Sign Up for an Audition Time Slot May 31

Sign Up for an Audition Time Slot June 1

The Department of Theatre and Dance will be holding auditions for Mother Road, the 2026 fall quarter production, on May 31 and June 1 in Lab A, Wright Hall. Auditions will be 2-5 p.m. on May 31 and 6-9 p.m. on June 1. Participants must sign up for an audition time slot. 

Performances will be Nov. 19-21 and Dec. 3-5.

Mother Road by Octavio Solis, one of the most prominent Latine playwrights, received its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2019. An imaginative “sequel” to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the play charts a road trip from California to Oklahoma with William Joad and Martín Jodes, a Mexican immigrant and the last remaining descendant of Tom Joad. Solis’ rich poetic language complexly engages the challenges of seeking justice in the face of discrimination and the possibility of coming together across difference through a shared relationship to land. The large diverse cast includes a chorus energetically driving the road trip bringing to life past and present moments. 

Directed by Catherine Castellanos, this powerful story—filled with humor and heart—about land, family and survival inventively reverses the Joads’ mythic journey, as these modern-day Joads travel from migrant farm-worker camps in California back to Oklahoma.

Auditions are open to all UC Davis graduate and undergraduate students. For the audition, please prepare the following:

1. 1.5-2minutes monologue or poem that is memorized.  No cheat sheets allowed.  It has to be memorized.

2. One 1 minutes-ish song or 16 bars that the auditioner feels comfortable singing. Can be anything. Can play an instrument. Can use a karaoke app to back it up. Can sing it a’ cappella. There is group singing in the show

Castellanos, a Bay Area based theatre artist, was involved with California Shakespeare Theatre for nearly 15 seasons as an actor and associate artist performing in nearly 20 productions, working with some of the best guest directors in the nation. She has performed for the company were Queen Margaret, Caliban, Sir Toby, Prospero, to name a few, and was involved in the creation and acted in Octavio Solis’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven. From 2016-2022 Castellanos was at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and appeared in world premiers and Shakespeare productions. In 2023, she came back to the Bay Area’s American Conservatory Theatre to perform the titular role in Maria Irene Forbes’ Fefu and Her Friends, directed by Tony award-winning and Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon. Previous to 2023, Castellanos started her relationship with A.C.T. in 2015 with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Between Riverside and Crazy, and was seen as The Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol from 2016-2023.

A company member of the San Francisco’s Campo Santo since 2001, Castellanos has appeared in world premiers and worked closely with the writers. During the residency of acclaimed author/playwright Denis Johnson, Octavio Solis devised, created, wrote and his plays The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy and Bethlehem. Castellanos has directed for Campo Santo, and most recently Luis Alfaro’s The Travelers, which garnered many awards, including the Glickman Award. Upon transferring to Los Angeles, the The LA Times named the play one of the top 10 productions of the year.

Castellanos has taught acting and script analysis at The Jean Shelton Actors Lab for many quarters, and for a couple sessions with Berkeley Repertory School. As an immersive theatre artist, she led the development and directed formerly incarcerated young women out of the San Francisco sheriff’s department. Restorative justice as a theatre artist continued with her participation with acting and collaborating with the incarcerated men in San Quentin.