The House of Tudor is in an uproar when Pope Clement VII refuses to give King Henry VIII an annulment from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he can marry Anne Boleyn. Henry rebels from the Church of Rome by requiring his subjects to sign an Act of Supremacy making him both spiritual and temporal leader of England. Sir Thomas More, his Lord Chancellor, cannot in conscience comply. Neither Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey nor the King himself can get a commitment from him. More's resistance and silence are an act of treason that cost him a great deal.

The Common Man: Late middle age. Wears from head to toe black tights, which delineate his pot bellied figure. Crafty, loosely benevolent, best expression base humor.

Sir Thomas More: Late forties. Pale, not robust. Life and mind in him is so abundant and open. Swift but never wild, having natural moderation. Intellectual & quickly delighted; the norm serious and compassionate.

Duke of Norfolk: Heavy, active, sportsman and soldier, held by rigid adherence to the code of conventional duty. Attractively aware of his moral and intellectual insignificance, but a great nobleman, convinced that his ideas are important because they are his.

Alice More: Late forties. Born merchant class now a great lady. she is absurd at a distance impressive close to. Overdressed, worships society, brave, hot hearted. She worships her husband. Troubled and defiant against both.

Cardinal Wolsey: A big decayed body in scarlet. An almost megalomaniac ambition unhappily matched by an excellent intellect, now lonely self-indulgent and contemptible.

Thomas Cromwell: Late thirties, subtle, serious expressing not inner tension but the tremendous out-going will of the renaissance. A self-conceit that can cradle gross crimes in the name of effective action. In short, an intellectual bully.

Cranmer: Late forties. Sharp-minded, sharp faced. Treats church as a job of administration and theology as a set of devices for he lacks religiosity.

King Henry VIII: Not the Holbein Henry, but a much younger man, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, graceful, athletic. The Golden Hope of the New Learning throughout Europe. Only the levity with which he handles his absolute power foreshadows his future corruption.

Margaret More: Early twenties. A beautiful girl of ardent moral fineness; she suffers and shelters behind a reserved stillness which it is her father’s care to mitigate.

William Roper: Late twenties/early thirties, stiff body, immobile face. Little imagination, moderate brain. An all-consuming rectitude, which is his cross, his solace and his hobby.

Richard Rich: Early thirties. Good body – unexercised. Studious, unhappy face lit by the fire of banked-down appetite. An academic hounded by self-doubt to be in the world of affairs and longing to be rescued from himself.

Chapuys, The Spanish Ambassador: Sixties. A professional diplomat and lay ecclesiastic. Much on his dignity as a man of the world, he in fact trots happily along a mental footpath as narrow as a peasant’s.

Chapuys' Attendant: An apprentice Spanish diplomat of good family.

Woman: Self-opinionated, self-righteous, selfish, indignant.

Cold reading from the scripts

To be determined

November 14 to December 7, 2008
Friday, Saturday @ 8:00 pm and Sunday @ 3:00