The generator died during the second act
A Lagos stage manager tells Folake about the night the generator failed mid-performance, how the cast finished the play by torchlight, and what she now packs for every show.
Casting a play when nobody can take six weeks off
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Show notes
Casting a play when nobody can take six weeks off
Most theatre outside the big houses is made by people with day jobs. Folake and a director who runs a fringe company in London talk about casting and rehearsing when nobody can give you six weeks, and how to make that a strength.
- Auditions on a Sunday, and what you can and cannot learn in ten minutes
- Rehearsing three evenings a week for two months
- Letting go of the brilliant actor who cannot commit
- Understudies in a company of seven
- The production that cast a bus driver as Lear
The audition sides Folake uses are on the show page for anyone running their own casting.
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to Half Hour Call, I am Folake Adeyemi-Oni. This week we are casting, and not in the way the big houses do it, with agents and six week rehearsal blocks. We are casting the way most of us actually do, with people who have jobs, children and a bus to catch. My guest runs a fringe company in London that rehearses three evenings a week in a church hall, and together we have cast a great many plays with almost no money and no daytime hours. We talk about what you can really learn in a ten minute audition, when to let a brilliant actor go because they cannot commit, how understudies work in a company of seven, and the production where a bus driver gave the best Lear either of us has seen. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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