Nobody Sucks... Except That Guy

Last week, Don Hall, Chicago-based actor, director, theatre-observer, and activist (and well-known enough in the theatrical blogosphere that I trust someone will correct me if I left anything out) has been posting a series on the audition process on his blog An Angry White Guy in Chicago. Having recently been in the position of casting actors for Total War, and like Hall, not being "institutionalized (meaning I didn't go to college to learn how to do this work)" I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what Hall and some of his other readers had to say:

2. Take some time and find out what the director is looking for - I'm happier than shit to tell you what we're up to and what you can do to get "the edge."

3. [...] I know within about fifteen seconds whether or not I can use you in my show - a good director knows in advance what he's looking for to some degree - and the only reason I let you get through that 2-minute monologue that somehow manages to be five minutes long is because you came all this way, there's no reason to be unnecessarily rude.

The bottom line is:

This means if you don't get called back, it isn't because you suck.

So if you did audition for the reading of Total War and didn't get the part: that's right: you didn't suck; you just weren't right for the role; you might have been right for a completely different role. In fact, since this was a staged reading, and I conducted my audtions in an informal, unorthodox manner, in a neighborhood coffeehouse (I simply didn't have the budget to rent out a space for auditions, though to be fair, I interviewed for my teaching gig with OpenAir Circus in the very same coffeehouse, and the informality seemed to encourage actors to volunteer their personal interest in the project) I might have liked you personally, even if I decided not to cast you.

* * *

As with every rule of social interaction (such as theatre-making) there is always a statistical outlier: in this case, it was someone who, despite having some talent, proceded to so alienate me during the audition that I would not even consider adjusting my sought-for preferences to accomodate his strengths. It all began when I received the following (yes, multiple) emails (Note that the name has been withheld for obvious reasons):

My voice has been described as deep, resonant, beautiful, and hilarious. I have been practicing for five years now and am able to express a wide range of personalities.

[...]

I feel that I would be perfect for the role of Duane McCormack. [...M]y writing has recieved significant praise from my honors professors so the role will come quite naturally to me.

Duane McCormack is a fictitious character, so the actor isn't actually expected to do any writing associated with the play. So while I appreciate that an actor might want to draw upon some aspect of their own life in order to relate to a character or to the themes of the play, this struck me as odd. Nonetheless, I sent a .pdf of the script along with a list of pages where Duane appears, concluding that this would be sufficient for the actor to judge for himself if the character is right for him and if so, provide hints as to how to approach the role.

So, in between meeting other actors at my table (which I rent by ordering espresso and bread pudding) our friend whose "voice has been described as deep, resonant, beautiful, and hilarious" shows up for his audition. His voice is indeed resonant and he has movie-star looks. Then he explains his interpretation into the character:

"Duane is a journalist; he's a truth-seeker."

This struck me as an odd misreading, so I suggested that "He is a student journalist but he's more defined by the attempt to keep his head above water while the comrades to which he's tethered are sinking than by any quest for truth."

The actor ignored my suggestion and read it his way. Not having a lot of actors auditioning for the role, I tried to consider if his interpretation added something I had not seen before (which had already occurred during the first staged reading.)

None of this would have been worth commenting upon until he started exhibiting the oddest behaviors. While I was flipping through the pages of my script to find the next bit of dialogue I wanted to hear him read, he put on his sunglasses, presented his profile and asked me if I saw his resemblance to Tom Cruise and Ashton Kutcher.

As I was conducting this audition in the oddest of places we were interupted when a young woman who had been a friend of a former roommate of mine, dropped by to say hello and asked about my cat. After the brief exchange of pleasantries and my explanation that I was conducting auditions, there was no exchange of email addresses, phone numbers, no words or gestures implying a hoped for future communication, which apparently the the actor missed, he slyly smiled and purred:

"A possible interest?"

He then launched into what must have been a rehearsed speech about how he was going to make my play great because he was going places, which, leaving aside the pathological narcissism, was simply insulting to the talents of the actors who had already volunteered to work on this project.

So, leaving aside his unsuitability for the role, I simply did not want to put my actors in a position of having to work with this guy.

