Auditioning kids may be the saddest
thing I've ever done. When considering who is to play Snow white or the Mirror,
it does not matter if they tried “really hard” or if they are adorable. If they can’t
project or won’t participate in the creature walk it won’t work out.
"Will we all get parts?” asked one little girl after a round
of monologues. “I’m afraid we don’t have enough parts for everybody” I said,
trying not to give anything away in my voice concerning the decision we had made about her. “Oh.”
You have to pay attention to many different things when
going through a call back process with kids. First, you have to ignore your own
self reasoning out why one kid isn’t as good as another. Nobody has ever tried to teach them better, or, they did try really hard. What if they really
need this?
Secondly, you must pay attention to
how you structure the little time you have because you don’t want to give away
your casting before the cast list goes out. For instance, you can’t keep
calling one person up to read as the evil queen , even if you’re doing the
scene for the purpose of finding the right boy to play the Mirror.
Another thing to consider is how
conversational you are with the kids, I know some of the kids from other
productions but I don’t want to seem like I’m favoring them, even if I am just
catching up because it won’t seem that way to the kids you don’t know, or their
parents who are watching like a hawk from the back of the theatre.
About kids “from other productions”, you have to use knowledge you've gained about the kids from past productions in
your decisions. We have a few kids who are returning after two or three shows
with STC. They may be really talented, as most of the kids are but they are
also rude, sassy, constantly upstaging, and bad at taking direction. Truly,
they did add something to the production but if they were hard to handle, was
it worth it?
These are the things Kiersten and I
had to consider as we tried to find a cast of 38 out of the 50 talented kids
that auditioned.
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