Christmas Carol auditions

[ceebeegee]

I've been at DeBaun the past couple of nights, busy with Christmas Carol auditions. There were many people who signed up for appointments and didn't bother to cancel which irritates me VERY MUCH. Extremely unprofessional, people. What was even weirder, our monitor came in last night toward the end and asked if we could see a couple of walk-ins who'd "been waiting for a couple of hours." Why the hell didn't you just send them in, in place of those who didn't show up? That seems common sense to me. Anyway, we had some terrific talent including some awesome men, and more kids than last year. Yay! I cast most of the show last night, although there's one person I still have to audition (she couldn't make it to the regular call, so we're setting up a special appointment--she's good, so I definitely want her to read). We won't start calling until Monday or Tuesday though. Bob (Reed, the producer) was impressed that I didn't need to have callbacks--when people came in, I listened to their monologue and sent them out with a side or two. Then last night I went through all the H/Rs and pretty much cast most of it. German efficiency. I'm gonna sit on my decisions for a few days though, just to be sure about it.

We had quite a few people who did classical monologues, which I loved--that's probably the best kind of monologue for this version of Christmas Carol, with all the rich language. One woman did Henry IV, Part II, another did Emilia from Othello, all three guys yesterday did Shakespeare (Claudio and the Friar from Much Ado and I can't remember what Mark Dunn did), plus some Chekov and Ibsen. Love it! Most of the singers were pretty decent.