Characters

Cast of Characters

women
LYDIA, the first of the runaway brides we meet; engaged to Nikos
(though often identified as Greek, Lydia clarifies that she and her sister brides come from Greek-heritage, although they now live on the Italian coast)

THYONA, Lydia's man-hating sister; engaged to Constantine

OLYMPIA, Lydia's materialistic and youngest sister; engaged to Oed

BELLA, grandmother and matriarch of the house (here in Sicily); has 13 sons (including Piero)

ELEANOR, an English guest at Piero's house; coupled with Leo
note: Mee indicates that an actor may play both Bella and Eleanor

plus as many as 47 additional brides (sisters of Lydia, Olympia, and Thyona)

men
PIERO, Bella's oldest son and proprietor of this house

GIULIANO, Piero's unattached, gay nephew (who lives next door with his dad but works or hangs out at Piero's)

LEO, an Italian guest at Piero's; coupled with Eleanor
note: Mee indicates that an actor may play both Piero and Leo

CONSTANTINE, the oldest, angriest, and most chauvinistic brother; engaged to Thyona
(the brother grooms are all Greeks who moved to the U.S.)

OED, the quietest brother; engaged to Olympia

NIKOS, the most talkative brother; engaged to Lydia; the only groom to survive the wedding massacre

plus as many as 47 additional grooms (brothers of Constantine, Oed, and Nikos)


Playwright's Note on Casting (not required)

I am an old crippled white guy in love with a young Japanese-Canadian-American woman, and we talk about race and age and polio and disability, but race and disability do not consume our lives. Most of our lives are taken up with love and children and mortality and politics and literature—just like anyone else.

My plays don't take race and disability as their subject matter. Other plays do, and I think that is a good and necessary thing, and I hope many plays will be written and produced that deal directly with these issues.

But I want my plays to be the way my own life is: race and disability exist. They are not denied. And, for example, white parents do not have biological black children. But issues of race and disability do not always consume the lives of people of color or people in wheel chairs. In my plays, as in life itself, the female romantic lead can be played by a woman in a wheel chair. The male romantic lead can be played by an Indian man. And that is not the subject of the play.

There is not a single role in any one of my plays that must be played by a physically intact white person. And directors should go very far out of their way to avoid creating the bizarre, artificial world of all intact white people, a world that no longer exists where I live, in casting my plays.
http://www.charlesmee.org/html/cast.html