On Casting

Tomorrow I have a callback for The Bats' Cato, Joseph Addison's Restoratian-era imagining of Rome's last pre-Cesarean days. There are only two female roles: Marcia, in love with Juba (African prince loyal to her father, Cato) who loves her in turn along with a traitorous senator, and Lucia, daughter of a loyal senator and loved by Cato's two sons, Marcia's brothers. I'm called back for Lucia.

When I audition for plays that involve classic speech, I know that I have an advantage over many actors in that I had the Deb Sussel training. So did anyone else who had her as a teacher, but of all of us that had the brief introduction to the Seven Points of Speech for Classic Plays, I would estimate that only about 10% or so of the students ever absorb any of the language stuff. Seeing other actors my age perform Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, it is apparent that talent does very little good when your speech immediately detracts from your believability.

So let's say for the purposes of this discussion that the speech and diction shouldn't be a problem for me. Now my competition consists of other actors who don't have a problem with delivering classic speech. Presumably that filtering has happened between auditions and callbacks. Let's also assume that I have some degree of talent that is comparable to the other folks that have been called back. In these two fields, we're all on equal footing.

So that's what the audition is for, we have that to convince the people doing the casting that I am technically capable of performing for them. Now the next step is convincing them that I am more appropriate for this role in particular than everyone else who is also up for it.

Here's the thing, though. I attend a lot of auditions and see a lot of the plays that result. I learn where directors' tastes lie; putting aside whatever conclusions I've drawn over the years about what kind of men's auditions result in what kind of men getting cast, let's talk about what happens with women.

First of all, there are always fewer womens' roles and more women who are auditioning. There just are. So already, there is greater competition.

Let's say there are two actors of about equal talent. Equal technical capabilities, equal acting talent. One of them seems like they'd be more fun or more pleasant to work with than the other, based on their personality or seeming professionalism. So that might matter.

Let's say the actors are comparable in both talent and working manner/personality. Only one of them looks more like what the director had in mind, and the other...well, it wouldn't be distracting or anything to have them play the role, but when you imagined what this character might look like, starting from scratch, this actress probably wasn't what you came up with on your own.

I am a young woman who is Chinese-American, and looks it, who is also heavyset. Which category do you think I fall under?

One's expectations of what a character should look like influence the end results of casting more often with lead roles than with character roles. That's just going to be a given. Character roles can pretty much look like whatever they want to look like. Older characters - roles for women over the age of thirty-five or forty, say, can also begin to range. You imagine "old lady" and you can think reedy and thin or big momma. It depends. It varies. With young women, if it's not specifically written for a woman who looks different (only one role leaps immediately to mind, and her name is UGLY Betty), most people imagine average to slim build, and white. There is more flexibility with race in casting for classic plays. Flexibility of body type only happens when the level of talent has broken all molds and blinds everyone with its force.

I'm not calling for a revolution in they way people think, demanding that people search outside their expectations in casting because I need more work. Even if I felt that way, that would be a different essay. What I'm saying here is, I have my work cut out for me. I can't be as talented as everyone else. I mean, anyone who auditions for anything, no matter what they look like, has the job of trying to be more talented than everyone else. That's just what auditioning is. I just have to be extraordinary. It's very rare that a case comes up like this where I'm even called back for a role that is not a character role. Like, twice. And I have certainly never, ever, EVER been cast as the object of two mens' affection. (I was called back once, for Leo in Getting Married, but was not cast).

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge. I'm going over the sides and practicing with the language, going to make some choices, etc. But tomorrow I have to try and convince some people not that hefty minority girls can play ingenues, too, but that they don't want an ingenue for this role. That in fact, an ingenue type would be completely wrong for this character. That this role, for character reasons, can't be played by someone who looks like what you'd expect. It can only be played by someone who looks like me.

It can only be played by me.