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I think the highlight of my bearing witness to auditions came several years ago when a very attractive student actor at CSU performed a pole dance / strip routine for my play Only Sing for Me. Unfortunately, we were not able to cast her as my play required no women. The cheap thrill remains, though.

The auditions at CPT were quite a bit more professional and much more reserved. Alongside Beth Wood, Associate Artistic Director at CPT, two of the directors sat at a long front table covered with note pads, binders, scripts, head shots and actor’s cvs. Behind this front table, on chairs rising toward the back of the James Levin space, sat the playwrights, stage managers, and various others, including Mike Geither who is running the NEOMFA portion of the festival.

Auditions were run in one hour blocks with between 5-8 actors in an hour. An actor would come in, led by Lindsay Carter, Festival Production Manager. The actor would go to the main table, deposit his or her head shot and cv, engage in brief chit-chat, and then go out into the space. He or she would say the piece they would be performing and then go. If there was interest, a director would ask him/her to do it again with some variation: louder and farther back (projecting), softer with greater nuance, in a different enunciation or accent. Sometimes, an actor would be asked to do a bit from Shakespeare (i.e. they had two pieces prepared–contemporary and Shakespearean). Interestingly, I learned that whenever there are auditions schools with acting programs send students to practice auditioning, so on one night several students came through.

It was a machine. Actors were processed through quickly, orderly, decisions were made. I was appalled at how quickly I adapted to the attitude. I was shocked, in retrospect, at how quickly I came to view actors according to specific attributes that the play required, and not as people at all. I believe the human mind is easily conditioned to systematic modes of thought: that the brain’s approach to things is easily conditioned, in this way, to chilling itself to emotion and becoming clinical. The danger of this mode of thinking is historically documented and is not a direction I intend to go with this blog entry, but I note the attitude nonetheless.

Geither advised me that the key attribute to look for in an actor was the willingness and ability to respond to the director. So, above I mentioned the director might ask an actor to do their piece again in a certain way; this is when you see how the actor responds and how well. Regardless, here are some excerpts from my own notes on the audition to get a sense of what I was discussing above:

Forced emotion. Not a good sense of delivery. Tense and constricted.

Good comic sense. Good delivery. Good shifts: speed up and slow down. Dynamic. Good smile. Confident.

Good eye contact. Strong presence. Good delivery. Good timing: funny.

Pretty convincing emotionally for a short audition piece. Direction? Takes it. Don’t know how well she projects. Seemed to do well, but would she hold up? Expressive. Did increase volume.

And so on…

On one night there were 14 auditions. Something similar on the other, I think. My play is the only play with women, so my play had the pick for the four actresses I needed. For the men, it was a bit tougher. All three plays have men and there weren’t many men auditioning to begin with. This led to some “negotiations” amongst the directors about who got which actor, etc. This conversation was almost as interesting as the auditions.

Brian asked me my opinion on some of the characters, my main character Aisa, for instance, who really must carry the show; and another prominent character: Harry Collins. Other than that, I felt that the casting was Brian’s decision, and Brian is working with a vision of types that I can only watch develop.

This is a point, as well, where it is important to comment on the vision of the playwright as the play is written, versus the reality of the play as it is produced. When the play is written it is staged, produced, and run in the mind of the playwright. Unfortunately, that is a production that will never be visible–or if it is, the technology that will make it possible is far, far away from where I’m sitting in time. This reality means that there will automatically be a disconnect between the vision of the playwright as the play is written, and the auditioned/staged reality of the production.

One benefit of Geither’s effort to get playwrights in productions at CSU is that I confronted the disconnect between my imagined version of the play and the real production many years ago. Consequently, I have moved beyond the superficial assumptions about what my characters would “look like” or “be like” in reality to realize that they will emerge through the writing.

After two days, Brian and I came away nearly fully cast. There were two holes in the play that were filled within the following week. What followed is the scheduling of rehearsals, calendars, contact sheets, etc.

Moving on next to the first production meeting.

Went and saw Vogel’s play at None Too Fragile on Saturday night. The location is pretty nice on Front Street, right down in Cuyahoga Falls. The space itself is small and I got a seat right up front. Being a big fan of the intimacy that comes from The Liminis, I was ready for the small space and liked sitting right up in the front. The front row seats can’t be matched for getting excellent vibes from and views of the actors.

I have mixed feelings about the use of video for the “chorus” in the play and some of the other bit parts; but I was intrigued by it, too. As the play went on the video bits grew on me some, but the hiss of the audio sometimes took me out of the “world” of the play and made me realize I was watching something and not in it. I thought Alanna Romansky (Li’l Bit’s) interaction with the video was really good though and was impressed at how they worked through the timing of the thing. I also appreciated the inter-cut highway safety videos that Derry found to put in alongside Vogel’s captions.

I think what disappointed me about the video was the second to last scene–THE scene where the first sexual abuse incident transpires. Much of what I read about this play and the techniques that Vogel uses focus on what Li’l Bit reveals in this penultimate scene: “That day was the last day I lived in my body.” This last scene is designed to emphasize the point as there are three actors representing Li’l Bit: a girl on Peck’s lap, the 30 year-old Li’l Bit, and a disembodied voice speaking her lines. All this emphasizes the point that Sarah Stephenson makes in the article I wrote a while back, “evidence regarding how sexual abuse victims conceive of themselves, foremost being the sense of separation from their physical body.” In fact, throughout the play there is an intense and obsessive focus on the body and the rejection of it–including some scenes that were cut by Derry regarding Li’l Bit at a high school dance. Still, the initial molestation scene was powerful and had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat–so, minus the stage craft of actors and voices, the scene still has great power and an ability to cause discomfort.

The actors in the video were very good. Maryann Elder who played Li’l Bit’s mother was as close to a scene stealer as one can get, I imagine, with video; as was Jim Viront, who played Li’l Bit’s grandfather. And I have to say that one impression I got of the use of video was a distinct sense of memory that I don’t think I would have gotten from the physical presence of the actors. Mary Jane Nottage (grandmother) was very good, too.

Romansky did a very good job as Li’l Bit and I was impressed by her transitions between the various ages that the character goes through. I was equally impressed with the acting of Jeffrey Glover (Peck) who layered on the southern draw of rural Maryland like honey and played Peck with the necessary compassion, strength, and desperation (loss?) that the character deserves.

I am still very disappointed in Paula Vogel for the BB molestation scene which all but ruins the character of Peck and nearly makes him cardboard. If any scene should be cut, that is the one.

I’m not keen on the drive from Cleveland, but now that the kids are getting older I can make more of an effort to get off my ass and go see some plays; I like Derry and am glad to see that he and Romansky are creating theater. I hope Cuyahoga Falls appreciates their luck at having theater like this in their front yard. Derry takes chances and that is what is needed in the all-too-often aridity of play choices (such as adaptations of nineteenth century novelists) that are the fodder for stages. Theaters today are often too much hell bent on the bottom line, which can twist your soul as Mike Daisey points out.

As Derry showed with Bang and Clatter, he’s not afraid to go broke and he’s got the balls to shake it off, stand up, and come back for more. I don’t know if I could do the same and I have to tip my hat to him for that. And he’s still giving away beer and wine, which is a bonus.

None to Fragile is doing Mamet next, and I’ll be in the audience.