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 2nd or 3rd 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.
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