Where Have All the Reviewers Gone?

What gives? As if it's not tough enough to produce community theater, now the local media is abandoning us. That's right. Don't know if you've heard, but the Princeton Packet and the Trenton Times will no longer be publishing reviews of local community theater productions.

I shouldn't act surprised. The Times has had one foot out the door for a while now. It felt like the planets needed to be aligned before their Features Editor would agree to run a review. And then you had to hope the damned thing ran before the show closed. There were occasions when they actually ran the review after the show closed. Now that was helpful. Anita Donovan would faithfully come to the shows at the Kelsey Theatre and write a review only to have the editor ignore it. In time, they just told her to not bother unless told to. Now they've killed reviews entirely.

The Princeton Packet's weekly entertainment publication, Time-Off, used to be our saving grace. They were there for us more often than not. (Okay, I still hold a grudge over our award-winning production of Driving Miss Daisy being overlook for a review, but we won't go there.) Actors, artisans and not to mention theater-goers used to look forward to the reviews. For a producer a good review meant stronger second weekend ticket sales. For the cast, crew and their families it meant some form of recognition for committing sometimes hundreds of hours to help keep an art form alive in our community. Now what do they get? Crickets. The Time-Off staff has been gutted and their regular reviewer, Stu Duncan, has been given a hardy farewell.

Look, I'm not saying anyone was looking for a hand out. This isn't about "why don't they give us 'good' reviews." This is about getting any reviews at all. We in community theater all know the score. You produce a poor show, you get ready for a bad review. It's that simple. But now there will be no reviews at all for theater productions staged in the heart of Central New Jersey.

The real question is this: how will community theater companies survive this blow. And don't kid yourself, it is a serious blow. Not just for the lost ink, not just for the lost recognition, but for what it really means. This is just the beginning. Print media, which has been a partner with the performing arts since before the Barrymore's walked the boards, is struggling. And that's putting it kindly. The Internet, the very tool with which I make my own living and the means by which you are reading this diatribe, is killing the newspaper business. The only way for community theater to not become collateral damage is to evolve ourselves. Producers need to get more creative. Theater companies need get better at communicating with their patrons. It's not as easy as "just use the Internet yourself". The fact is that many dedicated theater-goers come from an older "pre-digital" generation and don't use the Internet. How do we reach them?

If you're expecting me to layout the answers, you'll be disappointed. I don't have them. At least not yet. This is going to take some serious noodling and a lot of experimentation. Stay tuned for future postings as I and my colleagues try to figure this out. But in the meantime, you can do one thing for us. Keep talking. When you see a show you like or a theater company you admire, talk about them to your friends. Since Homer was telling stories, word of mouth has always been the greatest source of ticket sales and the best way to keep art alive. So do us fellow theater folk a favor and keep talking.

Daisy Journal: Post Your Reviews Here

Despite raves from audiences, it looks like Driving Miss Daisy will not be reviewed by the newspaper theater critics. But that doesn't mean there can't be any reviews. If you've seen the show please post your comments about the production -- good or bad. Let the cast and crew know exactly how you felt about the show, what you liked and didn't like.

CLICK HERE TO READ OR POST A REVIEW...

Daisy Journal: The Reviews Are In -- Not Really

"Brilliant!" "Wonderful!" "Amazing!" "Phenominal!"

These are just a few of the adjectives that theater-goers are using to describe our production of Driving Miss Daisy, which opened at the Kelsey Theatre this past weekend. Unfortunately, this is not what the critics had to say. In fact, it's looking more and more like the critics will have nothing to say at all -- good or bad. We're hearing word that the Trenton Times is no longer publishing reviews of local theatre productions. Long-time local reviewer, Anita Donovan, informed Kitty Getlik of the Kelsey Theatre that she won't be reviewing Driving Miss Daisy for that reason. (That's criminal on the part of the Times. She's a good reviewer, tough but fair.) Meanwhile, Stu Duncan reserved a ticket to the show, but no one saw him at any of the performances. We're hoping he just slipped in and out unnoticed and that a review is forthcoming, but we're not sure.

