Audition Notice:
THE STRONG MAN (PLS)

When: Thu 24 July 1pm-8pm and Sat 26 July 10:30am-6:30pm,
Where: Room 812, Floor 8 of the Jackman Humanities Building at 170 St George St.

What to prepare: a 1-3 minute poetic text from any era (Shakespeare is fine); if you can, please also prepare a short song (a capella or accompanying yourself on a portable instrument you’d be willing to use in the show). These are simple, friendly auditions. Matt may also ask you to do an improvisational medieval drama exercise or two, or just chat.

To schedule a slot: click here (if no available slots appear, click “Jump to the next bookable date.”) Do not arrive more than five minutes early; Matt will need to meet you at the door.

No callbacks; no headshots (bring a copy of your résumé if you wish).

Performance dates: varied times between Sept 26 and Oct 8 (see below).

Honorarium per actor: $600 (plus lodging and $50 per diem for each of 3 days Sept 26-28).

Coming off of its incredible York Plays 2025 festival in June, and with funding from the Jackman Humanities Institute, the early drama company PLS is organizing a small, portable play performance of THE STRONG MAN, newly translated from the medieval Welsh morality play by Morgan Moore and directed by Matt Sergi.

By “portable”, we mean that The Strong Man performances will travel into new locations, indoors and outdoors, with little to no rehearsal in those locations ahead of time: following medieval practice, we’ll work in rehearsal on improvisational/physical techniques that help actors safely and seamlessly activate changing environments in compelling ways. We are looking to test out this performance in multiple scenarios and locations, so will likely add multiple showings based on actor availability between Fri 26 Sept and Wed 8 Oct. Actors must have some availability to attend rehearsals and performances in Toronto from Aug 22 through Oct 8 (scheduled based on actor availability), and must be fully available for the following confirmed performances:

Oxford Renaissance Faire, all day, multiple performances outdoors on Fri 26 Sept, Sat 27 Sept, Sun 28 Sept (actors must also be available to travel on the evening of Thu 25 Sept).

Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100A, performances in evening Thurs 2 Oct, Fri 3 Oct, Sat 4 Oct.

Social Capital Theatre, main space, performance in evening on Wed 8 Oct.

The Strong Man is a new translation from the medieval Welsh.  It's a morality play, with a lot of surprising resonances with our growing culture of materialism and celebrity billionaires -- the main character is kind of like a camp-tyrant Elon -- which then, in medieval style, unexpectedly turns into something amusingly different at the end.  The play runs 25 minutes on its own; at all venues except the Oxford Faire, we will append to it a complimentary but more overtly religious piece, Soul and Body, which will extend the run to 45 minutes.

Following medieval practice, the translator herself (Morgan Moore), and likely the director (Matt Sergi), will also take on roles in the show; we’ll decide which roles those are after seeing auditions. There are four roles in total. Every actor will play a few different roles, but the primary archetypal roles are:
The Strong Man (presents as male — a raging, arrogant, performatively masculine blowhard),
The Cleric (presents as male — wise and wordy, with singing a plus),
The Servant (presents as any gender — a sneaky chameleon who can take on various identities),
The Wife (presents as female — whose true opinions come out from beneath a campy performance of spousal devotion).
We will consider actors of every gender, type, age, race, etc for every role. Don’t decide ahead of time which role you’re auditioning for, but do consider the archetypes we’re looking for when preparing. Singing is a plus but not a requirement; a loud outdoor voice and a sense of flexibility are definitely needed.

We strongly encourage participants from York Plays 2025, or other folks from the broader PLS community, to come and audition — but since this is a very small and particular little play, we’re only going to be able to cast two or three people (four roles minus Morgan and possibly Matt)! There will be many, and larger, opportunities to collab with PLS in the coming couple of years — stay tuned and stay in touch.