In the last week we have had the auditions for ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ the production we are taking part in with the Honiton Community Theatre Company. This blog is an insight from the director of the production Alex Jackson into the casting process and the building blocks of the show.
Some might say that casting a show is the most important part of the directing process- after all, if your cast don’t deliver, it doesn’t matter how great your set looks, how fancy your lighting rig is or how well directed the show is, it will still be a flop! Now, this is only amateur theatre but audiences still want to go away from the show having had a good time and we pride ourselves on our audiences going away from a show and saying great things about every member of our cast on stage.
So the pressure was on for auditionees and the panel to put great performances across and make the right decisions for the performance moving forward. The quality of future auditions were incredibly high- just as we had experienced with past productions, the amount of talent (both junior and adult) from the local area is both promising and reassuring. The panel unanimously commented on the quality of auditions and we had a very hard decision to make when we stayed behind afterwards to draw up a cast list.
The panel was built of myself (the director), Trevor Patch (a director of The Honiton Players), Jan Guscott (Honiton Players committee member) and Jaime Crudge (our choreographer for many Pantomimes and plays). the team of four all brought different ideas about casting to the table and several different casts were put together before deciding on the one we wanted to use.
So now, the hard work continues as I edit the script and the rehearsal schedule to reflect our casting. Although not everyone will have got the part they auditioned for, it is rarely the case that we can cast everyone solely in this manner. Even in professional productions often performers are called back to audition for roles they hadn’t initially applied for.
Now that the casting is complete, we begin rehearsals and I for one am very excited about how the show will turn out. See you in July!