Turning Away Good Actors

Turning away good actors. It's the most difficult part of the audition process. You lure them out on audition day with the hope of a juicey part in your next show -- maybe even a part they've been longing to play. They prepare a monologue, or a song, or both. Maybe they put the effort into updating their theatre resume. They take the time to arrange their schedule, maybe even their family's schedule, in order to get themselves to the audition appointment. Next they sit around waiting (the waiting is always murder), waiting for their turn to come. When it does, they are ushered into a classroom where a small handful of bleary-eyed people (the director, the musical director, the producer maybe), people waiting to judge their skills and fit for the available roles. Even then the guessing begins. What does it mean when the director asks me to do it again? Did I get it wrong? Did he not like me? The musical director let me go past 18 bars, to finish my song -- almost. Does that mean I was good? Why didn't they ask me more questions? This will go on long after the audition is over, often times until a call from the director with the offer of a role, or a polite rejection email comes. For some its agony. We as producers and directors put actors through this. Sometimes very good actors, sometimes very good actors who are our friends and who we are eager to work with. And yet in the end we don't cast them. Why? Why do we not cast obviously talented people in the show?

First let me say it's just as difficult to turn away a talented actor as it is for that actor to get the bad news that s/he won't be in the show. I know few people believe that, but it's true. Once the evaluation gets past the "are they talented enough to handle the role" step, and assuming there are no major conflicts, it really does come down to need, fit and vision. What are the specific needs of the production? Does the actor fit the role? Will they fulfill the director's vision for that character? What about the dynamic the director has in mind between the characters. I know this was especially hard for me during the casting of Driving Miss Daisy. I was pleasantly surprise by the number of actresses who auditoned for the part of Daisy. Around 12, I think. To be honest, I thought I'd be lucky if 12 people showed up to audition for all three parts combined. Then it was especially difficult to choose when it became clear that of the 12, as many as four actresses coud have handled the role. Actresses I'm eager to work with again in the future, even if they don't get the Daisy role. I found the same challenge with the other two characters. My solution was to look for the best blend of actors for the three roles. The dynamic, as I've mentioned. And early rehearsals have proven my choice the correct one. But in the process wonderful actors were left with out a role. It had nothing to do with their talents, or them as person's It all came down to what seems to work best when I put the pieces together.

As luck would have it, many of the best actors understand this. They take the disappointing news for what it is, a director choosing a direction, not rejecting them or their talent. Some actors even send kind notes. A nice way to say: "hey, I understand how the process works. Maybe my contribution will better suit the needs of your next show."

The Audition Hangover

The Rain on Daisy falls mainly in the hazy days of winter? Huh? Sorry, I'm so confused this morning. I'm suffering from a monumental audition hangover -- times two! This past weekend we auditioned actors for both Singin' in the Rain and Driving Miss Daisy at the same time. We had originally planned to hold separate auditions, but when Buzz Herman, our musical director, came up with an unexpected scheduling conflict on our Rain audition weekend, it became necessary to push the Rain auditions up and marry them with Daisy. (Why do I suddenly have bizarre visions of Gene Kelly doing a tango with Jessica Tandy?)

Audition weekend is always long and hard for the production team. Actors, singers and dancers march in one by one to strut their stuff. Some friends, some strangers, some who will be come new friends. But they keep coming. And we have to keep them all straight. After a while, your head starts to hurt, you get behind in your notes, and you begin to forget your own name. Luckily, we video tape every one's audition for later evaluation.

This weekend we sat through more than 15 hours of auditions in the communications building followed by a 6-hour casting meeting at my house. Trust me when I say it is both fun and brutal in equal measure. It also got pretty hairy on Saturday and Sunday. We were light in our audition sign ups going into the weekend. This was a result of a scheduling goof which resulted in Playful Theatre's production of Thoroughly Modern Millie (a tap dance heavy show) going up right around the same time as Rain, so we were competing for some of the same actors/skill sets. Playful held their Millie auditions the week before we did, so it cut into our pool of actors. On top of this, Pennington Player's My Favorite Year, which goes up around same time as Rain held early auditions to get a jump on the talent. With even more actors approaching burn out from doing the recent production of Beauty and the Beast, it was tough to get the best talent to sign up. That said, we got lucky. Much of the top talent in the area did show up -- eventually. Here's what happened.

As Saturday approached, actors started rescheduling their auditions. It's a phenomenon we call "jockeying". Our online scheduling system allows actors to pick and choose their own audition day and time on the schedule. As the audition day approaches, actors start to move their appointments to later in the day, or the next day. Some actors will reschedule their appointments several times. Sometimes it's just personal conflicts, but more often than not, it's actors trying to buy more time to work on their audition. So when the jockeying began, we found ourselves sitting around on Saturday for long stretches at a time waiting for the next appointment while the Sunday schedule suddenly got completely booked. This extreme had never happened before, but we were glad to have a full schedule on Sunday and braced for a long day.

And then it happened. On Sunday, we saw more people walk in then ever before. In fact, much of the Kelsey star power, people who often play lead roles started walking in off the street late in the day on Sunday. Actors started pulling other actors in to audition. Leading men and leading ladies walked in unexpectedly saying: "I've had a change of heart. Don't know if I can cut the dancing, but I'd like to be a part of the show if you can use me." Folks from other shows rehearsing down the hall wandered in and said: "I'm on a break, can I audition?" With only about an hour left in our day, the hallway was packed, two audition rooms were humming with actors doing their thing. It was standing room only, and then the bomb dropped. The band from Pierrot's production of Follies walked in with all their instruments. They were scheduled to rehearse in the same room we were using for the acting auditions (the band room). But they were almost an hour early. When I took a peek out of the audition room it looked like Alycia (who was managing the traffic flow) had them all crammed in with a shoe horn. Finally, at 6pm we moved to another room and gave up the band room to Follies, who's rehearsal started at 6:30pm. Rain and Daisy auditions continued for another hour before we saw the last actor, packed up and called it a day.

Like I said. Fun, but brutal.

More on the auditions and the casting meeting later.