Daytona State to conduct open auditions for Smokey Joe’s Café

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Dec. 4, 2015) – The Mike Curb College of Music, Entertainment and Art at Daytona State College will conduct open auditions for Smokey Joe’s Café from 3 to 6 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 14, on the college’s Daytona Beach Campus, Goddard Performance Hall (bldg. 230), Choir Room.

The musical celebrates the golden age of rock n’ roll, boasting the longest running musical revue in Broadway history. With some of the biggest hits from the ’50s and ’60s, including Fools Fall in Love, Poison Ivy, On Broadway, Yakety Yak, I’m a Woman, Stand by Me and Love Potion #9, this electrifying music by Leiber and Stoller lit up Manhattan’s Great White Way for five years.

Auditions will be held for the following roles:

• Victor - part of the quartet, this preening bad-boy has comic overtones.
• Adrian - part of the quartet, he is slow but witty.
• Ken - part of the quartet, he’s the smoothie.
• Fred - part of the quartet, he’s the implacable bass who’s seen it all and refuses to get upset about it. 
• Michael - should be able to evoke a memory of Elvis without doing an impression or camping his way through a GREASE-inspired parody. 
• B.J. - a female character inspired by the titanic rhythm-and-blues shouter Big Mama Thornton, who recorded the original version of Hound Dog. Big Mama was a woman of size, arrogance and great good humor.
• Delee - should evoke both the innocence of the teenage girls who fell in love with Elvis, Dion, Fabian and Frankie Avalon on the Dick Clark Show, and the wild streak that all of us dreamed about such girls having. She is Brenda Lee, but sometimes she wants to be Jayne Mansfield. 
• Pattie - the throaty voice of experience; a little older-but-wiser, she anchors the more serious moments, and may even seem to come from a slightly later period (Janis Joplin, Tracy Nelson, Bonnie Raitt) than the rest of the company.
• Brenda - the combination of savvy, wit, brains and beauty born of the line of stunning rock-n’-roll divas including Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Tina Turner and Patti LaBelle. 

Participants should prepare a one-minute pop/rock song from the ’50s/60s, preferably music from the show, Smokey Joe’s Café. Bring comfortable clothing and be prepared to move.

Production dates for Smokey Joe’s Café: Feb. 26-28 and March 4-5. Rehearsals begin Jan. 11.

For more information about the auditions, call (386) 226-1903 or email SternS@DaytonaState.edu.

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