I Want to Dance with Someone

imagesIn Directing class, we began a conversation on the audition process from the director’s point of view. We acknowledged that the process is ardous and hardly very scientific. The most compelling question that I heard was a young lady that asked what do if I do if find the very best person for the role, but he does not read well against any other partner. Would I cast this “best person” or would I keep looking around? I explained that in my years of auditioning high school students I have begun to almost exclusively audition and cast in pairs. The idea of being alone on stage is just so rare in theatre – and even then, one is MAKING an acting partner out of the audience.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I view each and every scene as a love scene – and one requirement of a love scene is to have two players. No matter whether the genre is comedy, drama, musical theatre, absurd, expressionistic or any other “ism”, it all comes down to pairs.

I view it all as a dance – story telling is an experience that is told IN the dance. It makes no sense to cast on actor in isolation from others in the story. If they cannot work WITH and play OFF of another then how good are they in the first place?

P.s/ Although my production of Shadow Box is not FORMALLY auditioning until late January, I am casting this play twenty times a day. Everytime I see two theatre students standing off from the rest engaged in some kind of interchange – I am wondering if THAT pair has the right dance – the right chemistry for the story I will be telling. And it goes way beyond the theatre students. I am casting my play at the dry cleaners, grocery store, gas pumps, barber shop and anywhere I see a pair of people seperate themself form others. I watch them dance. I work to name and define the dance that they are in. I place them in Shadow Box. This play has been cast and cast again and again. Perhaps if you slow down and invite someone into your dance you will work your way into Shadow Box. Strangers ways have led others to step onto the stage . . .

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