Auditions set for 12 Angry Jurors

Aug. 30, 3 pm & Aug. 31, 6:30 pm - Callbacks Sept. 8, 6:30 pm

at Sunnydale (334 S. Trade St., Tryon)

If you can't make these dates/times, please reach out to us and we will do our best to accommodate you.

General Information

Performance dates: Nov 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21
Venue: Tryon Little Theater Workshop, 516 S. Trade St., Tryon
Director: Gerard Prendergast

The first read-through will be Monday, Sept. 14, 6:30 PM. Rehearsals will generally be held Monday – Tuesday – Thursday from 6:30 PM to 9-9:30 PM, depending on needs and production schedule. Additional rehearsals and individual coaching sessions may be scheduled as needed. NOTE: The rehearsal schedule is subject to change and will be adjusted and finalized around known conflicts. Please put all known conflicts on your audition form, and tell the director as soon as possible about any potential conflicts as we move forward.

This is a true ensemble piece where all actors are on stage the entire time.
 

Audition Details
- Cold readings from provided sides
- Roles: 12–15 actors of all genders and backgrounds
- Preparation: Review juror bios below and consider 2–3 roles you’d enjoy. If possible, familiarize yourself with the play / movie.
- Printed copies of this audition info, including the sides, are available at the TLT Workshop, 516 S. Trade St., Tryon.
 

Director's Welcome
Welcome to the Jury Room.Thank you for your interest in joining this production. Twelve Angry Jurors is a powerful ensemble drama that explores justice, prejudice, rushing to judgment, and the courage to stand alone with conviction, even when all are against you. It requires collaboration. Every role matters, every voice shapes the story, and together we create the intensity and emotion that make this play unforgettable. This play works with what you bring to it. This play is a fabric with everyone having a thread, a color, a vibrancy. Everyone has a voice. This play is about every one of the characters. They each tell their own story. It is your story to tell.
 

About the Show
This play speaks to the time. A mirror. It’s about the human experience, and the impact we have on the lives of others. 12 Angry Jurors places ordinary people in an extraordinary position: deciding whether someone lives or dies. In that room, the drama isn’t the evidence, it’s the way each juror’s history, bias, and humanity collide. The characters and what they bring to make a judgment are the focus, not the crime.

What makes the play powerful is its insistence that justice isn’t automatic. It requires patience, listening, and the courage to slow down when everyone else wants to rush ahead. It asks: how do we see one another? How do our assumptions shape the truth? And what happens when one person dares to say, “Wait, let’s look again”? First written in the 1950s, the questions it raises are still just as urgent and important today, perhaps more so. In a world that often prizes speed over thoughtfulness, and self over community, 12 Angry Jurors reminds us that fairness takes work and responsibility, and that dialogue, even uncomfortable dialogue, can change everything, or even save a life. This is not comfortable.

Available Roles
Casting Notes
All roles are gender‑flexible. Characters can be played by actors of any gender or background. Roles will be assigned based on actor preference, characterization, chemistry, fit, and ability to fully embrace the character and story. 

Focus on essence, not stereotype. 

Please choose 2-3 roles of interest for the audition.

