Description:

Paradise Playhouse announces auditions for their upcoming reading and possible independent production of "The Dinner" by Jillann Gabrielle.

Jillann Gabrielle's Paradise Playhouse has focused its productions for the last eight years on her four soon to be five original solo musicals. In 2018, they mounted 'Hedda! A Musical Conversation" and "The Garbo the Musical" to great critical acclaim at the Athenaeum Theatre. Since then Jillann has written two more original solo musicals: "Joan & Bette Bette & Joan" and "Princess Di-Gone but still kicking!" Jill has been on the road with all four shows for the last two years. During the course of her research on her fifth original solo musical-"Oh, Jackie O!"-Jill was compelled to write her first drama for the stage on the assassination of JFK, "The Dinner." She is also marketing two screenplays in Los Angeles: "Michi-Hedda Hopper's Houseboy" and "Frederick the Great."

Inspired by true events "The Dinner" is set four months after the assassination of JFK. Jackie Kennedy's mother, Janet, receives a letter from a Russian spy who claims to have known Lee Harvey Oswald. She turns it over to the former CIA Director, Allen Dulles, who was fired by JFK and is now on the Warren Commission investigating JFK's assassination. Dulles and Janet cook up the idea of hosting a dinner to try to get info on the suspected assassin, Oswald. Janet pays a visit to her daughter, Jackie, to try to convince her to attend the dinner since this Russian spy requested her presence. She adamantly declines. The Russian spy and his wife, Janet and her husband Hugh, and Allen Dulles heatedly debate over dinner who actually was responsible for the death of JFK. With unexpected twists and turns this Harold Pinter meets "Murder She Wrote" mystery is a new take on the ever intriguing conspiracy theories on the Kennedy assassination in the era of Camelot.

AVAILABLE ROLES:

JACKIE KENNEDY: 34

HUGH AUCHINCLOSS: Lates sixties

GEORGE DE MOHRENSCHILDT: Late 50s

JEANNE DE MOHRENSCHILDT: Early 50s

The reading will be held in a large church basement in the near western suburbs with proper social distancing in October. A possible independent production will be mounted after the Covid-19 resolution. The video from the reading will be used to submit the script to existing Chicago theatre companies.

Auditions will be cold readings from the script via FaceTime or other software.