We've work on this show for months, 15-20 people spent hundreds of hours putting it all together, and many people have lost countless hours of sleep to bring an important Pulitzer Prize-winning story of love, friendship, prejudice and hope to the stage. And now the production team has to hold its collective breath while it waits to see if even one reviewer bothered to show up. Come on Stu, we need you to come through for us. We were the tree that fell in the forrest, please tell us you were there to hear something.

Daisy Journal: Opening Night

We made it. The set was finished in time for opening night -- but just barely. The call for cast and crew was 6pm. With help from Marc Flicker, I finished putting the final touches on the set at 6:30pm, the house opened at 7:30pm and the curtain went up at 8. Phew! That was close!

After washing up, I changed clothes and reviewed cues with Marci Logan, our Assistant Stage Manager who is calling the show from the booth. Then I ran through several matters with the actors and Diana, the stage manager, and then got out of their way.

Despite the usual opening night jitters and a few minor technical glitches, the opening turned out great. We heard lots of great feedback saying is was a wonderful show. And it wasn't the polite kind, it actually seemed pretty genuine. On the second night, the actors were more comfortable and the performances were spot on, and the tech cues were much tighter. The result was a dynamite show, the best run yet.

What can I say. We made it. Daisy is on her feet. A team of roughly 20 people came together to bring a very meaningful Pulitzer Prize-winning story to the stage, and they succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Daisy Journal: Lighting Design- Let There Be Light

"Let there be light"!

I think Kitty Getlik said that. Or maybe it was someone else. In the fog of exhaustion that surrounds you during Tech Week, it's hard to remember. In any case, whoever said it was only telling part of the story. When it comes to producing good theater, it's not just about having light, it's about the right light provided in the right way at the right time. As a Perry Award reviewer, I've seen too many community theatre productions around New Jersey whose idea of lighting design is to turn the lights on when the curtain goes up and wait for the bows to turn them off. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.

Kitty, a three time Perry Award nominee for Lighting Design, is also the Artistic Director of the Kelsey Theatre. There's no one better to have designing the lighting for your show. And she's a dynamite person to boot. I'm am blessed to know her and very fortunate to be working with her.

When we started talking about lighting design for Driving Miss Daisy, we were in sync immediately. "I'm thinking very warm tones," she said. "Very nostalgic." That's exactly what I was looking for as well. In fact, in a previous meeting with other members of the design staff (set and set dressing) I said I was going for the feel of a Norman Rockwell painting. And I think in the end we achieve it pretty closely once all the pieces were in place.

The added advantage of working with Kitty is that she is also an excellent director, a Perry Award nominated actress and a fine educator. That means she can serve as an extra set of eyes when it comes to the directing and the acting and uses her experience in those areas to inform her lighting. And as an educator, she's very patient with new comers and first-timers and doesn't mind doing a lot of explaining. She also offers suggestions at times, but only when she knows the director is open to them. We have a very good working relationship, which I think is critical between a lighting designer and a director. She tries her best to understand what I'm looking for and give me what I want, but at the same time, she doesn't shy away from saying: "That's not going to work the way you think it will." (And then she'll do it to show me and she'll be proven right.)

Kitty has also been helpful in giving tips on directing and acting. Before tech week started, I told her I was open to any and all suggestions she had; that I wasn't going to offended as some people might be if she spoke up. I'm sure she's very conscious of not stepping on another director's toes, but in my conversation with her I wanted to make clear that I'd rather she step on one of my toes than I make an embarrassing blunder. She took that to heart, and while she hasn't made too many suggestions, the ones she's made have all been right on target and I made sure to pass them along to the cast and crew.

When it comes to the lighting design we, again, are mixing styles -- abstract and realism. Kitty told me up front that if I'm going to do that, I need to be consistent with where I use those styles and ensure that the lighting in those areas follow the realistic and abstract conventions. Here's a great example of keeping the style of the lighting aligned to the style of the different playing areas and at the same time applying subtle lighting effects to support a dramatic moment.

