Interesting to watch a very good, very smart director run his audition process. And to see how actors respond to that.
R.P. says he looks to answer five questions during an audition:
1) Can the actor move? What is the quality of his or her movement?
2) What is the quality of the actor's speaking voice?
3) What is that actor's emotionality/access to emotion?
4) What is this actor's relationship to RISK?
5) Who is the PERSON in the ROOM.
What was interesting to me is that there wasn't, necessarily, one "right answer" for these questions -- how much agility, vocal ability, emotionality or willingness to take risks might change, project to project or role to role. But those five questions set up an interesting matrix within which to evaluate a potential collaborator. Where R.P.'s process was new, at least to me, is that he has made explicit the variables in that matrix.
I wonder, what are the five questions we need answered, as playwrights, in order to find our collaborators? What do directors or producers need of us? What are our criteria, and how do we evaluate a potential partnership?
In talking to actors, he stressed that he wanted everyone clear on the following by the end of the process:
1) How does the ACTOR work.
2) How R.P. works.
3) When is the actor's "moment of crisis" within a rehearsal process, and how does he or she approach/move through that moment.
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