Casting

Casting was hard, as I knew it would be – not only because it always is, but also because the competition for Hamlet was earnest, and I knew going in that someone was going to be majorly disappointed. I just didn’t know who it would be. The two top contenders (and only fellows with the balls to try for it, BTW) are both excellent young actors, and both have played leading Shakespearean roles before: Luke was Biron in Loves Labors Lost, and Bragg was Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Both memorized lengthy monologues for the audition, and both had moments of real grace. Neither was “better” than the other. Ultimately, the one not playing Hamlet would be playing Claudius, so the choice really came down to which Hamlet/Claudius configuration made the most sense. I believe we’ve made the best choice for the story we’re looking to tell, and I know that both of these actors will grow significantly as artists from this experience. Before auditions, I combined roles so that I needed seventeen actors to play the 28+ characters, but only eleven actors showed up to read, so I have cut a character and doubled more roles to make a cast of thirteen. I have complete confidence that we will find two actors to fill these nine multiple roles. One would think that kids would be lining up down the block to have the chance to be in a production of Hamlet, but one would be wrong. This makes me sad. Our organization exists in part to help people come to love Shakespeare as much as we all do, but it’s hard to break through that too-difficult-to-understand-it attitude people have. Due to the number of bitty roles the kids are going to have to play, we are pondering the idea of using masks for all of the minor characters. Since everyone in the play is lying and spying, it makes sense that some characters have actual masks while others have only the masks their faces can contrive – masks that are harder to perceive but which are there, as they are on all of us in our everyday lives. We will play with this idea for awhile and see if it’s a keeper. We start with our first table read tomorrow evening. If you know us, here’s the cast list. If you don’t know us, I’m pretty sure you’ll be hearing some of these names again: Luke Tyson (Hamlet); Bragg Hammac (Claudius); Sydney Yeager (Ophelia); Gennifer Lundquist (Polonius, priest); Lila Brustad (Gertrude); Caroline Sullivan (Laertes, player); Grace Trombly (Horatio); Daisy Brustad (Rosa Crantz, Clown 1, Francisco); Hanna Hammac (Gilda Stern, Clown 2, Bernardo); JD Thiemann (Ghost, pirate, player, Fortinbras); Emily Hammac (Marcellus, captain, player, pirate).