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On Theater and the Question to Ask in Auditions

I was going to save this interview for next week, but I loved what this person had to say so much I decided to push it up and get it out sooner.

Theater advice isn't hard to find, but when you hear something that really strikes a chord with you--something you think might actually create real change--usually you don't want to wait to tell everybody about it.

This is the interview:

ME:  As soon as you told me about this, I said--We have to do an interview about it.

THEM:  I was wondering when you were going to ask me to do one of these.

ME:  Well, I wasn't sure what to ask you about--

THEM:  I've been directing professional shows for fifteen--

ME:  I know, I know.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Now you're making me read off my resume.

ME:  The point is--you made it.  You're here.

THEM:  I'm here.  All because you like the way I cast.

ME:  I like the way you cast, but I didn't know there was a reason behind why I liked it.

THEM:  So you think it's just the question?  You don't think--

ME:  Don't you think that?

THEM:  I--

ME:  Okay, wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.  We just got right to it.

THEM:  Whose fault was that?  It's your interview.

ME:  So you've been a director for a long time.

THEM:  Long, long time.

ME:  We're not going to say what you've worked on specifically, but...big stuff.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  I've done okay.

ME:  And you're sort of respected for--I remember your shows and your casts always being very diverse before diversity was this issue that was trending--

THEM:  I think--Can I mention that I'm Cuban?

ME:  You can mention whatever you want.

THEM:  But anonymous right?

ME:  Well there are lots of Cubans.

THEM:  There are, that's true.  I only bring it up because I don't think--I wanted the projects I worked on to feature people who looked like me and who looked like the people I knew back home.

ME:  And where is home for you?

THEM:  I'm a Miami boy.

ME:  Okay.  But I never knew that you have this question you ask at every audition.

THEM:  I don't--Do you want me to explain the process of--

ME:  Yes, please.

THEM:  When we're in the final stages of casting, the people who work with me--be it the producers or the casting directors, because I've done some film stuff as well--they know that I like to ask this question when we get down to putting together what's going to end up being the cast.

ME:  And does that go for the leads or--

THEM:  Everyone in the cast.

ME:  Everyone.  Okay.  So what's the question?

THEM:  I ask them what being in the project would mean to them.

ME:  Why it would be meaningful or what it would mean--

THEM:  Some variation of that.  I don't have it written down on an index card, but I've always asked it.  It's the last part--for me--it's the last part of the process before I make my decisions.  Other people get to weigh in, but that's the last thing I want to hear from somebody who's auditioning.

ME:  Why is that?

THEM:  Because to me, it's the most important question.  Why do you want to do this?  These projects--a lot of the projects I work on--they're very--when you're working on things that are of a--of a scale--you really have to love it.  You can't just be there because you're looking to collect a check--

ME:  But what about people who say--I'm going to play devil's advocate--what about people who say, 'I should just be able to treat this like a job.'

THEM:  That's an option for them, but it's not an option for me.  I believe I have a right to work with the kind of people I want to work with, and those are going to be people who feel passionately about the project.  I believe it shows up in the work if you're just there because this was the job that came down the pike.  I can respect people needing work.  I lived off ten bucks a week when I started out--I was scraping together any way I could, and if I ask someone why they want to work on something with me and they say 'I just need the money' I'm not going to dismiss them right away for that, but I am going to ask them if they think they can find another reason in addition to that to join me and the rest of the team.

ME:  And this impacts diversity as well--asking this question?

THEM:  I had never thought of that until you phrased it as--

ME:  You'd never thought of it?

THEM:  I knew that it was helping, but the way you put it really helped demonstrate why this might be useful to other people in casting situations.

ME:  Because--okay, so one time I was ranting about casting straight guys in gay roles--

THEM:  You rant about that a lot.

ME:  I do.

THEM:  You must have a lot of thoughts about Broadway right now.

ME:  Ohhhh, let's not.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  That's fine.

ME:  Better we don't.

THEM:  Your call.

ME:  But one time I was ranting about it, and my friend Nate Patten, who loves to yell at me, pointed out that in a case like that, it would be difficult to explicitly cast a gay person in a gay role, because legally, you can't ask a person if they're gay or not.

THEM:  Right.

ME:  But with your way of doing things, you could ask someone what working on a show would mean to them, and if they're gay and they're auditioning to play a gay role--and obviously in all kinds of similar circumstances.

THEM:  That has happened, yes.

ME:  Because no gay person has ever resisted the opportunity to talk about what playing a gay role would mean to them.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  You can speak to that better than I can.

