That is, to many lands and universes in our Sci-Fi and Fantasy Festival! The Final Frontier Festival will be an annual festival centering around geek culture that still fits our Queer & Feminist mission. This year we kept it broad--sci-fi and fantasy, and we have SIX awesome directors directing short plays by awesome emerging or mid-career playwrights. Now, we just need YOU--the actors (and perhaps a couple of stage managers)--to make this festival complete.

For Stage Management, please send us your resume and some times you would be available for a brief interview. We are looking for two stage managers for this festival. Our preference is to have you there at auditions in March.

Auditions are two Saturday afternoons, March 22nd and 29th between 1:00 and 4:00 P.M. at the People's Center Theatre on the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis. Please schedule your appointment in advance by e-mailing gadflytheatre@gmail.com and sending your headshot and resume, as well as letting us know what your preferred gender pronouns and ages you can believable play are.

Auditions will consist of ONE 60 second monologue from a contemporary play of your choice, and then directors will ask you to cold read scenes for shows you are being considered for. Please respect everyone's time and stick to the 60 second mark, but feel free to use all 60 seconds to show yourself off. Please let us know if you have time restrictions and can only read one or two scenes. Please also bring a hard copy of your headshot and resume.

Here is the breakdown of plays, directors, and the roles we are casting. Please keep in mind that we are a queer organization, so many of these roles are not heterosexual roles, and you may need to be intimate with someone of the same gender identity as yourself. Please also keep in mind that we are a feminist organization, and so we could not care less about your body type when casting, only that you've got the acting chops and the time to commit.

Who Killed Captain Kirk by Paco Jose Madden
Directed by: Immanuel Elliott
Captain Kirk-- African American, Female-Identified, in her 20’s.
Mr. Spock-- Female-identified, any race or age
Sulu-- Male-identified, Asian, any age
Uhuru-- Male-identified but dresses in drag, Mexican, any age
Bones-- Male-identified, white, any age
Pluto-- Female-identified, any race, any age

The Wolves Above by Alyssa Zaczek
Directed by: Cassandra Snow
Venus-- Female-identified, in her 20’s, any race
Booker-- Male-identified, in his 20’s, any race
Cyril-- Male-identified, older than B & V, any race

Falling Awake by Alexis Scheer
Directed by: Mel Day
Landon-- Male-identified, age 18,  any race
June-- Female-identified, age 16, any race
Billie-- Female-identified, age 18, any race
Kip-- Male-identified, age 18, any race, has blonde hair

Love Bot by Matthew Everett
Directed by: Scott Pakudaitis
Solomon-- Male-identified, any race, childbearing age
Esther-- Female-identified, any race, childbearing age
Justin-- Male-identified, any race, childbearing age
Jennifer-- Female-identified, any race, childbearing age

Honest to God by J.C. Pankratz
Directed by: Anna Lewein
Nina-- Female-identified, early 30’s, any race. Must be able to play multiple characters.
*Given the demands of this show, Nina will not be double cast in the festival.

Gargle McFury Slays Gender Essentialism by Alex Reed
Directed by: Kristin Fox
Sam-- Female-identified, any race, fairly young
Gargle McFury-- Any gender, age, or race
Announcer/Author-- Any gender, age, or race
2 Chorus Members-- Any race, age, or gender, must be willing and able to play multiple roles.

Looking forward to seeing all the great Twin Cities talent in March!

QUEERulously Yours,
Cassandra Snow

"You hurt people a lot less when you use the actual words." Brodie's girlfriend throws the words to her at the end of scene 9 of Precious Little.

I've been thinking a lot about language lately. Or more specifically communication. The two are related but certainly not the same and I find myself navigating the negative space in between the two on a daily basis. I read this play about a year ago and knew right away that Gadfly had to do it, but damned if I could tell you why.  After rereading the play multiple times it became clearer and clearer that that was the point.

While I've never had the experience of being a lesbian, being pregnant, or having to make a difficult choice regarding said hypothetical pregnancy, Brodie's struggle to describe thoughts and feelings with words that simply do not exist in the English language resonated with me. As a person who identifies as part of the queer community, where we are constantly silenced, and part the theatre community, where everyone has an opinion, I wanted to play with the idea that all too often we find ourselves at the crossroad of too many or not enough words.

Every theatre artist is taught to seek out the subtext in a play. Every person who has lived in a closet understands to look for the coding in art. As a queer theatre artist most of my life is spent in those in between places. In the things left unsaid. The things said just to fill the silence. And the things we try to say but don't know how. I often wonder how much easier life would be if we just used the actual words.

Instead we take words away from those who would use them, we shorten words into meaninglessness, we smash them together, tear them apart, and alter their definitions until we can no longer remember how that word first entered our language. We encounter thousands of words each and every day and very seldom take the time really digest what they say. How many of us have counted down the seconds until we can skip an ad on a youtube video? Or deleted an email from one of those well meaning non-profits whose petition we signed at Pride? And how many arguments have been started over a careless Tweet, awkward autocorrect, or mistranslation in a holy text? Words are all around us though their meaning isn't necessarily. When words lose their meaning people stop using them. When people stop using words they become silent, in the case of queer people, or in the case of the ever discerning theatre community, they become a very vocal group with very little to say.

Brodie's journey from seeing herself as a linguistic expert, and then realizing she has only a passing experience with communication is one I think we can all identify with, because at one point we've all thought we had all the answers, only to find out how wrong we were.

These things have made the play a whole lot of fun to work with, but the play has posed in interesting challenge, both for myself and for the actors. Not only have we had to figure out what was meant by the "actual words," but had to create a working, fictional language as well as turning one actor into an ape and another into an entire crowd. Hopefully, by the time March rolls around our words and meaning will meld into a seamless theatrical experience that will leave you speechless.