The Art of Casting
The PLAY guide to the art of casting.
There can be few words more terrifying — or exciting — to an actor than ‘audition’. And with good reason: auditions mean deciding whether you’re going to be off book (and then learning the lines), stressing about what to wear, arguing with your flatmate about whether the District line will get you there in time and then, of course, at the end of it all, turning up and pretending to be someone else, in a room of people who are all just
being themselves.
Yet Anne McNulty, previously Casting Director at the Donmar Warehouse and now freelance, who is Career Consultant at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, reckons we should all calm down.
“It’s no more than a job interview, really,” she says, “A mix of good preparation, arriving on time, dressing appropriately, demonstrating your training and skills, and seeing it as an opportunity to meet people, even if you don’t get that particular role.”
Of course it is — so, in that spirit, we present the PLAY guide to the art of casting.
1. Preparation
Actor Nikesh Patel (Acting 2010) says he spent hours in the British Library reading up on Indian history and society before his first audition for the role of Parsi civil servant Aafrin Dalal in the TV series, Indian Summers. He says that doing homework has always been an important part of the audition process for him, and he remembers going to the audition “dressed as I vaguely thought an Indian clerk in the 1930s might. I had some tweedy grey trousers and a waistcoat”. Was the get-up useful? — “I don’t know if it helped them, but it helped me”, he says.
But despite being well prepared, Patel was worried he wouldn’t get the job — because he had a beard. “I was in a play at the Royal Court at the time and needed a bushy beard for the part,” he explains. “I was worried they wouldn’t see beyond the beard, but, luckily, they liked me and called me back — asking me to come clean-shaven this time.” The rest is history: Patel landed the role, which he says proved to be career-making.
Sometimes, though, you can be too prepared. Will Hollinshead, agent at Independent Talent, who represents a number of Guildhall School alumni, remembers taking a call from a confused producer about an actor who had turned up to audition for a part as a 19th-century beggar woman. “The producer said, ‘There is a woman downstairs who we think might be your client, but she is refusing to talk to the receptionist. She’s dressed in rags and we can’t understand her.’ I cleared up the confusion — but sadly they ended up casting someone else.”
2. Gaining experience
McNulty says that gaining as much auditioning experience before you get that dream casting is vital. At Guildhall, she sits in on sessions where students are preparing their showcase choices, both monologue and duologue, for a professional presentation to agents on a West End stage. Young practitioners, directors, writers and casting agents, also come in and audition students. “We all know new talent is the lifeblood of theatre, so everyone wins. And young directors who help young actors in auditioning are honing their own casting skills at the same time.”
Indeed, director Jonathan Munby, who recently worked with McNulty on the current production of King Lear with Sir Ian McKellen in the lead, finds that young actors coming from drama school “are wonderfully equipped to step into a rehearsal room and work as an ensemble. Though I always want the casting director alongside me, as another pair of eyes. And preferably a reader as well. Acting is all about dialogue, reaction and interaction, so I want to see what the actor can do with other people.”
3. Self-taping
In fact, meeting face to face, especially for a first audition, is becoming increasingly rare. Hollinshead believes that one of the reasons self-taping has become so prevalent is the sheer number of people involved in the decision-making process — especially when it comes to screen work.
“It used to be just the immediate creative team who made the decisions,” he says. “Nowadays, there are often executives, heads of TV channels or film studios, and financiers involved. The process is constantly evolving. When I first started working we would send out packs of hard-copy CVs to casting directors and fax a list of names. Advances in technology have had a major impact on the decision-making process, especially Skype, and the ability to self-tape from anywhere in the world.”
Patel says that taping also has advantages for actors. “Taping a scene can be liberating,” he says. “You are in the safety of your own home or studio, rather than directly in front of a group of people — and what you leave on tape is what the casting team watch. It can even give you a certain mystique
as there is only you to watch.”
At Guildhall School, acting students now attend self-taping seminars, often run by alumni (including Patel). Students are set a scene and asked to make a tape, which is assessed. The tapes are then discussed with the group. “We aim for constructive criticism about what works and what doesn’t,” Patel says.
“Much of it is technical: for example, finding a good eyeline. The eyes can convey so much information about what a person is thinking, and great screen actors are often able to speak volumes with a look. When self-taping, the actor should find a point of focus that is close to the camera but not straight at the lens.
4. Face to face
But despite the popularity of self-taping, Munby remains unconvinced. “Personally, I am never going to cast from a tape alone — theatre is about people in the same space, and you can’t get a sense of the actor, including what they are going to be like to work with, unless you are face to face,” he says.
Hollinshead agrees. “Ultimately nothing beats being in the room. In addition to showing what an actor can bring to the role creatively, it shows what people can be like to work with.”
Indeed, Munby says that this goes for both parties. “I’m open to what an actor might bring to the part, but the audition gives me a sense of whether they will take direction. I want to know this is someone I can collaborate with,” he says. “And while it can be difficult for young actors to realise, they are auditioning us as well. In the end, the only power an actor has is to say no.”
5. Rejection
Ah yes, rejection. No matter how good — or experienced — you are, at some point everyone experiences it. “I really feel for our actors,” says Hollinshead. “They put a lot of work into preparing for the occasion and then wait for a call that often doesn’t come. But you can’t let it get to you. It happens to everyone.”
Not only that, it keeps happening to everyone — no matter how successful or well-known. Indeed, Anne McNulty says that accepting rejection is a key part of being successful. “It’s not just young actors who get nervous, or even neurotic, before an audition or a workshop — old hands do too. Sometimes the first-timers handle it better than those with more experience,” she says. “But the actors who learn to shed their disappointment and frustration tend to be those who do best in the long run.”
6. Magic bullet
And, as McNulty says, it’s worth remembering that while there is no magic bullet that can guarantee a successful casting, magic does sometimes happen. “It is my job to make sure the actor is match-fit and walks into the audition in a calm state of mind, having put any previous disasters behind them. Then, it’s all about the hard work and preparation the actor has done,” she says. “But sometimes an actor walks in who, through their physical presence and personality, just makes the director see the role in another way — and with them in it.”
Jonathan Munby agrees. “Projects happen in all sorts of ways. In the case of King Lear, we knew that Sir Ian, close to his 80th year, wanted to reprise the role. But sometimes an actor can come in for audition and offer an interpretation that is so extraordinary, so unique and so thrilling that not only do I cast them, sometimes against my initial interpretation of the role, but they lead me to see the play in a different light,” he says.
“That happened to me when I was casting the part of Portia in a Chicago production of Julius Caesar. In came an actress who initially I wasn’t even going to see, because of her past work and because she was so physically different from my image of what I wanted. She transformed my vision of the part — and so of course she got it.”
This article first featured in the Autumn/Winter 2018 edition of the Guildhall magazine, PLAY, and was written by YBM for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
