Auditions for The Importance
of Being Earnest

Directed by Rosh Raines

Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center announces auditions for The Importance of Being Earnest to be held December 10, 2025. Auditions are open to grades 9-12.

The Audition

Auditions will take place on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, from 4:00pm-9:00pm in Lincoln Park Performing Arts Rehearsal Studio. Please enter through the 10th Street Entrance.

  • Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to your scheduled audition time to check in and fill out any necessary paperwork.

  • Please prepare a one-minute dramatic or comedic monologue (preferably in an English Accent but is optional).

  • Please bring a current picture and resume.

Callbacks

Callbacks will be scheduled by invitation only on Thursday, December 11, 2025, from 4:00pm to 9:00pm in Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center’s Large Dance Studio, located on the second floor.

  • Please enter through the 10th Street Entrance.

Current Lincoln Park students under the age of 18 must download and complete the following Application for Minors in Performances form and bring with them to auditions.

Students under the age of 18 who do not attend Lincoln Park, please download and complete this full version of the form and bring to your audition.

To sign up for an audition time slot, please complete the online form.
** You will receive a confirmation email with your time after completing the form. 

Synopsis

The Importance of Being Earnest is the most renowned of Oscar Wilde’s comedies. It’s the story of two bachelors, John ‘Jack’ Worthing and Algernon ‘Algy’ Moncrieff, who create alter egos named Ernest to escape their tiresome lives. They attempt to win the hearts of two women who, conveniently, claim to only love men called Ernest. The pair struggle to keep up with their own stories and become tangled in a tale of deception, disguise and misadventure. The elaborate plot ridicules Victorian sensibilities with some of the best loved, and indeed bizarre, characters to be found on the modern stage.

Character Breakdown

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."

Merriman (Age: 30-65) - The butler at the Manor House, Jack's estate in the country.

Servants and Maids

Schedule

Rehearsal

  • Monday, January 12, 2026 - Thursday, January 15, 2026, 4-9:00PM

  • Saturday, January 17, 2026, 1-5:00PM

  • Monday, January 19, 2026 - Thursday, January 22, 2026, 4-9:00PM

  • Saturday, January 24, 2026, 1-5:00PM

  • Monday, January 26, 2026 - Thursday, January 29, 2026, 4-9:00PM

  • Saturday, January 31, 2026, 1-5:00PM

  • Monday, February 2, 2026 - Wednesday, February 5, 2026, 4-9:00PM

Run Through (Mandatory)

  • Thursday, February 5, 2026, 4-9:00PM (Designer Run)

Tech Rehearsal (Mandatory)

  • Saturday, February 7, 2026, 1-5:00PM

  • Sunday, February 8, 2026, 1:00-9:00PM

  • Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 4-9:00PM

  • Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 4-9:00PM

  • Thursday, February 12, 2026, 4-9:00PM

Performances (Mandatory)

  • Friday, February 13, 2026, 7:30PM

  • Saturday, February 14, 2026, 2:00PM

  • Saturday, February 14, 2026, 7:30PM

  • Sunday, February 15, 2026, 2:00PM

  • Thursday, February 19, 2026, 7:30PM

  • Friday, February 20, 2026, 7:30PM

  • Saturday, February 21, 2026, 2:00PM

  • Saturday, February 21, 2026, 7:30PM

  • Sunday, February 22, 2026, 2:00PM

Seeking strong actors; all genders, types, and ethnicities encouraged to audition. 

Performers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities and expressions, and performers living with disabilities are encouraged to audition.