AUDITIONS
How Did I Get Here?
Two One-Act Plays
The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
and
Nine by Jane Shepard
Directed by Lisa Lynds
Stage Managed by Emily DePew
Presented in The CENTER’s Black Box
Auditions: Saturday, July 25 at 1:00 PM and Sunday, July 26 at 7:00 PM
Callbacks: Tuesday, July 28 at 7:00 PM (by invitation only)
Where: The CENTER for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck (661 Route 308, Rhinebeck, NY)
Performance Dates: September 11–13, 2026
Rehearsals will begin in August. A detailed schedule will be provided at auditions.
CENTERstage Productions seeks actors for a unique Black Box performance of two acclaimed one-act plays. Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and Jane Shepard's Nine explore power, survival, communication, and the tension that emerges when ordinary people find themselves trapped in extraordinary circumstances.
Available Roles
The Dumb Waiter
Ben – Male-presenting, approximately 30–50s. A hitman who has been in the profession for many years. Thoughtful, questioning, and increasingly uneasy as events unfold.
Nine
Woman – Female-presenting, approximately 30–50s. A woman trapped in a life-threatening situation who must rely on wit, resilience, and psychological strategy to survive. This role requires spending most of the play physically restrained onstage.
* Casting Note: One role in each play has already been cast.
What to Prepare
Auditions will consist of cold readings from the scripts.
Selected sides will be made available digitally in advance whenever possible and will also be provided in print at auditions. Please check back here for digital copies.
Actors are encouraged to read multiple times throughout the audition. The dialogue in both plays is distinctive and layered, and performers may be asked to explore different scenes or character choices.
No prepared monologue is required.
About the Plays
The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
In Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Gus and Ben are on the job, waiting and listening. Into the waiting silence rattles the dumb waiter with extraordinary demands for dishes they cannot supply: but who is operating the dumb waiter in an empty house? Pinter‘s absurdist, menacing comedy of horrors never lets the tension let up as Gus and Ben await their fate, whatever that might be.
Nine by Jane Shepard
Nine by Jane Shepard features two women held in a life-threatening situation and the mind games they play to keep one another alive. Held in a room and chained apart, their only currency is words, and balance of power is everything when a single word becomes the hanging point between life and death.
About the Playwrights
Harold Pinter was one of the most influential playwrights of the twentieth century. He was an English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence, and even silence, to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Jane Shepard's works have been produced in New York, around the U.S. and in five nations. During 25 years in New York City, she received numerous productions and worked in association with some of the city's most revered companies, among them Circle Rep, The Public, New York Stage & Film, and Ensemble Studio Theater. She is the recipient of many writing awards, including a Jane Chambers Award, The Berrilla Kerr Playwrighting Award, and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship to write and appear in her one-woman show on learning disabilities, The Idiot's Guide to the Brain.
Questions?
Please contact director Lisa Lynds at lisamlynds@gmail.com.