ME:  But to me, as soon as you started talking about the question, it was like a light bulb went off.

THEM:  I should say--That's not what the question is designed to do--to help with the diversity issue, which I think is a very complicated issue, and one I've dealt with my entire life as an artist--but I can see--after speaking with you--I can see how that's helped with making sure representation was something that was happening on my projects--across the board, because I ask the people on my production teams the same thing--when I have that option.

ME:  What would you say to people who say 'Well, shouldn't it be all about talent?'

THEM:  I would say--first and foremost--talent is subjective.  I would say that with the kinds of projects I'm working on, talent is not in question.  By the time you get down to--It's going to be one of these three people--they're all talented.  Everybody's talented.  You need something to help you make that final call, and I think this is a perfectly legitimate way of making that call.  There are other ways you could use that aren't nearly as legitimate that people use all the time.  When you're applying to get into college, they ask you if you horseback ride.  Horseback riding doesn't have anything to do with college, but they need something somewhat arbitrary to help them make the decision when people are neck-and-neck.  I don't see diversifying a production as being arbitrary at all.  I see it as necessary.  As vital.  So why not use that?

ME:  And you can do that through asking this question.

THEM:  It's also not a given that a person like me is going to show up to audition for a role as a Cuban man and say 'This would mean a lot to me because I'm Cuban.'  They might have another reason that the role or the show is important to them.  Or it might not be important to them at all.  It might be that where they're from or what their background isn't something that's important to them.  I learn a lot from asking this question, and the main thing I learn is that you can't tell how somebody's going to do in a show just by using the audition process we have in place today.  If somebody is a stranger to you, I don't care if you have them do a hundred callbacks and you have them read the whole show and sing all the songs and do all the dances--You are not going to get an accurate representation of what it means to work with them in the room, in the process, until you're in the room and the process is underway.  But this is a question I ask throughout the process--What does this mean to you?

ME:  You're the one I stole it from.

THEM:  You do it now too?

ME:  I do.

THEM:  I ask it all the time.

ME:  It came up in this other interview I did with a woman who's, um, reaching the end of her life, and she talked about meaning.

THEM:  It's vital.  I keep saying that, but--it's vital.  So now I ask the question as soon as it makes sense to ask it, and there was a woman this one time who did--She did a fine audition, but it was down to five--to her and five other women--and there was no daylight between them.  They were all excellent.  I could have gone with any of them.  So I asked them this question.  Now, this woman--the woman who got the part--up until I asked the question, she would have been my fifth choice.  Then she gives me this answer that shows me she knows exactly who this character is, she knows how to call upon the personal resources to bring her to life, she knows what the show is about, she understands why we're doing it, why it needs to be done--all these things that I never would have known about her.  The other women--she left them in the dust at the moment.

ME:  But to reiterate--she wasn't less talented.

THEM:  She wasn't a worse actress than them--she was worse at auditioning.

ME:  Auditioning is not acting.

THEM:  Amen.

ME:  What other examples have you encountered?  You told me someone once got mad at you--

THEM:  That was because of a--a misrepresentation involving diversity.

ME:  I got the popcorn.

THEM:  There was this woman--working in this area--an actress.  I was hired--they brought me in to direct a show there.  You'd know the theater if I said it.  She was very popular there.  Very popular.  The presumption was that she was mixed race or Latinx.  Nobody knew, but that was how it was presented to me when she came in to audition, because I asked, because she was going to be auditioning to play a very famous Latina woman, and I wanted to make sure that there was someone in the role who understood the role.  I ask about her background, everybody gets uncomfortable, nobody knows for sure.  She gets to the final round of callbacks, and I ask her the question, and she gets very upset with me.  Really upset.  Says I shouldn't be asking that question.  That I have no right.  I stood my ground.  The Artistic Director was in the room with me, and she backed me up.  We told her 'You don't have to answer this question if you don't want, and you don't need to tell us anything personal, but we are asking the question.'  She said 'If I don't answer I'm not getting the role.'  I told her not necessarily, but I would like an answer, and I believe I should get one.  She gives me an answer, and then at the end she goes, almost like she wants to just come out with it, she goes 'But just so you know, I'm Italian."

ME:  Wow.

THEM:  There was a gasp in the room, because--Kevin, this was an actress who had played African-American parts in this area.  This was an actress who had played mixed race characters.  She was one of the go-to--they would have said she was a person of color--and she was a go-to person.  Do you understand what I mean?