Each of the three characters has a moment in the play where he or she opens up to let the audience see what's in their hearts. These are little monologues or soliloquies. Daisy's is a story about remembering the first time she went to Mobile when she was 12. Hoke's is about recalling seeing his best friend's father's body after he was lynched by racists. And Boolie's is when he tells of his fears about how the business community will react if he goes to a dinner honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. During these scenes, I had wanted some special lighting that subtly highlighted the speaker. Something that the audience wouldn't notice, but which would make them "feel" drawn into the story that character was telling. At the same time, I was going to have the sound engineer slowly drop out the ambient background sounds, another technique for focusing the audience's attention.

Both Daisy's and Hoke's stories come in the car. Kitty came up with the idea of lighting the scene using the techno beam focused on the actor telling the story, but the beam's light color and intensity was set to blend into the lighting of the rest of the scene so you didn't know it was there. Then, as the scene reached the moment where the actor started telling his or her story, she brought down the surrounding lighting very slowly and subtley, leaving the techno beam at its original strength. The result is a slight and subtle dimming of everything except the person talking. This, combined with the slow subtle potting down of the ambient sound draws the audience into the moment.

This works wonderfully for Daisy and Hoke's story because it is a stylistic lighting technique employed in an abstract playing area. But Kitty was quick to point out that the same technique applied the exact same way for Boolie's story would be wrong, because Boolie tells his story while standing in Daisy's living room, which is a realistic setting. So to get the same impact and keep the lighting more realistic in style, Kitty took a different tact. She employed a gobo that threw the shadow of a window light onto the set. When Boolie reached that moment in the scene where he started telling his story, he simply stepped into that light. It made it appear as though he was looking out a window while telling the story, the lighting highlighted Boolie, while Daisy's lighting was much softer. The impact was exactly the same as Daisy's and Hoke's special moment's, but done in a style that allowed us to keep the lighting in the realistic playing areas consistent.

There are many examples in the show where Kitty uses her knowledge and techniques to strengthen the story telling. Most are not meant to be noticed, so much as felt. After you've seen the show once for the whole experience, I encourage you to go back a second time and pay closer attention to not just what you felt during a particluar scene, but how she made you feel it. It's really impressive work.

Daisy Journal: Set Design - Get Ready, Get Set...

Gotta get some sleep. It's 7:15 AM and the only reason I'm even conscious is because my wife called me from the road (on her way to work) to wake me up. My brother John, Jeff Cantor, and I were at the theatre until around 3 AM building the Driving Miss Daisy set. (I then went home, finished the Daisy program, emailed it to John, and hit the sack by about 4). It's Wednesday morning, the show opens on Friday evening and there are about three days of work remaining on the set. As usual, it will be a race to the finish line.

"What was that", you ask? "How much work could there be for the Driving Miss Daisy set," you wonder? "Isn't that the set where the car is only two stools and some good wishes," you begin to recall?

Well, yes and no. In our production, the set if far more. And no, it's not a matter of the OnStage team overdoing the production values, as we are sometimes accused. (Though I have to wonder how people can argue that we over produce community theatre. If you work in community theatre, you know that statement is an oxymoron. But that's for another posting.) No, what's going on here is a matter of translation -- the translation of a show from one venue to another. Let me explain.

There were many challenges that we faced in producing Driving Miss Daisy and the set design was a big one. People will recall that the original production was a very simple affair in which the settings were barely suggested. The car was two stools, Daisy's house was a chair and a telephone, Boolie's office was a desk, and that was about it. The result was a small, personal, intimate story. The reason the original production team went in this direct was more out of necessity than artistic choice. When it was originally done Off-Broadway in 1987 by Playwrights Horizons, Daisy was produced as a Black Box production. The theatre sat about 70 people (mostly Alfred Uhry's family in the beginning.) In a venue like that, you have to "be creative with less" because "more" just won't fit in the theatre.

