Castings and Creation.
I’m going to start by talking about castings. Well, just one casting that I stumbled upon at the beginning of this week.
I was doing my usual daily trawl of my casting website of choice when I found a casting for a short film that was to be shot not too far from where I live. It seemed to be quite a sweet story from the brief. It mainly revolved around a young couple during a war, and their love story. There would also be an older actress playing the role of the female later on in life.
There were specifics, as always. The requirements were as follows: UK English Accent. Tick. Soft Voice. I can do that, tick. 160 cm / 5ft 3in - 175 cm / 5ft 9in. I’m 5ft 5, tick. The final requirement baffled me. I’m not going to write down exactly what it was for fear of the whole world knowing too much about me, but it had a weight specification. Weight! Mostly castings include a size in the form of slim, medium build, large etc, or even an actual clothing size. I’m fine with this. They may have already bought the costume and need someone to fit it. No problem. But to ask for someone a specific weight was going a bit too far in my eyes. Not impressed. Yes, I was deemed too heavy to play the role, but surely that’s not right. Hmm.
C is also for creation, which is what I did a lot of yesterday. I was involved in a process called ‘Play In a Day’. I think it’s obvious enough what that means! I set off bright and early to get myself to Loughborough to create some wonderment! There were six of us in the cast, and we came up with ideas, devised scenes, and strung them all together to create a play that came in at just under half an hour long.
The play was called ‘The Eight Songs of Us’, was set in a nightclub, and featured songs which meant something to each character, they all had a story to tell. I was never particularly a fan of devising, and haven’t really done much of it since graduating a million years ago, so I jumped at the chance. We did a few exercises to get our brains going in the morning before we got going with it, but once we started with the songs, we were flying!
By mid-afternoon the play was complete, so all that was left to do was rehearse before the audience came in to watch in the evening. It was a really good day. Everyone was so nice, the whole day was completely relaxed, despite the fact that we had no idea what we were going to do at 9.30am, but 10 hours later we performed. The audience laughed in all the right places, and we all had a jolly good time! If I’m completely honest, I did struggle to come up with ideas at the beginning, but once we got going, I felt better about it. Devising is a useful thing to be able to do, but my brain takes a long time to warm up!
I love watching other people and seeing the different ideas that form in front of my eyes, and one of the scenes almost made me cry. It was incredibly subtle, and nothing was explained, there could have been a million different explanations to the scene, but it worked beautifully. One of the scenes that I was involved in was also a stroke of genius (not on my part unfortunately) and I’m hoping that I can possibly write something myself that uses the same format. (Yet another idea I have now, that will be added to the unfinished pile of things that I never get around to doing!)
I think I’m incredibly fortunate to be doing the thing that I love, even if I’m not working all the time. Watching something being created and also being a part of it is one of the most magical things you can do. The scene I mentioned before that moved me, almost definitely moved other people too, and to get people feeling all these different emotions is pretty special. I’ve had people come up to me in the past after performances that I’ve been in, to tell me how happy it made them feel, or took them back to their youth and brought back special memories for them, and that makes me incredibly proud indeed. I’ve never had that from any other job that I’ve had before. I’ve been a waitress in the past. Yes, people had a very enjoyable evening consuming delicious food delivered to their table by my own fair hands, but they probably don’t remember it five years on. But I bet they’d still remember a performance they have seen that moved them in some way. And that’s another reason why I do what I do. I love performing, it’s the biggest thrill there is, but knowing you’ve made a difference to people while doing something that you love has to be the cherry on top of the cake!
Nxxx
Twitter: @nataliecastka Facebook: Natalie Castka Actor
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