VIRTUAL AUDITION SUBMISSIONS - K&K New Plays

UPDATE: Audition deadline is extended through midnight, August 29th. Submission details listed here remain unchanged!

VIRTUAL SUBMISSIONS - AUDITIONS, K&K NEW PLAYS

K&K New Plays: A Competition and Exposition of New Works

Performs October 2 - 4, 2026 at Inspiration Studios

Assorted directors across six scripts, to be announced.

An exposition of select scenes from new plays submitted by local playwrights, with talent acts and celebration throughout - and the audience will vote which play will go to full production in Kith & Kin's fifth season!

We are casting for actors to be considered for each of the six ten-minute scenes featured in the competition. Actors may be considered for more than one script.

VIRTUAL SUBMISSIONS:

All submissions are due by midnight on Saturday, August 22nd.

Please send the following materials to kithandkintheatre@gmail.com :

• A video performing any contemporary monologue

• A detailed list of all conflicts from September 14th - October 4th

• (If you have one) A headshot and resume

Please note, we will accept videos used from previous virtual submissions (Milwaukee Diversity Generals, Milwaukee Generals, etc) so long as you include the necessary information above.

COMMITMENT:

• Each scene will have one 90 minute rehearsal the week of September 14th and one 90 minute rehearsal the week of September 21st.

• All scenes will be called for tech week on September 28th - October 1st.

• Performances are October 2nd and 3rd at 7:30pm and October 4th at 2pm.

• Rehearsals will take place at our rehearsal venue in Butler, while tech and performances will take place at Inspiration Studios in West Allis.

This is an unpaid opportunity. We are seeking actors ages 18+.

Please reach out to kithandkintheatre@gmail.com with any questions.

SHOWS AND CHARACTER BREAKDOWNS:

Alala and the Scarman by Silma Sierra Barrada

Director: Ashley S. Jordan

Casting breakdown for scene:

ALALA - female presenting, Black, stage age 20s

SHINY HERALD - male presenting, Black, stage age 20s

In an unnamed country that funds American power, a student activist named Alala is preparing to lead a campus protest demanding her university divest from the United States. At home, her boyfriend Shiny Herald—an immortal Black man who survived a lynching in 1931—is one day from visa expiration. To stay, he takes a job as a spiritual medium for an American wellness company that turns his trauma into a product. Alala & The Scarman was inspired by Dr. James Cameron—founder of America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, and one of the only known survivors of a 1930 lynch mob in Marion, Indiana. Shiny Herald, the play's immortal protagonist, carries Dr. Cameron's history in his body: the grass rope, the crowd, the football player who told them to cut him down. The play would not exist without Milwaukee.

Alignment by Monica Cross

Director: Ekene Ikegwuani

Casting breakdown for scene:

EVA - female presenting, any race/ethnicity, stage age 24

 LORAN - female presenting, any race/ethnicity, stage age 35

KELLY - female presenting, any race/ethnicity, stage age 41

Eva Long and Loran Parks show up at a dinner party they think is being thrown by Kelly and Clark Winters, a venture capitalist power couple in the Bay Area. Kelly wants them to join her on a project to solve AI Alignment, the process of aligning AI with human values. Loran had been hoping to pitch her own AI safety project, a generative adversarial network - essentially an AI to police other AI. When Loran gets a little sloppy with the microdosing she uses to keep her edge and tips the scales into full-blown acid trip, Eva is left on her own to deal with Kelly’s increasingly unhinged plans.

Bud and Merri by H.E. Dunkle

Director: Pip Buffington

Casting breakdown for scene:

BUD - female presenting, any ethnicity, stage age 18

MERRI - male presenting, any ethnicity, stage age 18

She's waiting for the magic curse put on her to expire. He's desperately trying to find bravery he doesn't have. But when the two happen to meet, a kindred companionship blossoms. But could that friendship give way to something more? They sure hope not. An irreverent retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Bud and Merri follows two young adults of the same name as they battle wolves, an evil warlock, and their parents' determination to marry them off.

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CHAMP by Karen Saari

Director: Ezra Quinn

Casting breakdown for scenes:

CHAMP - female presenting, any race, stage age 30s

GARRY - male presenting, any race, stage age 20s-40s

GOOGLE LADY - female presenting, any race, stage age 30s-40s

Champ is highly-educated but has never set foot on a college campus. In fact, she’s never driven beyond the city limits of Kisser, Wisconsin. Riddled with insecurity and student loan debt, she accepts a challenge from her dying grandfather: Attend her latest out-of-state graduation in-person and inherit his lottery winnings. If Champ succeeds, she just might see the world--and herself--through new eyes.

Pixie and the Priest by Shayne Kennedy

Director: Lo Villarreal-Black

Casting breakdown for scene:

PIXIE - female-presenting/stage age mid-30s/the real, historical Pixie Colman Smith may have been biracial.

NORA - female presenting, Irish, stage age 35-45

FATHER FREDERICK - male-presenting, stage age mid to late-30s, from Brooklyn

Fact: In 1911, Rider-Waite tarot card artist and former-Spiritualist-turned-Catholic Pixie Colman-Smith and her partner Nora Lake opened a retreat house for Catholic priests on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, England. This play imagines their trial run, in which an acquaintance from Pixie's youth, now a priest, comes from Brooklyn to play guinea pig. The mystic bumps up against organized religion, love against self-loathing, and duty against the pursuit of joy. And there are shadow puppets.

This Is a Staged Reading by Rick Bingen

Director: TBA

Casting breakdown for scene:

AVERY - Any Gender, Any Race, stage age early 30s

JORDAN - Any Gender, Any Race, stage age 27

ROWAN - Any Gender, Any Race, stage age 60s-80s

KRIS - Any Gender, Any Race, stage age late 20s

This Is a Staged Reading is a meta-theatrical love letter to theatre, friendship, and the people who keep showing up for both. Performed through the lens of a staged reading, the play follows a group of semi-professional artists as rehearsal, performance, memory, and real life begin to blur. The play explores love, aging, artistic devotion, and the fleeting intimacy of making theatre together.