Final Casting, and La Damnation de Faust

Today is the day I finalize casting choices for The Red Umbrella, and I dutifully send them in to Dani Super and Roger Danforth. That sentence is a great deal more concise than my own process of final selection. The old cliche that different casting choices will dictate different plays has never felt more real, and it was a relief to me that I could rely on my old partner-in-crime Jason Williamson to help me make the decisions. An example of how differently the play could go - one Peter at the callback had the perfect look; another had perfect timing; another had unexpected depth. Of course we understand that the work we see in an audition is a small window into what an actor could develop over a period of time, but I was already anticipating a fast and furious 6-day rehearsal process and made the final choices according to who I thought had the same instinctive responses to the script in terms of timing of textual delivery, stakes of big moments of characters and a sense of both the vulnerability and the awkward comedy that masks it, a trademark of Jason's characterizations.

I then meet fellow Fellow Laura Savia at a Drama League board meeting in order to share our experiences in the program thus far, and to thank everyone on the board for making this incredible journey possible. Both of us stated without hyperbole that our lives are in the process of being changed right now, and we are both sincerely grateful for the board's efforts to keep the fellowship program going in this challenging time.

After a check-in with Roger, I meet up with DP alum and fellow Carnegie Mellon director Kate Pines to go see Robert Lepage's production of La Damnation de Faust at the Met. We're both nursing love affairs with the opera, and we were not disappointed. We had loved Lepage's Lipsynch (I saw it three times during it's run at the Sydney Festival this past January, and Kate caught it recently at BAM), and were thrilled to be taken on another epic journey at the Met.


Above, Kate Pines and I at the newly unveiled fountain in Lincoln Plaza, after seeing La Damnation de Faust.

Whew! A week stuffed full of activity. Stay tuned for the official casting announcement for The Red Umbrella, and updates from a trip I am making to London!

(posted by Ed)