Days before his death, Orson Welles looks back at his career in the upcoming play Mercury Man: The Last Performance of Orson Welles.
Auditions for Mercury Man: The Last Performance of Orson Welles, a new play by Joel Pettigrew (Waking), will be held later this month in Toronto. It is set to debut at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival on July 18-29.
Mercury Man takes place days before Welles’ death in October 1985 as he is recording the role of Unicron in the animated Transformers: The Movie. Welles meets his “Biggest Fan” and recounts his early success in movies, theater and radio, as well as the aftermath of making Citizen Kane, and sacrifices he made along the way.
Auditions for the role of Welles’ former Mercury partner, John Houseman, are set for Monday, March 26, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those interested, should email dramatichat@gmail.com with Audition – (Your Name) in the subject line.
Dramatic Hat Productions plans rehearsals between April and July in Toronto before traveling to Winnipeg for the annual festival. The show is a non-union tiered profit share initiative.
It is unknown as to how the play will treat Welles — or Transformers: The Movie for that matter.
Welles finished work on Transformers five days before his death. The film’s director, Nelson Shin, later said that Welles was pleased with the script and expressed an admiration for animated films.
However,Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming hours after a recording session, “You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I’m destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.”
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