The contest entries will be posted anon.
In the meantime, I am in Seattle, where a theater is holding auditions for a presentation of a musical of mine in two months. This is actually the first time I’ve sat through auditions for a piece of mine–if I’m involved I usually just call people and ask them to do it, and if I’m not involved I usually just show up near the end of rehearsals and act happy with the people they’ve cast, whether I am or not–and I spent all day yesterday being shocked.
The first thing that shocked me after a day of auditions was the discovery that, when directors and producers tell actors, “You were terrific, you’re just not right for this role,” they actually mean it. They’re not just blowing them off condescendingly. In addition to the many people who would be really good in the roles for which they were auditioning, we saw many more people I would cast in a heartbeat in other roles in other shows, but not this one, with terrific voices and/or winning stage presences and/or really great pecs. It was difficult for me to say we shouldn’t call back the people with that last quality, especially as I’m sure the theater could have located a sofa somewhere for a hastily improvised casting couch, but in the end my devotion to my show carried the day.
The second thing that shocked me was looking at the list of male candidates at the end of the day and realizing with a start that next to about half the names I had written the words “too gay.”
I feel I should report myself to GLAAD or something.
Though really, if you’re delivering a paean to a nineteen-year-old girl’s breasts beneath her ragged blouse, there’s only a certain amount of lisping an audience can accept before suspension of disbelief becomes impossible to maintain.
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