We have an Ensemble!

We have auditioned and cast an absolutely wonderful ensemble to be a part of our staged reading of "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation." I was thrilled, honored and humbled by the turn out to our auditions, and was even more pleased to find that the group of people we've assembled aren't just individually talented: they work together beautifully as a whole. An ensemble.

As a director, when I'm casting a show, much of what I look for is how well the group works together. This is why I tend to run my auditions a bit differently than most. Instead of spending two hours calling in individuals to read or perform a monologue, I like to involve everyone at the audition in a group exercise of some sort. At this audition, I asked the auditionees to take a scene from the script and create a "sound-scape." A sound-scape is the atmosphere, background or feel of a scene, created using just sound. The actors could use the words on the page, but they could also use vocal gestures (any sound created by the voice that isn't a word), their hands, objects, anything that was available to them in the room. The only objective was to "create the atmosphere of the Netherfield Ball."

This ensemble created an absolutely stunning sound-scape. They filled the room with the swish-swish of dresses, the anticipation for the evening, the laughter filling the room and that feeling of getting lost in a dream world. It was an amazing thing to have a group of people who had never seen this text before, who had never done this type of work before, come in and create a world out of a piece of text I wrote at a Starbucks over a year ago. And all this in just half an hour.

We start rehearsals March 21st, but I can hardly wait! Already the cast has been brainstorming and creating wonderful pieces about their characters and the show. 

If you are in the Southern Oregon area April 3rd and 4th, I can promise you, you are not going to want to miss this. 

RSVP to our Facebook Event for the Staged Reading here.