ME:  I do.

THEM:  That comes out--offered by her, nobody outright asked her--

ME:  But it's funny that she took that opportunity to admit it.

THEM:  I found it to be very sad.  I think it was a sad moment.  It really--It changed the trajectory of her career in that area, as you can probably guess.

ME:  I hear all the time that stuff like this--that it's a construct.  Race is a construct.  Sexuality is a construct--

THEM:  You want to know who says that s***?  Straight people playing gay people and white people playing people who aren't white and none of them want to feel bad about it.  Miss me with the construct talk.  We can talk about constructs, but not when it's about how a Portuguese guy should be able to play Malcolm X.

ME:  Oh being Portuguese means you're a person of color now.  You didn't know that?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Are you joking?

ME:  Oh yeah.

THEM:  You know people who are saying that?

ME:  I know a few people.

THEM:  Who are they trying to play?  See, now you got my Miami coming out.

ME:  Probably people who look a lot like you.

THEM:  Don't let me find out.  We'd be having a talk about it.

ME:  A come-to-Jesus.

THEM:  A come-to-somebody.  Aren't you Portuguese?

ME:  And I will not be auditioning for In the Heights anytime soon, I promise.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  For a number of reasons, right?

ME:  I'm Portuguese, I can't sing, I can't rap--

THEM:  (Laughs.)  That's a new one.  I never heard that.  Portuguese means you're a person of color.

ME:  Because it's a Latin--

THEM:  Okay, okay--let me meet these people--these friends of yours--

ME:  I didn't say friends.

THEM:  Okay, but, let me meet them where they are.  This is where the question I ask comes in.  You're saying--'This character is someone I identify with and let me tell you why.  Because I'm Portuguese and I grew up just like this character did.  We shared a lot in common despite not being perfectly aligned in our DNA.'  Make that argument.  Go ahead.  I'm not saying it wouldn't work.  It wouldn't work most of the time, but this is why I'm giving you the chance to make your case.

ME:  But if you're that Italian girl...

THEM:  She didn't want to make the case.  She wanted it all to be as vague as possible and I'll--I'll get myself in some trouble and say I think it worked for everyone else too.  All the people who cast her.  Because they got to have who they wanted, and if somebody said, 'Yeah, but is she--' They could just throw up their hands and say 'We'll never know.'

ME:  I still can't believe she outed herself.

THEM:  It's happened other times as well.

ME:  Where people have said 'And I'm not this thing that maybe I appear to be?'

THEM:  Yes.

ME:  Has it happened where people acknowledged that they were auditioning for a character they really can't identify with?

THEM:  I had a guy tell me he that playing a gay man would mean a lot to him because he believes homosexuality is a sin and he'd like to use the role to showcase all the problems with being gay.

ME:  No.

THEM:  That's a true story.

ME:  Was the play about how bad it is to be gay and if so, can I read it and produce it?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  No, but see, that was his take on it and what he could do with it.  That's why I'm glad I asked the question.

ME:  Why do you think people are so honest with you?

THEM:  I think artists--even really ambitious artists who need a check--they're going to feel very uncomfortable when somebody looks them in the eye and says 'Why are you here?'  Honestly, they could lie.  They could lie and give me some bs answer that sounds good, and it's possible some people have, but not that I'm aware of, and more often than not, they just say nothing and walk out the door.

ME:  People have walked out on you rather than answer the question?  I would love to have a potential director ask me a question like that.

THEM:  That's because you're an artist and you think of yourself as an artist.  Not everybody does, and when face with that, it can be hard for some people--in the moment--to, uh, to come to terms with that.

ME:  Do you sympathize with them?

THEM:  I very much do.  I've been there.  I tell them that sometimes--that I've been there.  I've followed them out of those rooms when they've walked out, because I don't want them to feel like my aim is to embarrass them or put them on the spot.  Even that woman who was pretending and taking jobs she didn't belong having--which is how I feel about it--I don't look at that as me catching somebody.  That's not how I want it to be viewed.  I'm just trying to get to the truth of why somebody's standing in front of me asking for something that four or five other people want and I have to figure out who gets it.  That's the position I'm in.

ME:  I really think everybody should do this.

THEM:  Feel free to steal it.

ME:  I will.

THEM:  Just send me some money every time you do.

ME:  Never mind.  I'll just keep casting Italian girls.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  If that's what you want to do.

ME:  A lot of other people are doing it.

THEM:  Hope that's working out for them.

Them is a Director.

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