Juror #1 (Foreperson): An organized leader, attempts to maintain order and neutrality is dogged.
Juror #2: A meek, hesitant person who struggles to maintain opinions of their own. Easily swayed and often adopts the view of whoever spoke last.
Juror #3: Strong, forceful, and extremely opinionated. Humorless, intolerant of differing views, and accustomed to imposing their will. Carries personal wounds that fuel anger.
Juror #4: A person of wealth and position, polished and articulate. Presents themselves well and feels slightly above the others. Concerned only with facts, appalled by emotional outbursts.
Juror #5: Naïve and frightened, yet earnest. Takes jury duty seriously but finds it difficult to speak up against louder voices.
Juror #6: Honest but slow‑witted. Decisions come carefully and deliberately. Struggles to form independent opinions, but listens closely and accepts arguments that resonate.
Juror #7: Loud, flashy, and impatient, a glad-handed salesperson. Has more important things to do than jury duty. Quick‑tempered, quick to form opinions on things which he knows nothing about, often a bully — but ultimately a coward.
Juror #8: Quiet, thoughtful, and compassionate. Sees all sides of a question, constantly seeks truth, and has the strength to stand alone. Above all, wants justice to be done.
Juror #9: Mild and gentle, elderly, and long since defeated by life. Reflective, self‑aware, and mournful of lost courage. Offers wisdom born of experience.
Juror #10: Angry, bitter, and antagonistic. A bigot who places little value on human life beyond his own. Cynical, self‑righteous, and corrosive in the room. A person who has been nowhere and is going nowhere and knows it.
Juror #11: An immigrant who speaks with an accent. Humble, ashamed, almost subservient to the people around him but deeply committed to fairness. Seeks justice with sincerity born of lived experience.
Juror #12: A slick advertising professional. Thinks of people in terms of numbers, percentages, and polls. Superficial, distracted, and lacking real understanding of people. Superficial snob but trying to be a good fellow.
Guard

Sides
On monologues A-D, bring yourself to them. The other monologues are jurors indicated by number. Pick what feels comfortable. We will also have mix and match ensemble readings.
 

A
You know what keeps me up at night? The thought that we might be wrong. Everyone's so sure, so confident—guilty, guilty, guilty. But what if we're not seeing something? What if there's that one piece of evidence, that one witness who got confused, that one moment of truth we're missing? I've been on the other side of absolute certainty before, and I was wrong. Dead wrong. And that mistake... it changed everything. I can't live with myself if I vote guilty just because it's easier, just because everyone else is doing it. This isn't about being difficult or slowing things down. This is about a human life. And if we're going to take that away from someone, we better be absolutely, completely, one hundred percent sure. Because once we walk out of here, once we say those words, there's no taking them back.

B
I've spent my whole life trying to fit in. In school, at work, in my neighborhood—always watching what everyone else does first, then following along. It's safer that way, you know? Less complicated. But sitting in that room, watching eleven other people so sure of themselves, I realized something. Sometimes following the crowd isn't just about being comfortable—sometimes it's about being complicit. My father used to say, "Stand for something, or you'll fall for anything." I always thought that was just something parents say to make their kids feel important. But today, in that deliberation room, I finally understood what he meant. It's not about being stubborn or difficult. It's about having the courage to say, "Wait. Let me think about this for myself."
 

C
They gave us this job—twelve strangers pulled from our ordinary lives—and told us to decide if someone lives or dies. Just like that. As if we're qualified, as if we're wise enough, as if we're good enough to hold someone's entire future in our hands. I keep thinking about my own mistakes, my own bad days, the times I've been wrong about people, wrong about situations. And now they want me to be right about this? To be so certain that I can sleep at night knowing I helped send someone to their death? I didn't ask for this responsibility. None of us did. But here we are, and we can't pretend it doesn't matter. We can't pretend that what we decide in that room won't echo through someone's entire life—and end it.
 

D

I grew up in a neighborhood where people looked just like that defendant. Same clothes, same background, same desperate look in their eyes. And I'll be honest—I made it out by the skin of my teeth. Could have been me in that chair just as easily. So when I first looked at that kid, I saw myself at seventeen—angry, scared, making stupid choices. Part of me thought, "Yeah, probably guilty. That's what kids like us do." But then I caught myself. I caught myself using my own story to fill in the blanks of his. That's not justice—that's assumption. That's fear. That's everything wrong with how we see each other. If I'm going to judge this case, I need to judge it on the evidence, not on the stories I tell myself about where people come from.