So I sent the standard, diplomatic response:

It was a pleasure meeting you, but alas, I can't offer you the role of Duane. Thank you very much for taking the time to read with me.
Best,
Ian

To which he responded unexpectedly:

Hi Ian, (This is good, just read it)
Too bad, your production will suffer as a result of this unfathomably ignorant decision. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Can you see that put to rhythm? I can, because I much more gifted than you will ever be in your life. Again, I offer my condolences to your woefully inadequate conclusion.
Yours Truly,
The Great And Noble [Name withheld]

In the end, I found Matthew Zahnzinger, who besides nailing the role, had the added bonus of already being in rehearsal with Mikey DiLoreto on the Factory Theatre's production of Kid Simple, and that's always a nice coincidence.

Total War: Post-Reading Analysis

Cast from left to right: Lou Fuoco, Trudi Goodman, Tom Sprague, Anika Colvin-Hannibal, Savanah Shaughnessy, Daniel Schneider, Kendall Stewart, Mikey DiLoreto), Matthew Zahnzinger (sadly barely visible), and Kate Heffernan. Once again, I forget to take a lot of photographs.

And now for the post-reading analysis.

The event received blurbs from Art Hennessey's Mirror up to Nature as well as from Thomas Garvey's Hub Review. Garvey was good enough to point out that:

The topic is a fascinating one - the legacy of Catholic anti-Semitism on a very Boston-College-like campus that is, of course, not, not Boston College.

Garvey is correct: The student newspaper in the play does not even have the same name as any Boston College student publication and due to my utter lack of imagination, I did not even bother to name the school in the play. Though many theatre artists have an antagonistic relationship with critics, as we see, critics fulfill an important function clarifying such misunderstandings that the audience might have. The notion that a graduate of Boston College might write a play set at Boston College, while an easily made error, is clearly ludicrous when examined with a critical eye.

But on to the evening's main event:

Unlike last time, there was not an inarticulate Hamas supporter accosting actors and audience members as they approached (a friend reports that Rolde has also been absent from his usual activities loudly denying war-crimes in Darfur.)

However, we were not without minor crises of a more theatrical nature. John M. Costa was called away at last moment; and thankfully, though it amounted to unconventional casting, Trudi Goodman was on hand. Trudi was already reading the small role of the unnamed campus police officer, but was up for the role of Richard Doncaster, Dean of Students. The the result was plenty of unintentional comedy as actors either did or did not improvise around the changed gender of the actor! Trudi was great, by the way, and I really need to think about writing roles for her to play if I'm going to continue with this playwright thing.

As the audience filled in, and we waited for a couple of late arriving actors, I noticed a far larger turn out than the last reading. In fact, every seat in the room was filled and I even gave up my seat and spent most of the time perched on a coffee table in the back of the room.

I scribbled notes and corrections in the back as I read along with the actors. Though the play was only two pages shorter than the previous draft, the rewrites had made for a faster pace ("crisper" was the adjective used by some of the returning actors.)

I'm definitely much happier with this version, though I still feel that the pace seemed to slow down right in the middle-- not as much as with the previous draft-- but it's something I noticed. One audience member noted that including intermission, the run-time was two hours and twenty minutes and a that's too long in my mind for there to be a slow moment. The audience seemed divided as to whether the play was just a little too long or just the right length.

Another observation: I really need to put a pronunciation guide in the play. There are French, German, Hebrew, Latin, Polish, and Yiddish words and place names scattered throughout the script.

Most of the audience comments were positive though there were a few interesting questions:

One audience member wondered why at a Catholic school, why one of the key characters be so clearly identified as a lapsed-Protestant (perhaps not so unusual in the United States, but the speaker had spent some years living in Ireland) yet she also gave me kudos for properly using the term "deconstruction."

Another felt I should expand on my allusions to a certain Jewish prophet but also thought I should run the play by a Catholic theologian to make sure I am accurately representing doctrine. (Probably good advice, even though I did research the theology pretty carefully and did get an "A" in my Thomas Aquinas class in grad school.)

One of my young commedia students asked if I plan to write a sequel. No plans for writing a sequel and no intention of revisiting the setting, but there are certain themes and even a character or two I might want to revisit.

