A Curious Series of Small Murders: Auditions and First Read Through

I was so excited for the auditions nights for a few reasons, obviously I was excited to see who was going to be bringing all these plays to life, but I was also interested in seeing the process of auditions from the casting perspective before I audition as an actor. Watching all the actors audition was super fun and interesting. Seeing all the interesting choices the actors made for their characters was awesome. I think my favorite choice I saw an actor make was while Josh Gasaway was reading for Doctor Ford from my play, and he decided to play the character while standing on his knees. I was struggling so hard to not laugh so loud I would distract the actors, but it was really hard. He had read the script ahead of time so he knew that Ford was supposed to be a "dwarf" and he is rather tall, so he made a choice, and while I don't think it would have worked for the show since it's played rather serious with a ridiculous premise, I appreciated the laugh it got out of me.

After auditions the casting process was next. My director Sarah and I were both on the same page about which actors we wanted and had second and third choices ready if needed. We sat down with all the other writers and directors and named who we wanted for our first choices for our plays, and our cast had no conflicts with any others. It was smooth sailing for us while all the other directors negotiated to make casts work.

With casting finished it was time to start organizing the cast, this play has a cast of two which makes it much easier to schedule rehearsals compared to a cast of four or five. In addition our actors have very open schedules as well. We created a group chat including the cast, director, and myself and scheduled our first read through of the script. The read through went well, Sarah got ideas for staging, and we discussed some minor line edits to make some of the dialogue flow better and make more sense. Next we go into real rehearsals and blocking, and I remain excited for not just my show, but all the awesome plays in the festival.