Casting
Posted by Tina Landau on 1/18/2007It’s been two months since my trip to Amsterdam. So much has happened on the show: we have cast it, and the design has radically shifted (along with my overall approach to the material. I’ll write about this in the next blog.)
As I’ve been home and moved on with other projects, Anne has stayed with me. Haunted me, somewhat – and in the best possible way. Not the play so much, but her. Her words – and the spirit expressed through her words. I see her face, from the photographs, often, as I’m just sitting around or my mind wanders for an instant.
When we did auditions for the production in Chicago, I kept her photo out on the table while we were looking at potential Annes, and did the same with the other “characters” as folk came in to audition for those roles. Not because I was in any way trying to cast people who literally look just like them – but because I believe there’s some way in which I want their spirits evoked, and also hope their spirits look down on us, bless us. Whoever we cast does not need to replicate their historical predecessor as much as convey their essence somehow. This of course has to be a purely subjective assessment on my part.
It was great to be in auditions and hear the text spoken aloud for the first time (other than in productions I’ve seen.) Erica Daniels, the casting director at Steppenwolf, did a superlative job of bringing in viable candidates, especially when it came to the “young people” – Anne, Margot, and Peter. I don’t know how many people she saw for the roles, but I know it was in the hundreds. I know she looked everywhere in this city, contacting high schools, dramatic groups, etc. as well as holding “open auditions,” in which anyone who heard about it could come in and give it a go. I saw dozens of young people for each of those roles, and it was very inspiring. As were all the auditions.
I realized during our days of seeing people how important it is to approach this text in a very specific and grounded fashion. When people acted the scenes with generality, or with a sense of melodrama, they became impossible to hear or feel. The approach that tended to work best was more dry and less emotive. More natural, and less theatrical. Nothing sentimental. No indulgence. I need to make sure in how we work on the text that we approach the language without preciousness or contrivance. Specificity works. Real behavior works. Idiosyncrasies work. I want to roughen up our approach to the text, let there be overlapping dialogue, sections that rush by and then long stretches of silence – so it has a more messy quality, the way life does, rather than a “neat” one the way plays sometimes do. This was one thing I learned from hearing the scenes in auditions. It’s one of the many reasons I appreciate auditions: I start to learn the play.
I’m thrilled with our cast. I’m thrilled to have found an “Anne” that seems so right to me. I was scared about finding the right person for this task. Like it or not, wish or not, I do know that a large part of how this production operates will be based on our Anne – how she is put forth, portrayed, inhabited. She is the center for me. And I have many rigorous requirements for this role, ranging from age, to acting chops, to ethnicity – just not an easy slot to fill. Would there be someone from Chicago or would we have to look out of town? Would she be the right age in terms of being able to credibly inhabit that awkward, mysterious age between 13 and 15? If she had the innocence and natural radiance, would she have the depth and darkness too? If she was the right age, would she be able to get out of school to do the show? I was worried about all of it. And I’m so grateful Clare Elizabeth Saxe walked in the door. She is our Anne – and wonder of wonders, I feel that she completely fits the bill.
Casting becomes complex for me the more I have to consider not only the individual before me but their relationship to the whole ensemble. This came up a lot for me on this particular process as the cast is, ultimately, a single entity, a group, a family of sorts. I constantly wondered not only if the actors were strong enough in their own right, but if they looked enough like the “family” members we had already cast, if they were enough of a foil to the character they’re meant to contrast, if they were too short or tall or old or young for their main scene partner, if they exhibited the right, believable ethnic quality or sense of time period and place in their very being…? I’ve never been quite so aware of casting people for a variety of reasons, only one of which was how well they acted the scenes in their auditions. I suppose, above all, I was looking for credibility - people who, together, transported me fully into the reality of the story. This meant not only that they needed to bear enough resemblance to their historical counter-parts, but also that they needed to approach the work with a certain high level of truth, simplicity, and connection.
I think our cast does all of this. They are: ensemble members Robert Breuler, Francis Guinan, Mariann Mayberry, Yasen Peyankov and Alan Wilder, as well as Kirk Anderson, Jason Bradley, Mark Buenning, Carolyn Faye Kramer, Christopher McLinden, Claire Elizabeth Saxe, Kathy Scambiatterra and Gail Shapiro.