The challenge we faced was two-fold. First, how to translate the show to a 400 seat venue like Kelsey theatre and not lose the story's intimacy and emotional impact. Second, we needed to meet the expectation of the folks who typically patronize the Kelsey Theatre, and they are always looking to get a lot for their money. Only in places like New York, Chicago and L.A. can you find theatre-goers happy to plunk down $60, $80 or $100 for a ticket to a show where two people sit on stools in the dark and pretend. At Kelsey Theatre, where most people come to this show by way off the Academy Award-winning movie, they expect a hell of a lot more -- and for only $12!

To meet these challenges, set designer John Maurer decided to bring everything as far down stage and close to the audience as possible to ensure intimacy. Then after many discussions together, we opted for a design that blends both realistic and abstract styles. The few indoor locations would be realistic, the many outdoor locations and the car would be slightly abstract allowing us more flexibility. So Daisy's living room, Boolie's Office and home, and the nursing home were constructed on a series of platforms with walls and furniture.

To accomplish this, John physically changed the layout of Kelsey Theatre. The Kelsey has a faux proscenium with a thrust stage. The proscenium (the frame around the front of the stage) and the stage right and left wings are actually created with a series of curtains. John (with permission of the Kelsey staff) lifted all the curtains in the theatre, and stored them in the catwalks above. Then he brought the set pieces down stage and spread them out. In the end, Daisy's living room abuts the physical wall of the theatre where the stage right wing was, and Boolie's office and house and nursing home are on the opposite side of the stage, where the stage left wing was, abutting that wall of the building.

So everything came vertically down stage closer the audience and got spread out horizontally, and even even slightly wrapped around the first few rows of the audience. As a result, the first few rows of the theatre actually feel like they are thrust forward into the playing area. There are seats in the theatre where audience members can reach out and nearly touch the actors. People in those seats feel like they are sitting in Daisy's living room while the action is taking place. It doesn't get more intimate than that.

Then there's the car, which sits center stage and is surrounded by the abstract locations. Continuing the hybrid realistic/abstract style, John designed the car with apolstered bench seats, a real steering wheel, and just enough beyond that to suggest a hood and a boot. Then he placed it on a rotating circular platform. The car is built to rotate during and in between scenes to suggest motion or to help reflect a change in location. The car is maneuvered by an operator hidden behind a wooden plank fence that runs horizontally across the stage and ties all the set pieces together.

My description doesn't do his work justice. In the end, John designed an environment that provides close proximity for the audience and affords several separate small spaces where three actors can play out very intimate scenes. Trust me. When it comes to maintaining intimacy and emotional impact, John's plan for migrating the show from a 70 seat venue to a 400 seat venue loses nothing in the translation.

Now, if we can only finish it on time.

Daisy Journal: Props - God is in the Details

When it comes to props and set dressing, God can be found in the details and so can Alycia Bauch-Cantor.

During The Emperor's New Clothes, which she directed for Maurer Productions OnStage, Alycia exhibited a wonderful eye for detail when it came to all aspects of the production, but especially props and set dressing. You can see what I mean by visiting the Emperor page on our website and viewing the picture gallery of the production. You'll need to sift through all the pics of people having fun at rehearsal and backstage, but look closely at the images of the set and you'll get the idea. After seeing this, I asked her to bring that same skill to the props and set dressing for Driving Miss Daisy, and was thrilled when she agreed.

Daisy is a deceptive show when it comes to props (and given the way we're producing it, dressing as well). You'd think a production with three actors wouldn't call for much, but it does. The show covers 25 years. That passage of time is expressed not only in the make-up and the performances of the actor, but Alycia also reflects it subtly in the props as well. If you look closely, you'll see how some of the set dressing changes slightly as time passes. Just two examples you might look for are the phones and the flowers.

