casting director Jeff Josselson JZ Casting has a twenty-year casting career serving theaters across the country, including Broadway. during an interview typeJoe Selson explains his casting process and how his team finds actors and how they support their careers.
On how he sources new talent, Josselson said:
โWe watch a lot of plays, we go to a lot of performances and teach a lot. So we get to know students who are graduating or who have been in other types of training programs or master classes. We also constantly look for students based on what weโre looking for. Digging into and reaching out to different communities, whether we’re looking for kids of a specific age, contacting teachers or academies in a specific area, or if we’re looking for participants from a certain background and reaching out to pools that we might know. Relevant organizations and individuals We also conduct open calls and meet with many actors who come to the EPA. [eligible performer audition] Or just a general open call. And then we also get a lot of recommendations from trusted colleagues and friends. A casting director is like a sponge; we’re constantly gathering all the information about actors and our performers and trying to make a mental note of where they might fit, or where they would fit in a general sense.
That being said, once his team expresses interest in an actor, Josselson says there’s no secret formula to getting actors in a production:
“I tend to shy away from the feeling that there’s a hard truth to any of these or any real rules, because every rule in the book is meant to be broken. I’ve seen people do everything contrary to what people espouse The thing is, either book the job or do a good job and I think the biggest harm is actors trying to do what they think we’re looking for, or trying to imitate someone else’s performance, because that really has to do with people behind the scenes. We have nothing to do with it. Ultimately, we โ the directors and producers are there too โ look for actors who can tell the story and represent the work on stage, and that comes from actors truly sharing themselves, being vulnerable, making choices and sharing their characters. Version, whether it’s right or wrong for a particular production, I always tell people that the baseline we see in auditions is very talented people – generally everyone who comes in is very talented. It’s not a matter of talent, it’s a matter of being right for that character and that show within the scope of the director’s vision on a particular day or at a particular time.
