Short and sweet today. Casting is the big issue this big week narrowing the field before having another audition call for MISS SAIGON. Getting everyone’s schedules in sync is a piece of work in itself. You would think I’ve never done this before. Casting. The most difficult part of the cycle. The cycle of production, from start to finish, is similar to the cycle of life. The selection of talent who will bring life to the page. The lives gathered. The energy. Breaking ground. Building. The collaboration, unified team work, that creates the living , breathing organism that is live theatre. This always mystifies me. I get stumped every occasion. As if I’ve never done it before. How did I do it that last time? I don’t know. Maturing in this, I know this much: every offering from every actor becomes part of the process. By showing up and auditioning you are in the show. You become part of the psyche of it. Your actions contribute to the realization ultimately to the outcome of the work. The interpretation, the level of skill, the intention you offer, how you discriminate, choose action. Representing this tragic love story during the fall of Saigon is daunting. Rife with issues social, political, sexual, racial…human. To represent authentically the atrocity, panic, and chaos the Vietnamese people struggled with then and to this day…how do we as artists do this responsibly? I simply have to believe. It’s faith. And hope. The right actor is going to walk in and bring it and sing the living daylights out of it. And the performance will be alive in the work before an audience. Thriving from the give and take from the stage to the audience and back again, it’s life, and the show’s energy, is born aloft. It is communion. Alive with us. Then eventually, four weeks later, the cycle ends. Physically ending. Psychically eternal. Like a soul. Whoa. So much for short and sweet.
RENT auditions will be announced soon!
Thank you for being here!
-Jim