Juror 3
You’re right. It’s the kids, They way they are- you know? They don’t listen. (bitterly) I’ve got a kid. When he was eight years old he ran away from a fight. I saw him. I was so ashamed. I told him right out, “I’m gonna make a man out of you or I’m gonna bust you up into little pieces trying.” When he was 15 he hit me in the face. He’s big you know? I haven’t seen him in three years. Rotten kid! I hate tough kids! You work your heart out… (pauses) All right. Let’s get on with it…

Juror 9
Attention….maybe. It’s just that I looked at him for a very long time. The seam of his jacket was split under his arm, did you notice that? He was a very old man with a torn jacket and he carried two canes, I think I know him better than anyone here. This is a quiet frightened, insignificant man who has been nothing his entire life - who has never had recognition – his name in the newspapers. Nobody knows him after 75 years. This is a very sad thing, A man like this needs to be recognized – to be questioned, and listened to, and quoted just once. This is very important…

Juror 8
The kid is dumb enough to do everything to associate himself with the switch knife – a switch knife murder – and then a moment after the murder he becomes smart. The kid is smart enough to make a kind of wound that would lead us to suspect someone else, and yet at the same instant he is dumb enough to do the killing as an el train is going by, and then a moment later he is smart enough to wipe fingerprints away. To make this boy guilty you have to say he is dumb from eight o’clock until about midnight and then about midnight he is smart one second, then dumb for a few seconds and then smart again and then once again he becomes stupid, so stupid that he does not think of a good alibi. Now is this kid smart or dumb? To say that he is guilty you have to toss his intelligence like a pancake. There is doubt, doubt, doubt, (beats table with fist as he emphasizes word, “doubt”) And the old man downstairs. On the stand he swore that it was fifteen seconds, but we all agree that it must have been almost forty seconds. For the kid to be guilty he must be stupid, then smart, then stupid and then smart and so on, and, also, for the kid to be guilty the old man downstairs must be a liar half the time and the other half he must tell the truth…

Juror 12
Looks like we're really hung up here. I wish I knew how we could break this up. Y'know, in advertising... I told you I worked at an ad agency, didn't I? Well, there are some pretty strange people - not strange, really - they just have peculiar ways of expressing themselves, y'know what I mean? Anyway, I was telling you - in the agency, when they reach a point like this in meeting, there's always some character ready with an idea. And it kills me, I mean it's the weirdest thing sometimes the way they precede the idea with some kind of phrase. Like - oh, some account exec'll say, "Here's an idea. Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it," or "Put it on a bus and see if it gets off at Wall Street." I mean, it's idiotic, but it's funny.

Juror 4
Now suppose we take these facts one at a time. One. The boy admitted going out of his house at eight o'clock on the night of the murder after being hit several times by his father. Two. The boy went directly to a neighborhood junk shop where he bought a switch-blade knife. Three. This wasn't what you'd call an ordinary knife. It had a very unusual carved handle. Four. The storekeeper who sold it to him identified the knife in court and said it was the only one of its kind he had ever had in stock. Five. At, oh, about eight forty-five the boy ran into three friends of his in front of a diner. The boy talked with his friends for about an hour. During this time they saw the switch-knife. Six. Each of them identified the death weapon in court as that same knife. Seven. The boy arrived home. Ladies and gentlemen, this case is based on a reasonable and logical progression of facts. Let's keep it there.

Juror 10
I don't understand you people. How can you believe his story? You know what they're like! They think different. They act different. They don't need any big excuse to kill someone. Well, that's true. Everybody knows it. They get drunk on wine or something cheap like that. Oh, they're very big drinkers. And then they're drunk, and all of a sudden - BANG - somebody's lying dead in the gutter. OK, nobody's blaming them for it. That's how they are, by nature, y'know what I mean? Violent. Human life doesn't mean as much to them as it does to us. Family don't mean anything to them. They breed like animals. That kid on trial, his type. they're multiplying five times as fast as we are. They're gonna breed us out of existence. I'm warning you. This boy, this boy on trial here. We've got him. That's one at least. I say get him before his kind gets us. I don't give a goddamn about the law. Why should I? They don’t.