LCC's Fall Mainstage Play
A STAGES OF THE LAW series production

AN EXPERIMENT WITH AN AIR PUMP by Shelagh Stephenson

Audition Dates:  Wednesday, September 3 and Thursday, September 4 @ 7pm in Dart Auditorium

Performance Dates:  November 7-9, 14 & 15

The Play:  In 1799, on the eve of a new century, the home of physician and scientist Joseph Fenwick of Newcastle, England, his family and his protégés (including Peter Roget, of Thesaurus fame) buzzes with scientific experiments, social unrest, marital discord and an illicit romance.  Two hundred years later, on the threshold of a new millennium, that same house reveals a dark secret with implications for its current inhabitants.  Ellen, a renowned geneticist, is offered prestige, financial security, and ethical risk for her work by a pharmaceutical company even as her husband, an English Lit professor, is faced with involuntary retirement and irrelevancy.  Inspired by Joseph Wright's famous painting, An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1769), Shelagh Stephenson's play asks what we will do to pursue knowledge, what knowledge do we value, and what are the costs when we think we know all the answers?

Scripts:  Available for overnight check-out in A&S 255 from 7:30am - 4pm, Monday - Friday.

Information:  Mary Job, 323-7137 or LCC Production Office, 483-1488

Cast of Characters:
NOTES:  All the characters except Phil and Isobel speak with a standard British accent.  Phil speaks with a Northern English accent and Isobel with a Scots accent.  There will be dialect lessons in rehearsal, but give it your best shot at auditions!

The parts of Ellen and Susannah will be double cast.  All other roles will be played by single actors.

Ages of characters are provided to give insight into the character, rather than as a limitation on casting.  LCC current and former students are strongly encouraged to audition for any part and not limit themselves to "age appropriate" roles.

1799

Fenwick - 55, a physician and dedicated scientist, articulate, forceful, impatient, a bit of an intellectual bully.  He believes that science equals progress.

Susannah - Late 30's to 40, his wife, a beautiful woman trained to be an ornament.  Too conventional to maintain her husband's interest, and too smart not to be aware of that fact, so she is also a deeply unhappy woman who drinks.  Doubles with Ellen.

Maria & Harriet - 18-20, their twin daughters, Maria is conventional and Harriet is intellectual.

Peter Mark Roget - 21, Fenwick's protégé, a young physician and scientist who also acts as Fenwick's secretary, later of Thesaurus fame.  A bit of a wallflower.

Thomas Armstrong - 26, physician and scientist, another of Fenwick's protégés, good-looking and charming when he wants to be, but also arrogant and obsessive.

Isobel Bridie - 25, the Fenwick's Scots maid.  Surprisingly well-read and spoken, with a forthright and somewhat ironic manner.  She also has a twisted spine, resulting in one shoulder and hip being higher than the other, probably a severe case of scoliosis, which becomes a source of fascination for Armstrong.

1999

Ellen - Late 30's to 40, a genetic scientist, a quiet and thoughtful woman struggling with an ethical dilemma.  Doubles with Susannah.

Kate - late 20's, also a scientist.  Ellen's friend, assertive and self-confident, who tends to see the world in dispassionately practical terms.  She is trying to persuade Ellen to work for her pharmaceutical company.

Tom - Early 50's, Ellen's husband, an English lecturer, recently laid off.  A quiet man with leftist politics and a feeling that his life's work is irrelevant in today's world.

Phil - 20's, a builder hired to renovate Ellen's & Tom's house for its new owners.  Talkative, friendly, earthy, but with a decided penchant for wacky scientific theories.

For additional information, call the Production Office at 517-483-1488.