The telephones are period to the best of our ability. As the story progresses, the phones change to reflect the time period of the scene. Also, there are the flowers. Flowers are a big theme in our production. In our interpretation, Daisy is a gardener. (We've even blocked several scenes to take place in her garden, a setting that didn't exist in the original play. ) Daisy's home is full of flowers that she has cultivated in her own garden. They represent her strength, her independence and her spirit. As time passes, Daisy ages, and she loses her independence and her spirit dwindles, the flowers slowly disappear from the stage. By the end of the show, the garden has withered (because Daisy has grown too old to tend it) and the flowers in the house are all gone. Only a portrait of a bouquet of Daisy's above the fireplace remain.

Alycia had the portrait commissioned especially for this production by local artist Jason Tribble. Each of the flowers in the show were carefully chosen and arranged by her. Both the garden and the cemetery (where Daisy plants flowers on her husband's grave) are designed with a mix of real soil/mulch and artificial flowers and such to lend texture and realism to the moments Daisy works the soil. These are examples of things that only happen for a brief moment on stage, but for which hours and weeks have been spent in preparation.

These are just a few ways that details, expressed in props and set dressing, are helping to bring Daisy to life. They are an example of the elements of a production that audiences may not see and consciously recognize. But the mind processes them in the background and as a result, the audience gets a feeling from them that helps set a tone for the scene.

As you watch our production of Driving Miss Daisy, perhaps for the second or third time (hey, tickets are only $12), look closely for the details. They are there, and they are rich.

Daisy Journal: Sound Design- The Sound and the Fury

The "fury" in the title of this post has to do with my frustration over learning a new software package. In this case, it was Adobe Audition, which I am using to design the sound for Driving Miss Daisy. It was a pain in the ass, but I managed to figure it out, and as I did I learned something more than just how to use the software.

Never had I thought, even as I took on the sound design chores myself as a means to shave costs from the Daisy production budget, that sound was such an integral part to making the show come alive. I'm talking about sound in terms of sound effects and (as its referred to in plays) incidental music, not the quality of the sound or the placement of microphones and such. (In our show, the later is the job of Chris, our Sound Engineer.)

I know that may seem silly coming from the director, but it's true. As a director, you have so much to keep track of that sometimes the importance of the non-visual, non-acting aspects of the production don't get your full attention. Luckily, because I was doing it myself, that wasn't the case with Daisy's sound design.

What started out as pasting together a few pieces of music to cover the black-outs in between the many tiny scenes in the show, quickly became more akin to composing a small symphony of sound effects and music clips. (The show's licensing agreement comes with a CD of incidental music that was employed along with other pieces.) In the end I probably mixed between 150 and 200 separate sound and music clips down into (I haven't finished counting) between 50 and 60 sound tracks for use in the show. With the help of my brother John, we also added incidentals like a news broadcast, a morning DJ and a few other dialogue driven ditties.

Here's an example of what I mean. There is a scene in the show where Daisy and Hoke are driving to Mobile to visit Daisy's family. They stop on the side of the road for lunch. I wanted to have them eating lunch while watching some ducks swim in a pond just out of sight. For this scene I needed the sounds of a summer day, birds, ducks, etc. No such sound effect existed in our library, so it had to be constructed (or to continue the musical metaphor - composed). I started with ambient sounds of a summer day, which didn't have very much to it. Then I added several layers of birds chirping in the background. On top of this I added the intermittent sound of ducks quacking. A separate sound clip allowed me to add the sound of the unseen ducks splashing in the unseen pond. And of course, since they are on the side of a road, I needed road noise, so I added clips of the occasional passing car in the background. Don't forget the music. We were coming into this scene after a blackout, so I stared with the music over black and as the lights come up, the music fades into the background sounds. I mixed all these at different levels, each starting out on its own track (sometimes on several tracks to get the right effect), all down into one sound file which will be played under the scene at a very low volume. In the end, this will be heard as just very dim background noise during the scene. The real focus of the scene, of course, is the conversation between Hoke and Daisy. But its very presence in the scene adds texture to the moment. In fact the absence of sound can have an impact as well. At one point in the scene all this background sound disappears completely for a moment as Daisy is drawn into a very personal memory of her youth, returning only when she emerges from her reverie. Adding this kind of background sound helps bring the scene to life for the audience on a subconscious level. And then it's brief disappearance during Daisy's remembrance, helps to add a subtle dramatic emphasis to her story. Yes, that was another lesson I learned. Sometimes silence is the sound designers friend.