One audience member took such a dislike to Donald (played by Mikey DiLoreto) and attempted the argument that Donald was a supernumerary character. Mikey's job is safe though if for no other reason than some of the biggest laughs came from Donald's vulgar mouth, though the look on Mikey's face was priceless (sadly, I was taking notes at the time and so had pocketed my camera.)

Kate Heffernan (who played Edith) made this playwright very happy when she noted the revelation of the lack of a conspiracy which had been foreshadowed from the very first act-- despite the fact that Edith isn't in any of the scenes where this motif is brought up.

There were a number of other interesting side conversations between the actors and audience about the themes that the play explored but not necessarily about the the writing itself-- but interesting enough for me to ponder as as I consider rewrites.

Afterwards, people grabbed a few more bites of cheese and chocolate and cleared out. I was surprised that everyone shied away from the hummus.

Nika and I met several days later to go over the reading (it's useful to have the stage manager's opinions since she was more proximate to the actors during the reading than I) and we were able to unravel what differences were the result of a rewrites since the previous reading and which differences were the result of a change of certain cast members. We agreed that the cutting away of extraneous material brought certain characters into sharper focus

I still need to tighten Act III.

Cast for October 11th Staged Reading of "Total War"

Sunday, October 11th at 8pm at Outpost 186

186 1/2 Hampshire Street, Inman Square, Cambridge MA

A staged reading of Total War, a play by Ian Thal

Cast:

Jonah Gringer: Dan Schneider

Andrea Kunst: Savanah Shaughnessy

Edith Havilland: Kate Heffernan

Erica Weiss: Kendall Stewart

Father Aldobrandini: Lou Fuoco

Father John Bullock: Tom Sprague

Richard Doncaster: John M. Costa

Duane McCormack: Matthew Zahnzinger

Donald Crincoli: Mikey DiLoreto

Campus Police Officer: Trudi Goodman

Stage Manager: Anika M. Colvin-Hannibal

N.B. As of September 30, Matthew Zahnzinger has been cast as Duane McCormack.

After the Staged Reading: Rewriting "Total War"

A couple of weeks ago, I completed the latest set of rewrites to Total War. It was an intense bit of work that began with a trimming of both the longer passages and more philosophically dense passages and an extension of the more character driven drama, trying to expand upon some of the ironies that Thomas Garvey noted during the talk-back session at the end of the April 26th staged reading.

Another important structural element was seeing that each of the five acts had their own themes, and that an epistemological question dealt with in the first act did not need to be reintroduced in the fourth act except in the most oblique manner.

Trudi Goodman, who had also been in the audience, had some interesting notes about the derivation of the Yiddish slur, "shiksa" that also managed to find its way into the rewrite.

Mikey DiLoreto's reading of the character of Donald was somewhat unexpected and caused me to rethink the character to a point where I recited the mantra of "Donald is the type of guy who..." whenever I worked on a scene in which he appeared.

The final stage of the rewrite was helped along by the sudden arrival of summer weather in the first week of July, during which I could spend some time on my back porch along with my modest garden of basil and mint plants with a copy of the script, a pen, and a large mug of coffee, proofreading, and cutting unnecessary repetitions. Every twenty or thirty pages or so, I would get out of the sun, and type up those changes.

The result is a draft with a stronger ending (oddly enough, revolving around the same three characters), more character-based drama, and a shorter page count.

The next staged reading is booked for the evening of October 11, once again at Outpost 186, but I'm going to wait a few weeks before I start putting a cast together. Afterwards, I will see what else I need to change.

Cast for Staged Reading of "Total War"

In the process of learning that self-producing a staged reading is harder work than I expected, I have assembled a cast of players to help me with the April 26th reading of Total War at Outpost 186:

Duane McCormack: Anthony DiBartolomeo

N.B.: Stuart G. Levy played the part of Duane on April 26th.

Edith Havilland: Kate Heffernan

Donald Crincoli: Mikey DiLoreto

Jonah Gringer: Andrew Hicks

Andrea Kunst: Krystle Spoon

Father Aldobrandini: Lou Fuoco

Erica Weiss: Lesley Anne Moreau

Father John Bullock: Tom Sprague

Richard Doncaster: John M. Costa

Campus Police Officer: Dale Appel

Stage Directions: Anika M. Colvin-Hannibal