Our local AEA and New York City Auditions have been completed. We spent a week in New York working with Pat McCorkle Casting including one day of EPA auditions: (open Equity Auditions) and two days of local Equity auditions. It was a very successful and productive casting process. Peggy McKowen, Associate Producer will make offers to the 2010 actors today and I hope to announce the 2010 Acting Company later this week. I was very impressed by all the actors who auditioned for our five play Repertory. And I am looking forward to introducing you to our cast.

Casting a rotating repertory of five plays is an exciting and overwhelming process. I believe that casting is 90% of my job as the Producing Director…second only to selecting the five playwrights. If I get the casting right…most of the work is done. Casting is an intuitive process. Over the years I have learned to trust my gut and listen to my intuition. I saw so many talented actors during the last two weeks. Because we do rotating rep…I must select actors to create characters for two different plays. We are committed to producing a five play rep with one Acting Company. This is an exciting challenge that creates artistic/collaborative opportunities for the 2010 Festival. I also believe that our audience looks forward to seeing the same actors appear in different roles. Repertory casting presents the audience with the opportunity to witness the creative process of the actor at work. It demonstrates the actor’s ability to transform and create multiple characters in a Festival of five rotating plays. Audiences are introduced to imaginative and inventive actors who create a sense of truth and belief on stage… in more than one play. This presents a creative challenge for the actor. They learn to develop artistic muscles and stretch their imaginations. Rotating repertory is a unique experience for both the actor and the audience. Casting the rotating repertory is a process that I look forward to every season. More on this later…I look forward to your thoughts on rotating repertory. Please send me your comments RE: rotating repertory. 

Ed Herendeen

The 2010 REPERTORY will continue to create noise. Contemporary theater has the unique responsibility to cause a ruckus and make waves. The intention of many contemporary plays is to leave the audience unsatisfied rather than satisfied, to create an anxiety and an uncertainty which is dispelled if you just have the courage to encounter the work.

I encourage our artists to be fearless and to take their work as far as it can go…make the work more alarming and dangerous and disturbing. Because I always respond in a positive way when we can make the audience mad. I am not interested in bland  theater. I want to produce work that has a strong effect on the audience. If we can make them angry…if the work gets under their skin…then we have succeeded. Because the job of contemporary theater is not to tell us what to think, but to tell us, what to think about.

When choosing the 2010 REPERTORY of five new American plays I ask myself: “How do I make theater that is exciting, that is relevant, that matters in our community, that stimulates public discourse? How does our Theater Festival respond to political events…social movements…current events? How can the 2010 REPERTORY make a difference in our Mid-Atlantic community? How do we embrace a more global outlook…what is contemporary theater…what is American theater? How do we challenge popular forms of theater?”

What I do know…is that we cannot shy away from the deepest questions and the search for meaning in life. And I know that we have to trust the audience and invite them to “play” with us. And invite them to nurture new work…invite them to join us on an uncharted adventure. Because new plays are uncharted. New plays have the “immediacy” and the “liveness” that will keep theater a vital part of our lives. The strength of new plays lies in what happens in the moment…on stage…in the room…in the space between the actor/performer and the audience.

I concentrate my energies and passion on new plays because it allows me to engage with the living writers who are grappling with the mysteries and challenges of existence, with originality, audacity, humor and profound ideas.

Four words: “Tell me a story”. We never tire of our stories. Playwrights are the theater’s storytellers. And I believe that we all crave…desire to hear a good story. The love of story will never go away. I want to invite our audience to indulge in a theatrical weekend of storytelling. ” The web of our life is of a mingled yarn”  William Shakespeare. Tell me a story, still comprises four of the most powerful words in the English language. Stories have forever been the cultural threads that help make sense of our world. And in 2010 we have five original new stories by five playwrights.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on our 2010 Festival. You may make comments below:

Ed Herendeen