Meghan Vogt
LifeAtStart.com Reporter
Little Shop of Horrors was a great success for Start’s drama department, and now the spring theater season is about to begin. Auditions for Little Women are being held this week, and Start’s thespians could not be more excited.
Although the cast for this straight play is a bit small with seven female roles and four male roles, the number of students auditioning has increased since Little Shop. Unlike Little Shop, however, those auditioning that don’t make the main cast won’t have an ensemble to be a part of. This leaves the casting team in a relatively rare and unpleasant situation of not being able to cast everyone who wants to be in the show. This will probably lead to our technical crew being quite large, which has its own pros and cons.
Student Director, Christopher Dauer, is adamant on including as many seniors in the cast as possible, so they can perform in their last high school production. This will probably work quite well because we have very talented seniors this year. My fear, though, is that first-comers, especially freshmen, will be uninterested in drama club if they are not casted. I hope this is not the case because there are a lot of seniors in drama this year, and we need younger thespians to continue making great productions when we are gone.
An interesting alternative to cutting students with good potential is to double cast the show. This would mean that there would be two full casts, A and B, and each cast would perform in two out of four shows. The main pro to this option is that it includes more people. However, the cons, in my opinion, outweigh the pros. With double casting, each cast would have to be taught the blocking and rehearse the blocking. Therefore, the rehearsal schedule would need to be longer. It’s already very time-consuming as is. Also with double casting, rather than relying on five principles to learn their parts, ten principles will have to take on the large responsibility.
The casting team will have a lot to think about this Thursday, and I am confident that they will keep the best interests of the students and the production in mind as they make tough decisions. I’m glad I will not bear the burden of this difficult casting, and I will update you with the results when they are posted on Friday.