How it works:

- We go bowling.  No, we’re not very good at it, but we do like the fact that it is loud and involves beer.
- You sponsor your favorite Custom Made staff member/company member  per pin.
- We bowl two games
- We multiply the total number of pins, over the two games, by your pledge.
- We send you instructions on how to pay (PayPal, credit card, check or cash)
- All money raised goes to the Annual Fund (that’s how we put on shows!)

Thank you SO much!

To sign up for a slot please go to https://instant-scheduling.com/sch.php?kn=360707

Having problems? Can’t make it but still want us to have your headshot/resume? Contact Casting Director Gabe Ross at gabeaross@yahoo.com

Our season includes: “The Play about the Baby” by Edward Albee, “Superior Donuts” by Tracy Letts, “Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them” by Christopher Durang, “Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl, and “Prelude to a Kiss” by Craig Lucas

All performances, rehearsals and auditions are at Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough St, San Francisco.

Actors receive a stipend.

Here’s the parts/breakdown/requirements of the season:
*note: the ages listed are “playable age”.  If you are 65 and can play 40, by all means go for it!
** note: unless the part has specific, required needs (see DONUTS and some characters in TORTURE) Custom Made is color-blind. We cast the best actor, regardless of ethnicity.  Always.

“The Play About the Baby” by Edward Albee (San Francisco Premiere)
Directed by Brian Katz
Rehearses August-Sept 2012
Runs Sept 7-Oct 7, can extend until Oct 14

Man: 40-65
Woman: 40-65
Boy: 18-28 (full nudity required)
Girl: 18-28 (full nudity required)

“Superior Donuts” by Tracy Letts (San Francisco Premiere)
Directed by Marilyn Langbehn
Rehearses late Sept- early Nov
Runs Nov 2-Dec 2; can extended until Dec 16

Arthur Przybyszewski: Polish-American, 59 (no accent)
Franco Wicks: African-American, 21
Max Tarasov: Russian, 49 (accent required)
Kiril Ivakin: Russian, 39 (accent required)
Lady Boyle: Irish-American, 72 (accent required)
Officer Randy Osteen: female, Irish-American, 49
Officer James Bailey: African-American, 43
Luther Flynn: Irish/Italian-American, 28
Kevin Magee: Irish-American, 28

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People who Love Them” by Christopher Durang (Bay Area Premiere)”
Directed by Claire Rice
Rehearses Dec-Jan 2012/13
Runs Jan 11-Feb 10; can extend until Feb 24

Felicity – a perfectly nice young woman of 25 to 34
Zamir – a charismatic young man of indeterminate ethnicity; dark-haired, probably Pakistani or Egyptian or Indian. But could look Italian or Greek too. Does not have an accent, sounds American. 25 to 39
Luella – Felicity’s mother, sweet, somewhat dazed/befuddled woman. Dresses well. Late 40s to mid 50s.
Leonard – Felicity’s father. Strong-minded, formidable, one hundred percent sure he’s right about everything. Late 40s to late 50s.
Revered Mile – a minister who directs porno movies. Late 30s to late 40s. Likable face, bit sexy, mildly debauched feeling like a Mickey Rourke or Kevin Spacey.
Hildegarde – a conservative, old-fashioned woman in her mid-40s to late 50s.
Voice/Narrator – 20s to 40s. Well-spoken, must make announcements. Also plays Loony Tunes (a hyperactive spy) and the sauve Maitre d’ Sings well.

“Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl (San Francisco Premiere)
Directed by Katja Rivera in collaboration with Brian Katz and Daunielle Rasmussen
Rehearses Feb-March, 2013
Runs March 15-April 14, can extend until April 28

Eurydice – Female, 20s
Orpheus – Male, 20s. Must be a capable musician.
Father – 40s to 50s
Loud Stone
Big Stone
Little Stone
Nasty Interesting Man/Lord of the Underworld – Male, 30s to 50s

“Prelude to a Kiss” by Craig Lucas
Directed by Stuart Bousel
Rehearses April-May, 2013
Runs May 17-June 16; can extend until June 30

Peter Hoskins – Male, 20s
Rita Boyle – Female, 20s
Old Man – Male, 60s-70s
Taylor – Male, 20s or 30s
Mrs. Boyle – Female, 50s
Dr. Boyle – Male, 50s
Aunt Dorothy/Leah – Female, 50s or 60s
Tom/Jamaican Waiter – Male, 20s or 30s
Minister – Male, 30s to 60s
Uncle Fred – Male, 50s or 60s

A Bright Room Called Day Photo Trailer from Custom Made Theatre on Vimeo.

