Intimate Apparel Auditions
Seeking four actors for a production of award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s historical drama
“INTIMATE APPAREL”
Performance dates: February 5 – 15th 2026 BLT, Black Box Theater
Directed by Leta Harris Neustaedter
Rehearsals Dec-Jan. Due to the structure of the play, there is flexibility with rehearsal scheduling.
“Intimate Apparel” is a play by award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. It features a set of diverse and complex characters. The play is set in the early 1900s New York City and explores themes of love, loneliness, race, class, and the pursuit of dreams and true connection.
Breakdown of characters:
Esther Mills: 30’s. Black. Esther is an American seamstress living in New York. She lives in a boarding house and creates intimate apparel for women from various walks of life. She has watched the young women around her get married but has not been chosen herself. She is slightly timid but strong, and has dreams of love and a better life.
Mrs. Van Buren: 30’s. Caucasian; Southern. A wealthy socialite and one of Esther’s clients. Mrs. Van Buren orders fancy corsets from Esther. She is married, trapped, and longing for affection. She is warm and thoughtful, but naive to the impacts of her privilege.
George Armstrong: 30’s. Black. A laborer from Barbados working on the construction of the Panama Canal. He corresponds with Esther through letters before moving to NY to marry her. George is a smooth talker with a commanding presence and melodic voice.
Mr. Marks: 30’s. Romanian; Jewish Immigrant. A bright, fabric merchant. Torn between his orthodox religious devotion and the changing world. He and Esther share a connection through their passion for fabric and textiles and their loneliness.
*The roles of Mayme and Mrs. Dickson have been cast
In-person auditions:
Friday 11/21/2025, 6pm-8pm & Saturday 11/22/2025, 1pm – 3pm in the Boise Little Theatre’s Black Box Theater; 100 E Fort St. Boise, ID, 83712
TO SIGN UP FOR AUDITIONS:
Please use the following link to schedule your 10 minute audition slot
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C054AA9AE2AA3F9C52-58709172-intimate
If unable to attend in-person auditions, email fichtmanrachel@gmail.com with your self-tape by 11/22/25 by 3pm
PLEASE USE THE SELECTED MONOLOGUE FOR THE CHARACTER YOU ARE AUDITIONING FOR.
(After getting married to her pen pal George, shortly after he arrived in NY)
ESTHER: Don’t really feel much different. I guess I expected somethin’ to be different. It was a nice ceremony. Didn’t you think? I wish my family coulda witnessed it all. My mother in particular. When the minister said man and wife I nearly fainted, I did. I been waiting to hear those words, since… they nearly took my breath away. Man and wife, and the truth is we barely know each other. I’ve written you near everything there is to know about me, and here we is and I fear I ain’t got no more to say.
MRS. VAN BUREN: Hand-dyed silks? Is it popular?
ESTHER: It will be by fall.
MRS. VAN BUREN: Really? I’ll have to weave that tidbit into conversation this evening. My in-laws are coming. The frog and the wart. Oh, and did I tell you? I saw Mr. Max Fiedler of Germany conduct selections from Don Juan. I had to endure an encore from the soprano, what was her name? Something Russian, no doubt. I’d rather have gone to the electric show at Madison Square Garden, but you see Harry isn’t impressed with electricity. “Miracle upon miracle, but there remain things science will never be able to give us,” he says, so he refrains from enthusiasm. By the way, I bled this morning, and when I delivered the news to Harry, he spat at me. This civilized creature of society. We all bleed, Esther. And yet I actually felt guilt, as though a young girl again apologizing for becoming a woman. (Mrs. Van Buren sheds her kimono, revealing a low-cut magenta corset with a pale pink camisole beneath.) Maybe I’ll be a bohemian, a bohemian needn’t a husband, she’s not bound by convention.
GEORGE: Dear Miss Mills,
My name is George Armstrong. I work in Panama alongside Carson Wynn, your deacon’s son. We digging a big hole across the land, they say one day ships will pass from one ocean to the next. It is important work, we told. If importance be measured by how many men die, then this be real important work. One man drops for every twenty feet of canal dug, like so many flies. Carson says if we eat a can of sardines, they’ll protect us against the mosquitoes and fever. I say, not as long as we be digging. Lord knows our minds deserve a bit of shade. But ain’t such a thing to be had, not at least. Don’t think me too forward, but I thought it would be nice to have someone to think about, someone not covered from head to toe in mud, someone to ward off this awful boredom. Carson speaks so highly of his church that I find comfort in his recollections. I ask if I may write you? And if you so please, I’d welcome your words.
Sincerely,
George Armstrong
MARKS:
(ESTHER: Scottish wool. Yes. (Feeling the fabric) It’s so heavy. Would you wear a suit made of this?)
MARKS: Well, yes. You see how soft it is. I bought it from a gentlemen who said it came from his village. He had a wonderful story about his mother caring for the sheep like small children. He said every night she’d tell them a fairy tale, and each morning give the creatures a kiss and a sprinkle of salt. The neighbors would watch and laugh, watch and laugh. But come time to shear the animals, what wonderful wool they produced for his mother. Like no other.
(Esther lovingly feels the fabric. Mr. Marks revels in her delight.)
He could have been a thief for all I know, but the color is a lovely coffee, very subtle. Don’t you think? So I pay too much, but not enough for the quality.