I had very specific things I needed when casting the Yellow Boat. I needed the actors to be flexible: they had to be able to portray a wide variety of emotions while still retaining a level of childishness throughout. I needed them to be emotionally strong as well as funny. And I needed a Benjamin.
Cole came into the audition process because I had mentioned casually during a drama therapy workshop led by Becca Greene Van Horne that I might need a child actor. I seriously debated with myself before auditions began about whether to use a child or to find myself a baby faced first year. I was concerned with having to deal with a rehearsal schedule that had to be fit around a child's needs, as well as the need for an actor who could perform the character's tragic arc. Becca emailed the mother of one of the kids in her improv classes, and Kissy Mathewson emailed me asking about the play and the auditions. When Cole walked into the audition room, I felt he was perfect. Then I heard his reading. He understood the character from the start, and for the first time I heard Benjamin's voice shining through that boy. I gave him a script at the end of his audition and told him he was in.
Another concern of mine was the issue of diversity. I believe it is important for casts to be culturally diverse, especially when performing for children. Kids need to have some sort of emotional connection with the actors onstage, whether they identify with their character based on their gender, their age, their character, or the way they look. I also thought it would be ludicrous to have a play about colors performed by an all white cast. Unfortunately, no actors of color showed up to auditions, as well as only two male bodied actors, one of whom had about as much energy onstage as a limp dishrag. I ended up asking my lighting designer, Matt Gonzalez, to audition. When he did, we realized that he was incredibly talented. He really was the only choice for Father, the most emotionally resonant and important male role in the play. We pleaded, let him take his pick of all the characters, and gave him a night to decide. When he said yes, I danced around the room.
The rest of the casting for the Yellow Boat was a matter of choosing the 5 best actors from the pool of 7 actors who showed up to auditions and had the necessary energy for the play. Cutting people is terrible. I always hate passing up a good actor, especially since everyone at the callbacks was lovely. But I think we mostly made the right choices.
The actor who we had originally cast to play Mother ended up dropping the play in December. It was a pretty difficult loss, because she was an emotional powerhouse, though I think in the end the role would have been too hard on her. I asked Becca Wefald, one of the two lovely people we had to cut who had stayed on as assistant movement director. She stepped in, a little hesitantly. All of a sudden the play had to adjust to a completely different interpretation of the mother's character. Since she started late, Becca had the most difficult position in the cast, also because her character had to experience something as devastating as the fatal disease of a child. She grew the most as an actor through the process, keeping a journal and, through hard work, creating a beautiful character and a really emotionally truthful performance.
The process for Jumping Mouse has been totally different. We asked the actors from Yellow Boat and straight up offered them roles. I gave the starring role of Jumping Mouse to Sassy Jensen, a lovely bright lively actor who played #3 (Joy) in the Yellow Boat. I also asked Mike Lion, who played the #2 (Coach) to play the Raccoon, though he was over committed and dropped out after the first read through. I watched Let the Body Speak, and asked the best actor I saw in that show, Archi Zietman, to play Little Girl Mouse and Frog.
I held auditions for the three roles we still needed to fill. One actor showed up. He didn't have the perfect energy and seemed to be doing it only to fulfill CEL credit. I cast him as Old Mouse, the smallest role.
I ended up asking one of my housemates to play Wolf, and then I asked this huge guy who sings bass in my Chorus class if he would play Buffalo. Then, when Mike dropped out, we asked Walker Staples, a lovely high energy guy we knew from some Theatre for Young Audiences classes to be our Raccoon.
And then we started having some trouble with our actor playing Old Mouse. He missed an important rehearsal and only told us he couldn't come ten minutes beforehand. Then, at the next rehearsal, he showed up late with none of his lines memorized, despite having the smallest part. He also did not seem to remember the blocking or to cheat out onstage. So we were faced with a conundrum: to ask him to leave the process and have Zach fill in, or to hope he got better.
He just did not have the energy we really needed for the role. He didn't have the spark, the vitality, the silliness. So Zach had a talk with him, and it turned out he was a microbiology student with no interest in theatre or kids, who had signed on for the CEL credit and felt too bad to leave the project even when it became clear that he didn't want to do it. Zach is playing Old Mouse now, and it's wonderful to see the right energy onstage. It has really clarified to me how incredibly important it is to have actors who are vibrant and alive in Children's Theatre, with enough energy to hold children's attention and hopefully make them laugh.
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