CASTING

by Brackets Digital

Last week I wrote about what a strain it can be to hear certain characters' voices, and to see them in three dimensions.  (Other characters, it must be said, are so autonomous and assertive that they happily do your work for you.)  In last week's case, it was in the end an actor who unknowingly helped me on my way to hauling that particular slippery character off the page and onto his feet.

Which brings me agreeably to one of my tasks this week: casting.  The final step in making a character literally begin to live and breathe.  On this occasion a new writer asked me to help him find actors for a reading of his script, and I found that I enjoyed working on the casting of someone else's work nearly as much as I love working towards finding the ideal embodiments of my own creations.  It's a thrilling thing, introducing a made-up character to a real, live person - and seeing them merge into one.

The reading is nearly cast (follow me on Twitter for updates), and so I return to my own work exhilarated by that reminder of one of my favourite parts of the theatremaking process - knowing that one day soon all those little imaginary people running around my head will move and talk in full-size, living, breathing bodies.