GRAND HOTEL, THE MUSICAL
A re-envisioned production from the ALCHEMY THEATRE
At the WHISENHUNT AT ZACH
Book by Luther Davis
Music and Lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest
Additional Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston
Based on Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel, by arrangement with Turner Broadcasting Co., owner of the motion picture Grand Hotel
Directed by Michael Cooper
Choreographed by Noah Wood
Musical Direction by Ellie Jarrett Shattles
Produced by Marnie Near
Performance Dates:
First Performance Date 5/30/25
Last Performance Date 6/15/25
Number of Performances: 13
Fri & Sat evening and Sun matinee 5/30, 5/31, 6/1
Thur, Fri evening, Sat matinee & Sat evening and Sun matinee 6/5, 6/6, 6/7, 6/8
Thur, Fri evening, Sat matinee & Sat evening and Sun matinee 6/12, 6/13, 6/14, 6/15
The ALCHEMY THEATRE will be presenting all performances of GRAND HOTEL, THE MUSICAL at The Whisenhunt at ZACH.
Rehearsals will begin April 1 with Tech Week scheduled for May 23 to May 29, 2025.
Exact rehearsal dates and times during April and May will be determined by cast availability, but primarily rehearsals will be held on weeknights and weekend days. Please note there will be a required, heavier commitment to our Tech Week dates.
AUDITIONS WILL BEGIN WITH ONLINE SUBMISSIONS:
If you are interested in a particular role, please let us know by submitting the following:
PLEASE SUBMIT BY THE DEADLINE OF MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2025. Both your headshot and resume should be in PDF format and as attachments along with your video. Requests should be sent to the above address with a valid email address included for the purpose of return correspondence.
IN-PERSON CALL-BACKS WILL BE HELD ON SUNDAY FEBRUARY 2, MONDAY EVENING FEBRUARY 3, and TUESDAY EVENING FEBRUARY 4, 2025. Call-backs to include singing from the score, reading from character specific sides, and a dance combination taught by the choreographer. Please note that the dance sequences in the show may be based around popular social dances of the 1920s, such as the Charleston, Tango and Foxtrot, as well as tap, jazz, ballroom dance, basic ballet and freestyle movement.
PAY:
There is pay.
SYNOPSIS:
GRAND HOTEL, THE MUSICAL is set in 1928 Berlin during the Weimar Republic, midway between the World Wars and at a time when Berlin was regarded as one of the world’s great centers of high life. The city is a hotbed of art, politics, entertainment and fast and loose living, attracting entertainers, avant-garde artists, businessmen, writers and musicians of the age, bringing issues of life and death, financial ruin, love and murder with them as they come and go through the revolving door to the lobby of the Grand Hotel. The hotel staff keeps the journey flowing, on one level the environment represents a grand place, but what is really being depicted is a society on the point of collapse—the stock market crash is just around the corner and Hitler will seize power in only five years. This story is a haunting one—a bleak world amongst the grandeur, where all the characters are dysfunctional at some level and the Grand Hotel is a microcosm of a society being drip-fed the poison of a money-obsessed culture.
Staged in-the-round at the Whisenhunt Theatre, GRAND HOTEL, THE MUSICAL will allow this complex world to be seen from many perspectives—a luxurious, pulsating yet vaguely tragic first-class hotel where we can eavesdrop on the conversations and the lives of some finely observed people, not a single one going out the revolving door the same as when they came in. In and out, through the ever-revolving door that turns and turns and turns.
CASTING NON-EQUITY, AUSTIN AREA TALENT FOR:
COLONEL DOCTOR OTTERNSCHLAG – A main character within the ensemble, and the story’s narrator. Male-Identifying. Age: 45 to 60. Strong Singer. Vocal range top: Bb3. Vocal range bottom: C5. One of the thousands of war cripples and psychologically scarred soldiers that returned home after WWI and who haunted Germany throughout the Weimar years. A regular at the Grand Hotel. Missing half of his face and walks with difficulty, his leg in a brace. A morphine addict. Generally, numb to the world. He is dismally alone and empty, cut off from life, but constantly looking for new reasons to continue his tortured existence. He considers himself a living suicide. “The revolving door has to remain open. The exit must always be available. You must be able to die when it suits you, when you yourself want to.”
