Casting About...

You write it, you rewrite it, you finally get great artists to say they will produce it, direct it, design it, sell it and then...you have to cast it! It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world unless you have written a musical COMEDY with an emphasis on the comedy but still want great singing (after all, it's a MUSICAL comedy, not just a comedy)Last year when casting The Road to Qatar! we couldn't afford a casting director so the authors did the casting about themselves depending on On-line casting services which did very well for us. We saw many good people, some of whom did not want to go to Dallas to do a new musical for bupkis. But ultimately with a lot of help from friends both professional and non, we cast the show and we did very well with the critics and knew that we wanted to keep several of the cast members if and when we got to the NYC production. In some cases we were able to keep them and in some we were not. So we found ourselves having to cast three out of the five actors all over again. But this time we had a professional casting director helping us out. You would think it would be easier. But the truth is, there are just so many brilliantly funny comic types who fit your show who can also sing like the wind. The pool is not as deep as one thought. Think about it...how many Nathan Lanes are there? If you have great comic chops like that, you get whisked away to TV or movies and hardly ever think about singing again until your sitcom is cancelled and you can command a huge salary in a revival of a show that is only running because you had a sitcom and well you know the rest. But try to find those brilliantly funny musical comedy COMIC types who can SING who don't have sitcoms and who will work for New York bubkis...well, that's a camel of a different color. But...to make a long story short, after a stressful few weeks of hunting, we have pulled those proverbial rabbits out of a hat...no they are not big name stars who will immediately sell tickets...but these are the future. The people who will get to show off what they seldom get to show off in a show that let's them show off and shine. Comic singers who act, sing, dance, use puppets, talk in funny accents, play Gays, Jews, Arabs, Italian Opera Directors, Indian Airline Stewardesses, Bratislavan Opera Singers and other assorted bananas. I can't wait.