"Hurricane Season" presented by The Eclectic Company Theatre

Hurricane Season

So much of theater produced is old works:  classics that are repurposed or modern pieces that were originally produced or written within the last ten years. But then there are showcases like fringe or playwriting festivals that pop up and encourage playwrights and theater makers to try new things on stage. This last weekend, I saw Hurricane Season, a show produced by The Eclectic Company Theatre. Their annual festival features new short plays, a total of nine shows (three per night) over a six-week period. At the end of each night, the audience votes on their favorite performances and plays, so it’s also a playwriting competition.  It was their tenth year doing the festival, and I will say I really enjoyed the final play of the evening.

The best show of the night was “Improvisation,” a short play that played with theatrical conventions to create a tense and interesting scenario. Written by Andrew Osborne, the show starts out with a simple set, three chairs on stage right, and a table with a chair off center left. I had guessed that the plot would actually revolve around an improv show, or at least the conventions of improv specifically, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Jenny (played by Beth Ricketson) walk in asking about an audition. No one is there to check her in, so she just sits in a chair and waits. Soon, a man, Jack (played by Mark Bate) walks in from back stage, and she assumes he’s there to audition her, the contact she’d been given. But no, he is just running the audition for the other man, her original contact. And then he hands her a script to cold read with him, and the lines of the scripts are exactly the conversation we’d watched since the beginning of the show. Naturally, the actress, (and the audience) is confused and a little put off, things are not going as expected. After threatening to go, Jenny finally decides to stay and read more of the script. As she does so, there is a part that is blank, and Jack says it’s her duty to improvise what the character would say based on her own life experiences.

Directed by Wendy Radford, “Improvisation” was a show that kept me guessing until the very end. I won’t give away the slight twist at the end of the play, because it was something I really enjoyed discovering throughout the show. Just know that this play is compelling, because as it continues, its layers fall away and we see what’s really going on at the center of this story.

As an actress living in Los Angeles, I feel as though I have experienced many of the motions of this play before in my own personal life. I am given an audition, with a location and a name and a time, and I most likely know no one at the location, and I am probably walking into a room blind with my guard up. And when I watched this happening on stage, I of course thought that this man was some sort of pervert (which happens way more than people like to admit to actors in LA). I don’t know if I would’ve stayed through the audition like she did, even though I do know that I’ve stayed and waited for auditions that did end up being a waste of my time.

What I really appreciate about this show was how it knew its audience. I don’t know if this is a play that would succeed in other parts of the United States, because it is about the conventions of an audition, and an audience needs to have that context in order to fully understand some of the behavior that happens. But this is Los Angeles (note that it would work in other “acting” towns as well like New York) a town that is filled with actors, casting directors, and every other person trying to break into the entertainment industry. We are the appropriate demographic for this piece, something that needs to be considered when producing theater or any type of art.

Hurricane Season, like any other play festival, will include pieces that are rough and need more work. But there will also be a few gems throughout that are exciting works of theater. By no means was “Improvisation” a perfect play, but its premise and character development was strong and compelling, and I believe it has the potential to be fleshed out a little more. And that’s what these festivals are all about…giving playwrights an opportunity to see different audiences reactions to their new works.

The Eclectic Company Theatre’s production of Hurricane Season runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:00pm through August 18 at 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, California 91607. Call (818) 508 – 3003 for more information, or visit The Eclectic Company Theatre online at http://www.eclecticcompanytheatre.org.

Producing a Shakespearean Play: The Auditions

 Producing a Shakespearean Play:

The Auditions

 

 

As an actor and director, I spend a lot of time producing and being in theater productions, which gives me a unique perspective on plays and shows because I always consider both the performer and production team. I am never able to just go and enjoy a production anymore, because I look beyond just the elements of what I see in front of me and wonder about each of the production steps that led to what I’m seeing. Usually I don’t spend too much time on these thoughts, because good theater is able to take me away from my mind and into the world of the play. But I can’t help but wonder, how did all the pieces fit together, how did they find their actors, what was their rehearsal process like, etc? And at times I wonder, how did their audition process go?

