Teacher, director and playwright Craig Sodaro has written over 100 published plays, including many that he wrote for schools and theatrical groups with which he worked. He also has great experience as a director, as you’ll be able to tell from his very helpful advice below.
Careful Casting Leads to a Great Production
by Craig Sodaro
You’ve read a slew of plays and picked the one you know your audience will like. You’ve set a date. You’ve publicized auditions. Excited, eager young actors have assembled to try out for parts. Now what?
After directing dozens and dozens of successful middle school and high school plays and musicals, I’ve learned that careful casting can lead to a great production. On the other hand, weak or careless casting can turn even the most lavishly-mounted, tried-and-true play into a dud.
Over the years, I’ve developed two different techniques to audition students, depending on how much time and how many actors I have to audition.
More often than not, I have limited time and quite a few young actors to audition, so from a practical standpoint, I have to work with the students in groups. I break the kids into groups of five to seven boys, five to seven girls. I ask each group to go onstage and have each actor in turn tell me his or her name, grade and one other fact, such as a favorite movie or favorite animal. As each actor gives me the information, I write his or her name on my audition sheet.
I then work with the group on reading from the play we’ll be producing, using three or four lines for girls and three or four lines for boys that I’ve pre-selected. I choose lines from different characters which reveal a lot of personality and require different emotions. So, after the group onstage has introduced themselves, I say a specific line as I think the character should, then ask each actor to say the line as I have. I score him or her on a number of criteria (which I discuss below). For each standard, the student earns a score from one to five, five being the juvenile equivalent of Meryl Streep or Daniel Day Lewis.
Finally, I ask each group to complete a basic pantomime activity for one minute, during which time I record their ability to move onstage, again on a scale of one to five in another column on the audition sheet. By the end of this process, I have a fairly objective indicator of who would be right for what parts by looking at the overall scores and considering other factors, such as physical appearance.
The second audition technique works well when I have more time and/or fewer actors. I give each actor a copy of several scenes from the play. I describe the characters in the scenes and summarize the play. I then give them time to read through the scenes with a partner or in small groups. Usually this extends to a second meeting, so the students have time to practice at home as well as at the school or theater.
When we met the second time, I ask different kids to read the scenes against different partners, testing the kids in various roles. The actors always read at least two if not three different parts. I tell them they are not trying out for specific parts; rather, I just want to see their range and how they handle the lines. I also ask them to individually prepare a pantomime, often selected randomly from suggestions on slips of papers placed in a hat or basket to be drawn out by the student.
Regardless of which process I use, I always look for the same things in determining the young actors’ abilities. In addition to the pantomime, my audition sheet has these categories going across the top, each garnering a score of one to five.
- Volume. I always sit towards the back of the theater or classroom. If I have no trouble hearing the performer, he or she scores a five. In a student production, it’s very important that the kids are loud enough so Grandma can hear what’s going on. Those who are loud carry the play; those who aren’t loud naturally can take smaller roles and we’ll work on volume.
- Clarity. If I can understand the words in addition to hearing them, the student scores a five. I pay particular attention to the end of sentences when most people have a tendency to drop their voices and thus their final words are lost.
- Expression. Kids who imbue their reading with expression, which is an indication of emotional content, score a five. This ability is the beginning of acting, and it is always a pleasure to hear a young actor read lines with passion. Another thing this tells me — either they have practiced the lines a lot, which shows a lot of commitment, or they are naturally talented, which is an even bigger "Wow!"
- Ability to Take Direction. I tend to put a red flag by those who only score ones or twos. These are kids who are unprepared or didn’t do what I asked them to do. Fortunately, they are few and far between, but it is good to get clued in who these students are. If I’m giving everyone a part, I can give these students basic enough parts that if they miss a cue or forget a prop, it won’t cause much damage.
- Movement. If the student is relatively uninhibited with his or her pantomime and I can pick up on what action they are completing during their performance, they get a five. If actions are limited to, say, just basic finger or hand movements with no expression on the young actor’s face, the score drops.
After the columns, I leave a space in which I note roles in the play that might work for the student. This is based not only on their scores, but their physical appearance as well. Usually during the auditions, certain kids jump out at me as a particular character, and that is the surest sign that these students fit the roles.
Let me conclude with a couple of last bits of very important advice. First, notice there’s no cold reading involved in either of these audition processes. This is because reading doesn’t have anything to do with being a good actor. Of course actors must read, but when you’re working with students, some of whom struggle with reading, I learned early on I shouldn’t put much weight on how jauntily a kid could cold read a script. Some of the best student actors I've worked with struggled with reading the script the first time, but they learned their lines (and improved their reading along the way) and ended up giving great performances. This includes students who receive special services — they deserve a chance to shine, too!
The second bit of advice before casting major parts is to check with the attendance office or with the young actor’s parents about how often he or she is absent. A lead who is chronically absent can drag down a production like nothing else. You need kids who are at rehearsals, no matter what. So if a student has a history of absences, a smaller part that can be covered in rehearsals or in performance by someone else is probably the best fit, even if he or she is a strong actor.
When you’re the director and you’re deciding who will play what parts, it’s best to let all the kids know right from the start that they all begin on equal footing. Nobody has an inside track on a particular part, not even the star of the last show you directed. Pre-casting a show — even in your head — can cause you to miss the opportunity to allow somebody new a chance to shine and take center stage.
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