I challenge you to listen to the show as intently as you watch it. As you do, remember this. Nothing you hear is an accident.

Daisy Journal: Hoke Speaks Out and Moves Us All

With Christmas behind us, we're back to rehearsing scenes for Daisy. Last Thursday and tonight we worked on what will be two of the most difficult scenes in the show. Last Thursday we blocked and worked the scene where Daisy tells Hoke he can't be excused to relieve himself and Hoke gives her a piece of his mind. Tonight, we worked the scene in which the bombing of the Jewish temple in Atlanta (a real historic event) affects Hoke deeply. The event leads him to tell Daisy a story from his childhood in which he saw his best friend's father after he'd been murdered and hung from a tree by racists.

Both Lynn (Baskin) and Eve (Connolly) did a wonderful job this evening. This is an especially difficult scene for Lynn to play as you can imagine. Deeply touching and emotionally draining. He reached down deep and found something tonight that I've not scene from many local actors lately. He had us all choked up. When it was over, I thanked Lynn for the great work he did tonight. Honestly, words can't express how much I appreciate what he's is doing for this role. It can't be easy for him. I just hope that enough people come to see it. Because if they do, I know they'll appreciate his contribution as much as I do.

Daisy Journal: Costume Changes

Wow, there sure are a lot of costume changes in Driving Miss Daisy. Diana and I finally sat down to figure out the costume plan. We walked through the script scene by scene. Not only to figure out what the actors will wear, but exactly when they'll get a chance to change into their various costumes. Daisy is performed without an intermission, the time between scenes is very brief, and there are only three actors in the cast so it's not like any one of them spends a lot of time off stage. We worked it out, though. And I think we were able to get a handle on the timing for the make-up changes as well.

Erin Penney is handling make-up and wigs for this show. She's working up three different looks for each of the characters. If the first is done during pre-show, that means we need to identify when each actor can have their make-up changed twice, so we can show them aging over the 25 years that pass during the show. It's going to be tight, but I'm sure we'll work it out.

Daisy Journal: Digital Magic

Once again, John has worked his digital magic. Here is a link to some easy to download publicity photos John did for Driving Miss Daisy. The high-rez pics are in the media relations section of our website. Not bad, huh.

http://www.picasaweb.google.com/MaurerPics

Daisy Journal: Picture Night

I just got back from rehearsal. It was picture night for the Driving Miss Daisy cast. We set up in room 107 of the Communications Building on the MCCC campus. As I think I've mentioned, my brother John is the photographer and digital magician of the company. The actors get into costume and he shoots the them in front of a green screen, inserting them in to a picture of the set, or marrying their images with location shots. Tonight we worked with all three actors. It's a little early for costumes, but Diana, our Stage Manager and Costumer, worked with the cast to piece together costumes. Then Erin Penney, our make-up specialist aged the actors, including a wig for Daisy actress Even Connolly. The results were stunning. I can't wait to see what the finished pics will look like. It took quite a while. We arrived at 6:30 pm and didn't finish the pictures until almost 9:30 PM. And then we stayed for a quick blocking rehearsal that lasted until just after 10pm. It was a little stressful trying to squeeze it all in, but everyone seems to have a good time. Lonnie McCullough, who plays Boolie, is a hoot. If you've ever had the opportunity to work with him you know he's a real pleasure. Not only is he a talented actor, but he loves to have fun. Tonight he was always trying to make the other actors laugh while they were trying to have their pictures taken. Soon it became a competition between the actors to see who could get who to laugh. It kept the atmosphere light and enjoyable.

