Auditions for The Importance of Being Earnest
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by J. Michael Spencer
Announcing auditions for Windham Theatre Guild’s upcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest!
Auditions will be held at the Burton Leavitt Theatre (779 Main Street, Willimantic, CT) on:
Sunday, December 7th at 7:00 PM
Monday, December 8th at 7:00 PM
Callback auditions will be held by invitation on Wednesday, December 10th (location TBD).
Auditions will consist of readings from the script. Readings will be provided at the audition, and can be downloaded to view in advance here:
https://windhamtheatreguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest-audition-sides.pdf
Performance dates for The Importance of Being Earnest are:
February 27-28
March 1, 5-8, 13-14
Play Description:
The Importance of Being Earnest follows two upper-class Victorian gentlemen, Jack and Algernon, who lead double lives by inventing fictitious alter egos to escape from their social responsibilities and pursue pleasure. Jack pretends to be an unreliable brother named Ernest to get away to London, while Algernon “Bunburies” by inventing an invalid friend to visit the country. The story becomes tangled when Jack proposes to Gwendolen, who only wants to marry someone named Ernest, and when Algernon, posing as Ernest, falls for Jack’s ward, Cecily. Mistaken identities, outrageous coincidences, and general hilarity ensue.
Character Breakdown
THE CHARACTERS:
The Windham Theatre Guild welcomes and encourages performers of all ages, ethnicities, body types, and genders to audition. Please feel free to audition regardless of the age and gender listed for each character.
John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P. (Age: late 20s-early 30s) – The play’s protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. The initials after his name indicate that he is a Justice of the Peace.
Algernon Moncrieff (Age: late 20s-early 30s) – The play’s secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements. He has invented a fictional friend, “Bunbury,” an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations.
Gwendolen Fairfax (Age: early 20s) – Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious. Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name.
Cecily Cardew (Age: early 20s) – Jack’s ward, the granddaughter of the old gentlemen who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness. This idea, rather than the virtuous-sounding name, has prompted her to fall in love with Jack’s brother Ernest in her imagination and to invent an elaborate romance and courtship between them.
Lady Bracknell (Age: 50-65) – Algernon’s snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen’s mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of “eligible young men” and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell’s speeches is unintentional. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as “a delicate exotic fruit.” When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play.
Miss Prism (Age: 40-65) – Cecily’s governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. She highly approves of Jack’s presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his “unfortunate” brother. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism’s severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was “lost” or “abandoned.” Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. (Age: 50-65) – The rector on Jack’s estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened “Ernest.” Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for “Doctor of Divinity.”
Lane (Age: 30-65) – Algernon’s manservant. When the play opens, Lane is the only person who knows about Algernon’s practice of “Bunburying.” Lane appears only in Act I.
Merriman (Age: 30-65) – The butler at the Manor House, Jack’s estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III.
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