. It can be a lonely place. I met my husband doing missionary work in South Africa. I was a signer for the deaf in one of the villages. In parts of South Africa when a person says, “Hello, how are you?” the answer is not, “I’m fine, how are you?” The answer translated into English is: (signing the words while speaking) “I see you.” So when I saw this preacher man and he asked how I was doing I signed to him I see you (signs “I see you.”) and we fell in loooove. (signs the words “and we fell in loooove.”)
DORIS audition tip: Wear your hair natural. You would make quite an impression if you research and learn the sign language on line.