I am currently producing a Shakespearean show through my theater company, and although I had about 1/2 of the cast locked down, I needed to find 5 more people to play some of the most iconic roles in theater history. The overall audition process was very interesting, similar to processes I’ve dealt with in the past (as both a director and an actor), but I thought it would make a good blog post for you all to see just what worked and what didn’t.

To find actors, I posted a breakdown onto ActorsAccess and LACasting, two of the most prominent breakdown services available in LA (that allow actors to submit to projects themselves). My theater company is very small and very poor, so I wasn’t going to be able to pay my actors, so I wanted to find people that were willing to work for free simply because they LOVE Shakespeare and acting. You’d think in a town with 200,000 actors this would be easy, but it was actually quite difficult to do.

The characters that were broader in description (either male or female, age 25 – 55) were the ones that received the most submissions, because there are more actors in LA in this category than say a female in her mid forties. But thankfully I did receive at least 5 people per character, (and some 20 or more) so I was able to look at everyone’s resume and background and see if they would be a good fit and could be called in to audition for the show. Since I was doing a Shakespearean play, I wanted to bring in people with a good classical background OR a good theater background. Someone who has worked a lot on stage or has a lot of stage training, which usually means they would be easy to direct and have a good handle on the poetic language. So out of the 100 actors who submitted, I found 50 good candidates to call in and audition.

This leads to one of the saddest aspects of casting and acting, especially with regards to actors in LA. Actors can be flakes. That’s a fact. Many people fly out to LA, call themselves actors, submit to breakdowns online, actually have some great training or a great look, but never actually go out on the auditions they are called in for. You might think “wow, 50 actors in a 4 hour time period, that’s a lot and how could you possibly know if they’re a good fit or not?” Well, the truth is, I knew that ½ of them wouldn’t even come out to the audition. So I called more than I could possible handle during my schedule audition time, and in actuality, only 25 came.

Of the 25, only ½ of those people were really prepared and ready to handle Shakespearan language. I don’t say this to be mean, but to merely say that, though an actor might be good with contemporary language, the ability to handle Shakespeare is a different skill altogether. I really enjoyed their work, and now I have their headshots and resumes available in my files for my future projects.

And as far as those who were ready with a monologue and who knew what they were saying when given Shakespeare to cold read…Some of the actors were just different. Different than my co-director and I had pictured. Different than the vision we’d built up in our heads for those roles. For some actors, their differences actually made them shine, because I wanted to change my vision to fit their energy or presence. For some, their differences were too great, and I just couldn’t see them on stage with the actor’s I’d already cast. It was nothing personal; in fact at times, it could be entirely arbitrary, the result of choices we’ve already made that the actor can’t affect one way or the other.

A really enlightening aspect of the audition was watching the men we’d called in for a very strong, brotherly role, read the sides we’d selected from the show. It was a scene about a son, who comes back home because he’d heard his father was dead. And his first scene back involves a high emotion scene attempting to find the truth about this father, and who’d killed him. I had 6 actors read this scene, and 4 of them read it the exact same way, same type of pacing movement to indicate their emotion (as if this was the first way each of them pictured the scene in their head as they practiced outside). And they did this without ever seeing the other’s do it. The other 2 chose something else (maybe 2^nd or 3^rd way they saw it in their heads), to stand and not pace, and focus their high emotion and their anger directly at the reader. This reminded me that the choices I make when I audition for a scene should be so strong and should be unexpected or else I will just look like the majority of girls that come into the room, which subsequently makes my scene boring. Rather than looking like the one girl who chose something different.

So to all you actors out there that are just starting out or need a little encouragement. If you find a breakdown, and you fit the character, and you’re available for the performance or shoot dates, and you get an audition, and you go to the audition… You’ve already beaten out ½ of those who were called in. Arrive prepared, ready to work and take direction, and you will be better than ½ of those who showed up. And finally, if you don’t get cast, it’s not due to your ability or your work, it’s just because you didn’t fit the vision of the production team. And who knows, you might be called into something they produce in the future.