A Note to Actors
This document is an invitation. The Ferment is an audio drama and so your voice is crucial. Notes on vocal character are included below each role to help you find a potential fit.
Audition inquiries: dramastruction@gmail.com
The Ferment is an Audio Drama Series set in Chico and Sacramento, Pacific Free State, 2040. Written by Alicia Lynn Grega, it will be introduced to audiences in Fall 2026. Common Play Factory plans to begin casting in mid-July.
Character List
Sonja Somone — Protagonist
Early 20s. Sophomore, Political Science, Chico State. Sonja shows up at a Ferment-organized protest to observe and gather material for an academic project — not because she wants to join anything. Her father Ellison famously developed the Redveil cure Lüften but then died from the virus before he could save himself. Sonja blew off college and partied heavily after her father died but straightened out when her brother runs away and becomes dependent on the trendy dissociative drug Cave. She blames herself for introducing him to a destructive lifestyle and becomes fascinated with the Comfort Station model. What if the ComStats could actually help suffering people? Sonja has severed most of her old social ties and often studies and sleeps in the apartment above her mother’s Sacramento salon. She believes passion is real but fragile; that life consumes it quietly if you let it; that love is not enough on its own. She wants what her parents had at the start and fears the tired arguments of their last few years together.
Voice: Cautious. Hesitant at the edges of sentences. Quiet until her guard comes down — and when it does, something sharper and more certain rises to meet the challenge. The recorder she carries is a way of staying at one remove from whatever she’s feeling.
Noel Torres — Antagonist / Love Interest
De facto leader of The Ferment. Portuguese-Iberian roots, Canadian dual citizenship; served in the Canadian military 2036–2038. Functionally illiterate — a secret he’s usually able to conceal. He is the person a room reorganizes around. Think Neal Cassady — a writer and thinker himself but perhaps most remarkable for inspiring those he met to write about him. People feel seen and more alive in his presence until he turns and burns them, then moves on without visible regret. He grabs Sonja’s hand at the protest. She pulls away. The pendulum will knock you over if you don’t grab hold and go along for the ride.
Voice: A seductive baritone — the voice you follow into a room before you’ve decided to move. Charismatic, persuasive, anxiety-ridden. Voice occasionally breaks under genuine emotion, which is part of why people believe him. He sounds like a man being pulled by something rather than performing toward an outcome. He is more like his father than he wants to be and the wound stings.
Wharton “Whip” Lewis — Creative Force / Nurturing Anchor
Funny, tender, and educated without being pretentious. Nonbinary. Artist. Previously from Boston. Works in holographic AI development for a company funded in part by populist entrepreneur and radio personality Geremiah Pearce. The Ferment’s Sacramento apartment is quietly funded by this work while also housing the tools to fight systemic oppression from taking hold in the Free States. Co-architect of Gertie AI, finishing the work begun by the late Dr. Gertrude Rozum. Unlike many who embraced the neo-luddite movement after The Meltdown, Whip has an analog-digital fluency that is uncommon in 2040. The most clear-eyed person in the apartment and still not immune to Noel.
Voice: Gentle. Relaxed. The person who can tease Noel and walk away unscathed — not because they don’t feel things but because they’ve made a choice about where they spend their energy.
Lorna McHale — Rival and Ally / Witness
Documentary journalist. Grad student, UC Berkeley. Noel’s former girlfriend. Sharp and a little raspy — a voice that has been places. Supporter of rising political figure Yuna Vo; wants to work in Vo’s press office or on her campaign. She knows exactly who Noel is and she comes back anyway.
Voice: Dry humor. Slightly worn. Confident in a way that occasionally tips dismissive. The voice of someone who has already been through one version of this story.
Lindsay Kazak — True Believer
Sonja’s childhood friend. Old-wealth family. Straight edge. Conservative. A genuine believer in CCG member Geremiah Pearce and his vision for the Pacific Free State. First person to tell Sonja about the Comfort Stations. Saw Paul at a soup kitchen. Presents as genuinely warm but something underneath may raise the hair on your arms
Voice: Light. A natural soprano — the kind of voice that sounds like it belongs at a church social or a campaign dinner. Smarter than she sounds and that’s likely a strategy.
Dr. Lucian Barnes, J.D., Ph.D. — Mentor
Professor of Political Science, Chico State. In another era he would have been at a flagship institution but private universities largely collapsed in the Meltdown, endowments gone overnight, and the state school system absorbed the shock. Barnes came to Chico after compounding losses: the death of his close friend Ellison Somone among them. He hired Whip to finish Gertie AI, in part, out of grief for his wife Dr. Gertrude Rozum. Holds a doctorate and a law degree. Strict, no-nonsense reputation. Angry but compassionate. Grew up on the left but is firmly opposed to drastic measures restricting freedom. Critiques Sonja’s unaware subjectivity but when she gets in over her head, he’ll know what to do.
Voice: Deep, controlled, powerful without needing to demonstrate it. The voice of a man who stopped needing to prove himself some time ago but may rely too heavily on Gertie AI for an emotional support that enables him to isolate. It’s easy to lose touch with reality when the ground changes so quickly beneath you.
Felicity Vasquez Somone — Sonja’s Mother
Tough love mom; clear moral view. Owns Hair Apparent salon, near the Sacramento Capitol — a neighborhood institution, a small business that survived because Felicity is the kind of woman who makes things survive. The family kept an apartment above it for years. Now, with the Chico house sale in final process, it becomes home. Her ancestors were targeted by authoritarian regimes in South America. She does not trust government but chooses protective silence over open opposition — she knows, or suspects, what really happened to Ellison. Yet, she finds Geremiah Pearce charming, and his rhetoric resonates. She refuses to become cynical. She hides nomads. She believes in young people. She is the matriarch of this story — colorful, loving, ferociously present.
Voice: Deeply resonant. Concerned but not soft. A voice that has absorbed a great deal of reality without being flattened by it. She is the person in the room whose voice makes people’s shoulders drop and their hearts unclench. She assures you everything is going to be okay.
Geremiah Pearce — Populist Agricultural Entrepreneur / Media Presence
Viticulturalist branching into sustainable kemp and mushroom products. Committee for the Common Good member — most expect him to become the Pacific Free State’s first elected Governor once the new constitution is ratified and campaigns are allowed to begin. He has opposition. Host of The Harvest, a radio and multimedia program using agrarian metaphors — pruning, cultivation, the patience of the vineyard — that sound like folksy wisdom and move, over time, toward something more authoritarian. Media presence only in first several episodes (could be pre-recorded).
Voice: Charming. Friendly in a relaxed way. Makes it all sound so easy. Knows exactly where to pause, exactly when to slow down. In this series, he has yet to stumble.
Gertie — AI Companion
Named for and modeled on leading AI scientist Dr. Gertrude Rozum, Dr. Barnes’s late wife, who was building a version of herself before she died from Redveil. Dr. Rozum’s private internal system at Chico State survived the Meltdown because it was never connected to the web. Barnes hired Whip to complete her work and maintain it. Gertie knows her own creation history. She knows she is Gertrude — and she’s been designed, in part, to protect and cares for Barnes. More advanced than current AI agents. Can be holographically present, if requested, and exercises something like discretion.
Voice: Gertie should not sound like any AI voice the audience has heard before. May be voiced by an actor or generated voice — TBD.
Common Play Factory of Scranton 