We couldn’t agree more.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Tony Kushner’s ‘A Bright Room Called Day’: Gripping theatre at CustomMade – San Francisco Theater | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/theater-in-san-francisco/tony-kushner-s-a-bright-room-called-day-gripping-theatre-at-custommade-review#ixzz1pJ1MUBPc

Read the full review at http://www.beyondchron.org/depts/index.php?itemid=9981&catid=2#more

http://artsamerica.org/blog/location/a-bright-room-called-day-dazzles-san-francisco/

These amazing photos are by Jay Yamada, and were shot at our final dress as well as our pick-up rehearsal before opening.  Enjoy, they really capture our beautiful show.

To download a high-resolution photo, click on an image.  Then right click and “save image as”

[Show as slideshow]

Most of the article is from an interview with me, although some of the facts about the version have gotten confused.  I’m planning on posting the Q&A soon….

Here’s an excerpt and be sure to click the link to read the whole article.

“By the end of the play, time becomes ethereal, and we are left neither here nor there,” Katz says. “It creates urgency. It helps transport us into the past without this being, for one moment, a ‘historical play,’ which, to me, is deadly.”

For Katz, Zillah’s presence in the apartment also forces the audience to place themselves in the same space, breaking down time and urging us to ask questions such as “What would we do? Would we fight? Could we stick to our convictions? And how could we survive if everyone we loved abandoned us?”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/07/NSEC1NE26Q.DTL#ixzz1oYBwdQ1X

Here’s some shots, enjoy!

[Show as slideshow]

When we started rehearsing A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY I was coming out of three months’ worth of dramaturgical research, mostly reading various political and social histories of the rise and fall of Weimar Republic, and the first two years of the Third Reich.   I talked endlessly about the parallels of Weimar’s crumbling and unstable democracy and our own mistaken security that ours could never fall.  I brought up the Capitalist Putsch against Roosevelt.  We looked at Kushner’s own (self-admittedly immature) comparisons between Regan/Thatcher and Adolf Hitler.  We talked about what I thought was going to be our big question: how the hell did this happen, and who was responsible?  That’s a good play, right?

Kushner has other ideas.  While watching our Agnes (Xanadu Bruggers) and her friends sit around her dining room table, and make witty jokes and tell stories, I flashed back to college and remembered the same scene in a different cozy apartment.  I laughed, along with our staff, at a couple’s inability to relax enough to have sex, and beamed with joy when these good, good people think that the tides of Progress are going their way, which reminded me a little of the nights of Clinton’s and  Obama’s election.  Then Hitler is elected and the Reichstag burns, and we are in less familiar territory, though perhaps not if you take Fox News seriously.  God willing, we will never know the darkness of Germany, 1933, let alone the catastrophe to follow.

However, because Kushner’s characters are so recognizable to the progressives among us, we cannot help but be moved and then transplant ourselves into Agnes’ modern flat, with all the ghosts and revelations that are contained there.  A Bright Room Called Day is realistic in that its characters speak very intelligently about the political and social world they know, but they are so recognizable, so like our own friends and lovers, that we are instantly conveyed into this funny, sad and mystical world.

Plays are always about people, not ideas.  We already knew that of course, but the view of the forest (as opposed to the trees)   I got at the designer run is that we were too worried about what was outside the apartment.  This was the first part of our work: understanding the terror coming around the corner, and what caused it.  Check, we’ve got that down I think.  Now, going forward, it is all about making these people are recognizable as possible, and us, as an audience, falling in love with these crazy artists, revolutionaries, communists, and Agnes, who holds them all together.

Oh yeah, and there’s the Devil, too.  But that’s for another post.