A different take
Here’s actor Bostin Christopher’s take on how he got cast in my play “He Said She Said,” which opens next Saturday here in Los Angeles. My quick response: Yes, I wrote it with him in mind — and yes, he still had to audition for the role.
Why?
Because the director, in this case Ross Kramer, had never seen him. Never even met him. So while I had the benefit of seeing Bostin’s work in a variety of venues the past two years, it would have been a lot to ask someone else to cast him sight unseen. That was my thinking anyway. And how much do I trust this director? I didn’t even go to the auditions. I’ve worked with lots of different directors, and I can’t think of another time in 30 years of getting produced that a play of mine was auditioning in town and I didn’t go.
So here’s the thing: Bostin is terrific in my play. Unsurprisingly, he’s doing a good job of playing a role that I wrote with him in mind. As for the female role, I saw that one very differently than how Rebecca Davis is playing it (and how Ross is directing it), but now that I’ve seen this take it’ll be extremely hard to see it any other way. Until, that is, I do. Nobody wants his play to be done just once.
What playwrights do want, though, is for their plays to be done well, with a director and actors bringing things to the production that add to the experience. Playwrights who get productions in which people detract from the experience know exactly what I’m talking about. My first production was in high school and went fine; for my first production in college I was saddled with a female lead whose habit it was to deliver every line like a crazed magpie: “Got any MAG-a-ziiiiinnnnnes?” Some years ago in New York a director decided that my play about artists in hiding from the government actually was about a lesbian subtext that he freely invented — and directed for accordingly. (On opening night, the cast and I, by now thoroughly creeped out by this guy, ditched him for our own party elsewhere.)
I’ve got more such stories — you do this long enough and you collect them. But I’ve also had many productions that left me awash with gratitude. To fly in somewhere, especially a small town, and see how hard and how well they’ve worked on your play, how much they’ve committed and achieved, leaves you humbled. Whatever alchemy produced the run-through I saw of this new play of mine the other night, I’m grateful for it.