ERIK LITNAUER – A main character within the ensemble. Male-Identifying. Age: 30 to 35. Strong singer. Vocal range top: F5. Vocal range bottom: C4. Strong dancer. The young, head front desk clerk who is a nervous father-to-be. Eager to start a family and deeply in love with his wife, this is his first child. He is intelligent, ambitious and a hard worker—now desperately torn between the strict hotel policy keeping him at his job or being at the hospital with his wife who is going through a difficult labor.
HERMANN PREYSING – A main character within the ensemble. Male-Identifying. Age: 40 to 50. Strong singer. Vocal range top: G5. Vocal range bottom: B3. Dancer. The General Director of the Saxonia Cotton Company, a large textile mill. A solid member of the wealthy, German bourgeoisie blinded by riches and terrified of losing their lifestyle. A successful businessman gone bad. Callous and greedy, he uses lies and money to get what he wants—all with a strong conscious. He has a persistent, unsettling feeling that his hands are not clean.
OTTO KRINGELEIN – A main character within the ensemble. Male-Identifying. Age: 35 to 45. Strong singer. Vocal range top: A5. Vocal range bottom: C4. Strong dancer. An ailing, downtrodden bookkeeper with a few weeks to live. Arrives in Berlin to squeeze as much life as he can out of his final days. Afraid of life, yet also afraid of missing it. Comic and pitiful appearance, squinting with very clear eyes from behind old reading glasses. Cries easily for physical reasons connected with his health. He is not young, nor good-looking or healthy, or strong—not a single quality of a lover, but his passionate desire to experience life along with his silent readiness for death makes this small, slender human manly and worthy of love.
FLAEMMCHEN (FRIEDA FLAMM) – A main character within the ensemble. Female-Identifying. Age: 18 to 21. Strong singer. Vocal range top: E5. Vocal range bottom: E2. Strong Dancer. A typist-for-hire and part of the burgeoning class of independent women: big-city girls with bobbed hair, plucked eyebrows, a dab of red lipstick in the center of their lips and small hats. Has a weakness for cocaine and adultery. Not a complaining person, optimism is the element she lives in. Quite at home in the hotel setting and unmoved by the many looks that fix upon her. She is used to it. A smoker with a roguish laugh who “should like to get involved with films”. Actually, breaking into the movies is her singularly passionate goal.
BARON FELIX VON GAIGERN – A main character within the ensemble. Male-Identifying. Age: 25 to 30. Strong singer. Vocal range top: A5. Vocal range bottom: B3. Strong dancer. A handsome thief with a heart of gold—dashing but morally compromised. Expensive taste but no money of his own. Extremely well-dressed, and a step as “elastic as a cat’s, or a tennis champion’s.” Smells of lavender and expensive cigarettes. He is quick to follow girls in the street and go home with them. An engaging Apollo. Unsure of love. Easily makes friends at the hotel—always ready to oblige. Loves flowers and new cars: when alone, he would stroke, even lick their petals, and at times he would lick the leather upholstery of a new car. He gets drunk in an amiable and high-spirited fashion. “I am a man of the moment, and I am all the better for it.”
RAFFAELA OTTANIO – A main character within the ensemble. Female-Identifying. Age: 35 to 45. Strong singer. Vocal range top: B4. Vocal range bottom: F3. Dancer. Longtime, loyal—sometimes too loyal—assistant, secretary, confidante and dresser to Elizaveta Grushinskaya. Italian. Hardworking, dependable, economical and smart. Has a sturdy, masculine view of the world. Secretly in love with Grushinskaya and wants desperately to protect her always. 3
ELIZAVETA GRUSHINSKAYA – A main character within the ensemble. Female-Identifying. Age: 45 to 55. Strong singer. Vocal range top: C5. Vocal range bottom: G3. Strong Dancer with moderate to strong ballet. A “fading” Russian prima ballerina—older but still a supreme diva demanding attention. Now plays to half-empty houses and to audiences that have grown tired of ballet. Suddenly success is ice-cold and lonely. Her legs are tired and heavy. She feels old. Self-medicates with Veronal to desensitize herself to the pains of the world. Has been performing in Berlin, staying at the Grand Hotel for 18 years—and tonight, for the first time in her career, she does not receive applause enough for an encore. “Oh, the cruel public. Cruel Berlin. Cruel loneliness.” She has had enough. And then she falls in love with the Baron.