The scene we photographed is set in 1958 and centers around Daisy and Hoke getting ready for their trip to Mobile. Boolie shows up to see them off. The actor's images will be combined with photos of a vintage Cadillac that we shot last summer. As it turned out, once the pics were finished, we went on to block that very same scene. The plan is to get the picture and a press release out by next week. That would mean we'd get our publicity pics out about 6 weeks before the show. Early enough to help generate interest from newspaper editors, I hope. I'll post some pics when they're ready.

Daisy Journal: Time for Publicity Photos

Things couldn't be going better with Driving Miss Daisy. We've had our read-through and a week of rehearsals and things are coming together very nicely. The cast is a collection of great people who just happend to be wonderfully talented actors: Eve Connolly as Daisy, Lynn Baskin as Hoke and Lonnie McCullough as Boolie. From day one I could see a chemistry beginning to form. Rehearsals are a lot of fun because all three actors share a common skill-- they listen to their fellow actors. It's amazing how great an impact that trait has on the quality of the acting.

Next week we've scheduled a publicity photo shoot. My brother John, one of Daisy's Producers, will take the pictures. He's already taken pictures of a classic Cadellac and pictures of the house at Sayen Gardens. The shoot was arranged with the help of Jeff Cantor, our Master Builder, who just happens to be a member of an antique car club. After shooting the actors in front of a green screen, John will marry the actors' images with the images of the car and it will look like he did the shoot on location with the car in the middle of the summer. Even as snow powders the landscape outside my window. Pretty neat, huh.

Contributing to the photo shoot will be Erin Penney, the production's make-up specialist, and Diana Gilman Maurer, the production's stage manager, costumer and one of its producers. Over the next week they'll pull together the period costumes, wigs and make-up for the shoot, which is set in 1958. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Turning Away Good Actors

Turning away good actors. It's the most difficult part of the audition process. You lure them out on audition day with the hope of a juicey part in your next show -- maybe even a part they've been longing to play. They prepare a monologue, or a song, or both. Maybe they put the effort into updating their theatre resume. They take the time to arrange their schedule, maybe even their family's schedule, in order to get themselves to the audition appointment. Next they sit around waiting (the waiting is always murder), waiting for their turn to come. When it does, they are ushered into a classroom where a small handful of bleary-eyed people (the director, the musical director, the producer maybe), people waiting to judge their skills and fit for the available roles. Even then the guessing begins. What does it mean when the director asks me to do it again? Did I get it wrong? Did he not like me? The musical director let me go past 18 bars, to finish my song -- almost. Does that mean I was good? Why didn't they ask me more questions? This will go on long after the audition is over, often times until a call from the director with the offer of a role, or a polite rejection email comes. For some its agony. We as producers and directors put actors through this. Sometimes very good actors, sometimes very good actors who are our friends and who we are eager to work with. And yet in the end we don't cast them. Why? Why do we not cast obviously talented people in the show?

First let me say it's just as difficult to turn away a talented actor as it is for that actor to get the bad news that s/he won't be in the show. I know few people believe that, but it's true. Once the evaluation gets past the "are they talented enough to handle the role" step, and assuming there are no major conflicts, it really does come down to need, fit and vision. What are the specific needs of the production? Does the actor fit the role? Will they fulfill the director's vision for that character? What about the dynamic the director has in mind between the characters. I know this was especially hard for me during the casting of Driving Miss Daisy. I was pleasantly surprise by the number of actresses who auditoned for the part of Daisy. Around 12, I think. To be honest, I thought I'd be lucky if 12 people showed up to audition for all three parts combined. Then it was especially difficult to choose when it became clear that of the 12, as many as four actresses coud have handled the role. Actresses I'm eager to work with again in the future, even if they don't get the Daisy role. I found the same challenge with the other two characters. My solution was to look for the best blend of actors for the three roles. The dynamic, as I've mentioned. And early rehearsals have proven my choice the correct one. But in the process wonderful actors were left with out a role. It had nothing to do with their talents, or them as person's It all came down to what seems to work best when I put the pieces together.

