Auditions:  January 4th and 5th at 7pm

Lonely Planet by Steven Dietz, Directed by Eric Jansen

Jody, a gay man, owns a small map store on the oldest street in an American city, and is seemingly worldly and knowledgeable. Carl, another gay man is a frequent visitor to the store, is a friend of Jody, and seems to lie a lot about his life and occupation. Despite this, the two seemingly know very little about each other. The play begins with Jody explaining how he found a chair placed in his store one day, without notice, by Carl. Pretty soon, the store is littered with chairs, and after some argument between the two, it is revealed that every chair was owned by someone they knew in their community, who had died from the epidemic.

It becomes apparent that Jody hasn’t left his store for months on end, rarely going outside and rather having things brought to him. Carl has placed the chairs in his store in hopes that Jody will realize that there are things going on in their community, and as a member Jody must bear witness and help the problem, rather than shun the world.

It is also revealed that Carl helps empty the residences of those taken by the epidemic, and can’t stand to see the chairs abandoned and alone. Rather, he takes them to Jody’s shop which is the biggest room he knows of. Carl succeeds in getting Jody to leave when he goes and gets tested for the first time. This leads to him taking a week off from the shop to see the world he abandoned and by the end finding out that he tested negative. However, a few months later, Carl’s own chair appears in the shop and it becomes apparent that he will soon succumb to the disease. Now Carl has become the one who needs security, and Jody must pick up where Carl left off.

Lonely Planet, despite its quips and comedy is ultimately a play about mourning and being forgotten: Jody struggles to cope with how much physical space Carl’s mourning takes up and Carl struggles with how much space his mourning take up in his mind. He finds it impossible to do anything but mourn, when so many people he knows are dying, he has to pay attention. Jody’s mourning is just as present but less visible, but over the course of the work we see that it is paralyzing him. He cannot leave his shop without being confronted by the death of his community and so he makes the only choice he feels he can: he doesn’t leave. There are also multiple discussions in the work of what happens when society abandons the dead and refuses to see them.

Auditions will be January 4th and 5th at the Lafayette Theater (former Main St. School) 202 W. Main Street, Waterloo NY 13165.  Auditions for 2 male roles: Jody 30s-40s and Carl late 20s-30s.  Auditions will include readings from the script, scene work and improvisation.  For questions about auditions or for a perusal copy of the script email: ejjansen@msn.com or call 315-220-0893.