Dayton girl makes good?

By Henrietta Leith

NEW YORK; It looked like any other offBroadway audition-pretty long-haired girls in their short skirts and boots, waiting in the dingy lobby of the tiny Greenwich Village theater for their chance to *read.

Even the fact that the girls, most of them extraordinarily young and innocent-looking, were to read for the part of a Lesbian, in a scene that contained a lot of four-letter words, wasn't unusual for on-Broadway, much less off.

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What did make it different was that they were being asked to audition the way they would perform on the stage, stripped to the waist.

The play, "Geese;" has been running to full houses at the Players Theater with a companion piece, "Parents and Children,” involving homosexuality.

Author Gus Weill said the nudity in the play isn't there just for the sake of nudity; the nude scenes are bedroom scenes between lovers, and he was simply trying to be realistic.

Producer Jim Mendenhall, auditioning girls for a leading part in the first traveling company of "Geese," decided on equal realism for the auditions. He explained to each young actress that he would prefer that she strip to the waist to read, but it was up to her.

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In a series of auditions during which he saw 100 girls, and narrowed it down to a half dozen, only about 25 did so.

Two of the girls at the final auditions Thursday lost their nerve. One, Jane Whitehill, took off her skirt but read the emotional and profane scene wearing her bra. And red-haired Laura Rose

didn't even take off her found out it was a nude jacket.

"When I feel it's necesI don't feel like doing it," Laura said.

sary

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Rita Bennett told Menden hall that "it really doesn't bother me," but Dinah Basson explained her reaction by borrowing a line from the play the play "I'feel illegal. I feel like a broken law.”

Dinah, who got stage fever playing small roles with the Dayton Opera in her hometown, recalled that Mendenhall had suggested she see the play before auditioning, and that's how she

part.

"I sort of expected it," she said. “And I didn't see anything offensive in it. But when I had to do it for the audition, inside I was half dead."

Told she had appeared quite the opposite, actually composed, Dinah replied:

"Really? I was absolutely terrified!"

Dinah was told Friday she had the road-company part and would also understudy for the role in the New York production.

“I'm still sitting here, not

realizing it happened," she said. "It's my first big break, the first thing I ever had in New York.'