As luck would have it, many of the best actors understand this. They take the disappointing news for what it is, a director choosing a direction, not rejecting them or their talent. Some actors even send kind notes. A nice way to say: "hey, I understand how the process works. Maybe my contribution will better suit the needs of your next show."

The Audition Hangover

The Rain on Daisy falls mainly in the hazy days of winter? Huh? Sorry, I'm so confused this morning. I'm suffering from a monumental audition hangover -- times two! This past weekend we auditioned actors for both Singin' in the Rain and Driving Miss Daisy at the same time. We had originally planned to hold separate auditions, but when Buzz Herman, our musical director, came up with an unexpected scheduling conflict on our Rain audition weekend, it became necessary to push the Rain auditions up and marry them with Daisy. (Why do I suddenly have bizarre visions of Gene Kelly doing a tango with Jessica Tandy?)

Audition weekend is always long and hard for the production team. Actors, singers and dancers march in one by one to strut their stuff. Some friends, some strangers, some who will be come new friends. But they keep coming. And we have to keep them all straight. After a while, your head starts to hurt, you get behind in your notes, and you begin to forget your own name. Luckily, we video tape every one's audition for later evaluation.

This weekend we sat through more than 15 hours of auditions in the communications building followed by a 6-hour casting meeting at my house. Trust me when I say it is both fun and brutal in equal measure. It also got pretty hairy on Saturday and Sunday. We were light in our audition sign ups going into the weekend. This was a result of a scheduling goof which resulted in Playful Theatre's production of Thoroughly Modern Millie (a tap dance heavy show) going up right around the same time as Rain, so we were competing for some of the same actors/skill sets. Playful held their Millie auditions the week before we did, so it cut into our pool of actors. On top of this, Pennington Player's My Favorite Year, which goes up around same time as Rain held early auditions to get a jump on the talent. With even more actors approaching burn out from doing the recent production of Beauty and the Beast, it was tough to get the best talent to sign up. That said, we got lucky. Much of the top talent in the area did show up -- eventually. Here's what happened.

As Saturday approached, actors started rescheduling their auditions. It's a phenomenon we call "jockeying". Our online scheduling system allows actors to pick and choose their own audition day and time on the schedule. As the audition day approaches, actors start to move their appointments to later in the day, or the next day. Some actors will reschedule their appointments several times. Sometimes it's just personal conflicts, but more often than not, it's actors trying to buy more time to work on their audition. So when the jockeying began, we found ourselves sitting around on Saturday for long stretches at a time waiting for the next appointment while the Sunday schedule suddenly got completely booked. This extreme had never happened before, but we were glad to have a full schedule on Sunday and braced for a long day.

And then it happened. On Sunday, we saw more people walk in then ever before. In fact, much of the Kelsey star power, people who often play lead roles started walking in off the street late in the day on Sunday. Actors started pulling other actors in to audition. Leading men and leading ladies walked in unexpectedly saying: "I've had a change of heart. Don't know if I can cut the dancing, but I'd like to be a part of the show if you can use me." Folks from other shows rehearsing down the hall wandered in and said: "I'm on a break, can I audition?" With only about an hour left in our day, the hallway was packed, two audition rooms were humming with actors doing their thing. It was standing room only, and then the bomb dropped. The band from Pierrot's production of Follies walked in with all their instruments. They were scheduled to rehearse in the same room we were using for the acting auditions (the band room). But they were almost an hour early. When I took a peek out of the audition room it looked like Alycia (who was managing the traffic flow) had them all crammed in with a shoe horn. Finally, at 6pm we moved to another room and gave up the band room to Follies, who's rehearsal started at 6:30pm. Rain and Daisy auditions continued for another hour before we saw the last actor, packed up and called it a day.

Like I said. Fun, but brutal.

More on the auditions and the casting meeting later.