JIMMY 1 / SCULLERY WORKER / WEALTHY COUPLE— Ensemble. Black, Male-identifying. Age: to play 25 to 35. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Strong dancer: Jazz, Tap. Ability to switch from playing a privileged and wealthy, world renowned club entertainer from America to a near-impoverished, under-paid (German) kitchen employee working in the underbelly of an elite hotel.
JIMMY 2 / BELLMAN / WEALTHY COUPLE / SHAREHOLDER—Ensemble. Black, Male-identifying. Age: to play 25 to 35. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Strong dancer: Jazz, Tap. Ability to switch from playing a privileged and wealthy, world renowned club entertainer from America to an under-appreciated (German) hotel bellman, to a wealthy corporate stockholder.
GIGOLO / CHAUFFEUR / SCULLERY WORKER / WEALTHY COUPLE / DANCER IN BAR— Ensemble. Male-identifying. Age: to play 20 to 30. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Strong dancer: including Ballroom. Ability to switch from playing slick and sophisticated, to tough thug, to an angry, under-paid kitchen worker at the hotel.
DOORMAN / SCULLERY WORKER / SHAREHOLDER— Ensemble. Male-identifying. Age: to play 40 to 50. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Dancer. To play a subservient long-time and dedicated hotel employee, to a disillusioned kitchen worker, to an elitist, middle-class, well-to-do stockholder.
COUNTESS / OPERATOR / WEALTHY COUPLE / WOMAN IN LOBBY / TOOTSIE / DANCER IN BAR— Ensemble. Female-identifying. Age: to play 20 to 30. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Strong dancer: including Ballroom. Ability to switch from playing slick and sophisticated, to subservient employee, to eye-catching denizen of the Grand Hotel.
ROHNA / DETECTIVE / SHAREHOLDER— Ensemble. Male-identifying. Age: to play 30 to 40. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Dancer. Belongs to the same social sphere as the Baron but works as the Grand Hotel’s dedicated and fussy General Manager. Demands strict adherence to rules and quickly doles out punishment for failing to follow them. Married, but has an eye for the “quality of fineness” in other men – especially those whom he has control over. Also plays a gruff, no-nonsense Detective and a well-off stockholder of the upper middle class.
VICTOR SANDOR-WITT / SCULLERY WORKER / WEALTHY COUPLE / ZINNOWITZ— Ensemble. Male-identifying. Age: to play 35 to 45. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Dancer. A grand, Hungarian theatre impresario who is now the focused and dedicated Company Manager of Grushinskaya’s ballet troupe. Also plays a kitchen worker at the hotel and the (German) wealthy, smart and detail-focused attorney to Herr Preysing.
MADAME PEEPEE / WEALTHY COUPLE / TOOTSIE / OPERATOR— Ensemble. Female-identifying. Age: to play 30 to 50. Strong singer. Vocal Range: Open to various vocal ranges. Dancer. The lowly, lavatory assistant at the hotel who has been in the same job for years with no advancement—smart and attentive to what’s going on around her. Also plays one half of a wealthy and privileged couple breezing through the hotel, a flirty “flapper” on the make, and a dutiful telephone operator.
The Alchemy Theatre is committed to equality of opportunity in all aspects of employment. It is the policy of The Alchemy Theatre to provide full and equal employment opportunities to all artists without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, marital status, veteran status, age, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, physical or mental disability or any other legally protected status.
We are committed to building a creative and dynamic workplace that celebrates individual differences and diversity, treating everyone with fairness and respect.
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