{"id":2815,"date":"2026-03-18T03:09:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T03:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.uked.com.au\/?page_id=2815"},"modified":"2026-03-20T22:15:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T22:15:21","slug":"uked-characters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/uked-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"UKED! characters"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Karla \u2013 our heroine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>

Karla has just turned 50 and is looking for love, which is not easy as she keeps getting dumped \u2013 most recently by her violin-playing boyfriend, Brian.
Her real name is Carlotta \u2013 \u201clike a lotta cars\u201d, but she prefers Karla \u2013 with a K \u2013 like a Kardashian.
Karla is one of those people who\u2019s fallen through the cracks of life. She\u2019s never married, never had kids and never had a career.
Between working at Pack n\u2019 Track with her friends Leonie and Julie, and caring for her aged Mum, she\u2019s struggling to find her place in a changing world.
But our Karla is not a quitter. She\u2019s resourceful and creative and a little bit politically incorrect.
Whenever she needs to express herself, she writes a rhyme \u2013 and plays he ukulele.<\/p>

Karla\u2019s YouTube ukulele teachers<\/strong>
Karla\u2019s teachers are all fictional affectionate parodies of the many ukulele teachers on YouTube.
All are male, except six-year-old Gloria Stardust, who may be played by an adult of any gender.
This gender imbalance is because Karla is very focused on finding a man and is looking for a male figure in her life \u2013 and because we used the same male actor for all these roles.
But if your uke group is mostly women, they can play the men, or you can mix up the genders. Anything for a laugh.
In order of appearance, Karla\u2019s YouTube teachers are:
Spruikin\u2019 Uken Luke<\/strong> is Karla\u2019s first YouTube teacher. He\u2019s North American, fatherly and teaches her the names of the strings.
Bret McLean<\/strong> is young and handsome and as ocker as you get, and Karla is entranced \u2013 until he suggests she learn Frere Jacques.
Tiny Tom<\/strong> is obsessed with his namesake ukulele-playing Tiny Tim and all the other great artists of the past. He helps Karla learn her first song.
Gloria Stardust<\/strong> is a six-year-old lisping prodigy who teaches ukulele on her very own channel.
Uncle Scraggy<\/strong> is a wise-old codger from the American South who seems to always know what lesson Karla needs to learn next.
Pierre Vert<\/strong> is a snooty Frenchman who gives Karla just the ammunition she needs when her friend Julie teases her about the ukulele being \u201ca toy”.
Baba Bill<\/strong> is a canny Scotsman who runs Ukulele Nirvana and preaches peace and love, assuring Karla that it\u2019s so easy to fall in love.<\/p>

The NUTS and GRUBS leaders<\/strong><\/a><\/p>

Karla finally gets some real-life teachers when she joins a the fictional ukulele groups the NUTS (Newstead Ukulele Troupe) and the GRUBS (Guildford Regional Ukulele Band).
Jeremy<\/strong> is the NUTS Leader, along with his partner, Joel. He\u2019s warm and friendly, which is why Karla is convinced he likes her.
Joel<\/strong> is the NUTS is the love of Jeremy\u2019s life, much to Karla\u2019s disappointment and envy. Why is everyone getting married except her?
Ruth<\/strong> is the GRUBS Leader. Like her fellow GRUBS, she\u2019s been around the Monopoly board a few times and is little cynical about love.<\/p>

Wade \u2013 the man of her dreams?<\/strong><\/p>

Wade is a widower and a passionate ukulele player. His second wife, Lydia was American. She died of ovarian cancer two years earlier and Wade is still grieving.
Karla meets him on the dating site Romance-R-US and is immediately impressed because he plays the ukulele AND has his own channel \u2013 WhatWadePlayed.
When he meets Karla, he\u2019s in Sacramento, LA, helping Lydia\u2019s Mum with some legal issues.
Wade understands what Karla is going through with her Mum, and her passion for the ukulele.
What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>

Maestro \u2013 the man who \u201cgets\u201d her<\/strong><\/p>

Maestro mysteriously turns up at the GRUBS meeting, replacing Ruth, who is on tour with Brittni Paiva, the world famous Hawaiian ukulele player who plays all that jazzy stuff.
A cross between Clint Eastwood and Antonia Banderas, he is mature, romantic, and passionate. He insists that Karla should not play the ukulele \u2013 she should make love to it.
Through Maestro, Karla discovers that her rhymes are really lyrics and her true talent is writing songs.<\/p>

Mum \u2013 meant to be \u2013that\u2019s Mum\u2019s philosophy<\/strong><\/p>

Mum is a chain-smoking fatalist. If something happens it\u2019s \u201cmeant to be\u201d and if it doesn\u2019t it\u2019s \u201cnot meant to be\u201d.
While Mum never appears in the play, she is a big part of Karla\u2019s life. Karla has no siblings and her father is dead or absent, so it\u2019s just Mum and Karla.
They don\u2019t live together, but they talk every day.
Like all mothers, she worries \u2013 especially that one of those guys on that dating site will be a serial killer. But she knows that one day Karla will find where she belongs.<\/p>

Brian \u2013 the bastard who dumps her<\/strong><\/p>

Brian is the first violin in the West Bendigo Chamber Orchestra and has just dumped Karla for Kylie, the cellist.
Eventually, we meet him \u2013 when he\u2019s been dumped by Kylie and is desperate to join a uke club (\u201cThere are no clubs for violin-players\u201d)
Brian can appear on stage in person OR you can do what we did in the Guildford premiere and just have one of your actors behind a door voicing Brian, while Karla tries to keep him from coming in and joining the club.
Either way, Brian is a bastard who gets his come-uppance.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Karla \u2013 our heroine Karla has just turned 50 and is looking for love, which is not easy as she keeps getting dumped \u2013 most recently by her violin-playing boyfriend, Brian.Her real name is Carlotta…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2815","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2815"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3038,"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2815\/revisions\/3038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uked.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}