Auditions are winding down now

We had our third regularly scheduled auditions yesterday (Tuesday) and had our biggest crowd so far, but we are still lacking a Hud. We did have several big wins though, including one guy who easily can play either Berger or Claude, and several others who are candidates for one of the lead roles, plus a number of very good women. Our fill-in pianist did a reasonably good job for someone who didn't have much experience with auditions, but I had to fill in for him on a few songs because he was having a hard time. That didn't make our actors feel very comfortable (you can see it in their eyes when they know the pianist is struggling).

Please, if any of you read this, understand that I have already made allowances for this, and will continue to do so. It would be my own dereliction of my responsibilities (not to mention pure folly in trying to get the best possible cast together) to hold you accountable for a pianist who is having a hard time. On the other hand, and this is often hard for a performer to understand, directors who have listened to many people sing can usually tell within a few notes, and certainly within a few measures whether a singer is an A, B or C. Yes, there may be some close situations, and in those cases, I will give the performer the benefit of the doubt, but last night, even though there were a few people who I knew were upset because they felt they might not have gotten to demonstrate their abilities, there were no really close calls. The people who fell short did so purely on their own abilities, not because of the pianist (even if they may think otherwise). That may be hard for some to take, but it is the truth.

We have told people we will announce callbacks on Monday, but in fact we may move that up to tomorrow evening or Friday morning. We may still see a few more actors at tomorrow night's extended audition but it won't be many, and we have already made most of our decisions about who we will call back from the first sets of auditions.

We now have 3 or 4 reasonable candidates for Claude, Berger, Woof and Margaret Meade (less than 10% of the male auditioners declined to consider a part "in drag" which totally suprised us!) We are, of course, still missing any reasonable candidates for Hud, sigh. We also have 3 or 4 choices for Sheila, Jeannie and Dionne, but only 1 female actor who we feel is even close for Crissy.

One other Crissy possibility is a wonderful Equity actress who approached us early in the week, but I am not sure we can afford it. I have wanted to work with this actress for the past 4 years but we just haven't been able to make it work. She auditioned for me in 2003 to perform in the West Coast premiere of Steel Pier, but it was in San Francisco and she had to decline which turned out to be a wise choice when our show had to be shut down 4 weeks before opening because our theater was "red-tagged" by the fire marshalls... but that is a WHOLE 'nother story!

In any case, I will look into it, but I expect that it is going to be difficult to work out. Equity is very insistent on maintaining their rules and as a result, because we are doing 7 shows a week, the cost is almost prohibitive.

So we will keep looking for the "black power hippy" and the "sweet yet not-so-innocent flower child" elsewhere, and hopefully at least one more Crissy and even just one Hud will find us (or us find them).

On a few other topics...

We had hoped a huge number of men would show up with long scraggly, ratty, matty hair. As might be expected in this day and age, it didn't happen. We had our share of mullets, buzz cuts, etc, but only one person even close to having true long-hair. So Barb is now on the quest of a wig consultant who can help us out with purchasing and using decent wigs for close-theater work (this isn't a show where the closest audience member is 100+ feet away, so having good wigs will be essential). Unfortunately, we obviously can't afford the $500+ natural human hair wigs that would look "real", but on the other hand, we don't want to use the $25 costume wigs either. There are a few options here and we need to get a head start on it, so off Barbara goes! Theatrical wiggery is truly an art form, and I expect we may have to pay more than a token to get the support, but it will be worth it.

Our New York trip is around the corner... In an upcoming post, I will write about how the trip came to happen and what is planned. Some of it revolves around HAiR and is very exciting.

Please check it out!