I received an email today from the artistic director of one of the theatres where I recently auditioned. It seems an actor had to pull out of another theatre's production and they were in need of a replacement. Rehearsals have already begun and the production opens in three weeks. My inclination was to say "Thank you but no." My cup "runneth over" with many other things and I'm already feeling overwhelmed. But, after talking to my wife, I decided to find out more. It couldn't hurt and I could always turn it down.

I got a call from the director, James Alexander Bond, while I was out shopping and we set a time to meet this evening. When I got home, I googled Elizabeth Rex to try to get an idea about what the play is about.

Essentially, the play takes place in the early 17th century in England. The Earl of Essex, who once was the lover of Queen Elizabeth, rose up against her. She's had him towered and slated to be beheaded. The night before the execution, there's a curfew and Shakespeare and part of his acting company are confined to the Queen's barn for the night. One of the players is an openly gay man, Ned, who plays Shakespeare's great female roles and is also dying of the pox. The Queen comes to spend the night with the players for distraction and becomes taken by Ned and his ability to freely speak his mind. At one point, she says to him, "If you will teach me to be a woman, I will teach you to be a man."

I was auditioning for the role of Shakespeare and, based on his barely being mentioned in the reviews I found, I guessed that it wouldn't be a big role or too much of a time commitment. To make a long story short, I auditioned for James and he gave me the role and a copy of the script to look over before the next day's rehearsal.

I got to the car and started flipping through the script and found that, not only does Shakespeare start the show with a four-page monologue, is on stage the whole show and has dialogue throughout. Uh-oh. Maybe this isn't going to be so easy after all.

As I read the script, I realized that, while Shakespeare is present and part of the action, he doesn't drive it. He's like a tiny link on a charm bracelet. In some ways, he seems like a bit of an afterthought.

There's a lot of historical references in the play so I'm going to have to do some research while learning about 300 lines in a week or two (yes, I do count lines... read here for the why).

Looks like the next couple weeks are going to be a whole lot busier than I expected.