I started in theatre as a high school lighting technician. As a tech, I never auditioned, but I had a closeup view of the process since I prepared the space and watched everything. At my high school, there were auditions for every show, but the same people were always cast as leads. Don’t get me wrong. Those actors and actresses were all great and I never heard anyone complain about their casting, but I have come to believe that this casting process was flawed.
When I took over my own high school theatre department, I came into the position with several philosophical ideals that I was eager to put into practice. First and foremost, I believe that high school theatre is about education. We are educating our future actors, designers, technicians, and audience members. We are providing opportunities for our students to explore new roles (pun intended) and take on things they’ve never thought of doing before. It is our responsibility to make their learning opportunities as diverse as possible. I sought to do this in a variety of ways.
1. 1. I required all performers to work on some technical aspect of the production.
2. 2. I encouraged all technicians to perform.
3. 3. I required all designers and crew chiefs to attend weekly production meetings.
4. 4. I rotated the performers getting leading roles.
I believe that all theatre students should be familiar with as many aspects of production as possible. They may not choose to do some jobs later on, but they should at least be familiar with the other folks’ problems. Having actors tech and having techs act helps make this happen.
I believe that everything is an educational opportunity – and that I don’t have all the answers. Having weekly production meetings allowed us to get together as a team to set goals, examine processes, and solve problems. This policy gave the students significant buy in and control of the creative process. Obviously, I made the final decisions as director, producer, and teacher, but the students learned about the collaborative process and knew that their ideas would be heard and frequently implemented.
I believe that as many students as possible should be given an opportunity to take a lead role and experience all the joy, work, and notice that comes with that role. To this end, I had an established policy to rotate my leads. A performer getting a lead in the Fall show knew going in that she would not get one in the Spring show. She might get a supporting role, a bit part, or might work tech on the Spring show, but she wouldn’t get a lead. If she got a lead in the Spring show, she knew she wouldn’t get one the next Fall. For example, I had an actor play John Proctor in The Crucible for the Fall show and he played one of the chorus knights in Once Upon a Mattress in the Spring. Over the course of his years in my program, he played leads, supporting roles, and small roles. Romeo in my first Shakespeare outing played Mustardseed in my later Midsummer.
This policy also extended to my techs. As I explained to the students, in their Freshman year, I would expect them to be on a crew. In their Sophomore year, they might be on a crew, or perhaps an Assistant Manager. By Junior Year, they should be taking on Crew Chief positions. I expected my Seniors to take on Assistant Manager positions so they could support the new Crew Chiefs and pass their accumulated experience and knowledge to the other students. This aspect of my policies is probably the one I had the hardest time consistently enforcing because sometimes the overall numbers just weren’t there.
As I reflect on my practices years later, I wish I could claim that they came from a great design to foster artistic growth in my students instead of my egalitarian desire to give more students more opportunities. I wish I could claim some kind of brilliance rather than acknowledge the serendipity of the results. As I carried on this policy for almost two decades, I came to realize that I was not only succeeding in giving my students greater opportunities, but I was also preparing them for the realities of college and professional theatre. My top students knew absolutely that they were not going to get lead roles every time. They knew that they would have to find new ways to share in the joy of theatre from production to production. They knew that their ideas and contributions were valuable and valued in all their myriad ways.
Late in my career, I interviewed for a teaching position at a new high school. One of the questions I was asked was, “How do you deal with parental protests on casting?” I had to tell the interviewers that I’d never had one. I’m not sure they believed me, but it was the absolute truth and I credit my announced policy of rotating leads for giving students and parents a clear understanding of my process.
If you’ve never thought of rotating your leads, I urge you to give it a try. It can be a little scary at first when you consider that you may be relegating your current best actor, or actress, to a supporting role, but I think your new leading performers will reward your faith in them with tremendous hard work and your best performers will get the opportunity to develop new skills and support their fellow students’ growth.
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Robert Smith
VA Co-Chapter Director
Virginia Thespians
VA
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