Casting . .

The IP season is about to start . .

10^th September 2011:

Today the theatre department met to organize the audition. It was a good meeting, in which we mainly focus on how to separate people (in four groups) based on what are our necessities. It seems like me, Laura, Sidingo and Abhinav will be operating in the same area and looking for actors who are ready to involve themselves and give us the emotional truth, but at the same time deal with delicate issues.

12^th September 2011: (auditions)

Overall, it went well. I was able to individuate several people I might be interested in casting:

®     Edward: Benjamin, Joe

®     Micheael: Niklas, Victor, Jordan

®     Jo: Samantha, Ela, Noah

®     Helen: Amanda

I was particularly impressed by Gabbi’s, Genevieve’s, Kristina’s and Tram-Ahn’s auditions.

Therefore, tomorrow for the call backs, I will be calling Benjamin, Victor, Joe, Niklas, Jordan, Samantha and Amanda. We didn’t really organize ourselves for the call backs, but hopefully each director will be able to have a 5 minute section with the actor in which they are interested on and by the end of the day, we should be casting.

I personally liked the casting method we adopted this year, although he got quite repetitive, it was more efficient in order to see the acting skills of each person and focus directly on singular people or interest (since the groups were between 3 to 9 people).

13^th of September 2011: (call back and casting)

Yeahhh.. I got all my first choices: Amanda, Samantha, Benjamin and Niklas. I fought hard in order to get them, although I was pretty generous with interchanging and substituting. Casting for me was easier than for others, since I had only four characters.

14^th of September 2011:

After a last editing to the script, and being afraid it would have been too short, I added a scene I wasn’t sure I was going to add. The scene is now going to be the 3^rd scene of the play (out of five), where one of Helen’s clients, Peter, rape Josephine, this being the trigger why Jo will leave home and go work for Michael and his dad. I always wanted to add this scene, but I was afraid it would have been too harsh which is something I really wanted to avoid (learning from Mini IP), but I finally figured out a way in which to recreate the scene without the act of raping being too harsh and unrealistic. So now, a new member of the cast is Robin Williams, starring Peter.

I also already talked with several people for the production crew – fundamental:

-          Light: Sahar

-          Stage manager: Hadi

-          Sound: Hulwa (Ramiro said no)

-          Backstage: no need (no scene change)