You’ve chosen your script, and all the musical numbers. You’ve designed your poster and appointed your creative team. Now it’s time to find actors to play all the parts in your pantomime.
Boost your Membership
First things first. You need a pool of people to audition for the show. In a thriving group, there are often more people than parts which can provide healthy competition for roles. After all, you want your best team in place!
The story I’m hearing on the ground more often is that post-pandemic exhaustion has people doing a bit less, and trying new hobbies. There are lots of ways to boost your groups membership and recruit new cast members. Ideally you’d get cracking on this between 3 and 6 months prior to your audition date.
Casting Breakdowns
Once you know which characters you need to audition cast members for (and there are lots to pick from!) the next step is to write a casting breakdown for each character.
Your casting breakdown is your way of ‘selling’ the potential of the character to cast members. For example, the pantomime dame and comic need funny people to audition for them. Whereas perhaps other supporting roles don’t need such strong comic chops.
Casting breakdowns should include:
- Character name
- Gender (if relevant – often in pantomime roles can be played by any gender)
- Age range (e.g. “30+” or “Age 20-30”)
- Character description – it’s often useful to include references to famous characters or personalities that actors can use as a bouncing-off point. For example, you could suggest that you imagine the Squire or King type role to be played in the style of Boris Johnson. The more interesting and entertaining the description is, the more likely cast members will be to audition for the role. You could also highlight any major moments in the production that the character is involved with.
You could also include the following extra information:
- Line count – to give actors a feeling for how many lines they will be expected to learn
- Singing & Musical Numbers – some actors are less confident about singing so may look for roles where they don’t need to sing
Top Tip: It’s good practice to ensure that characters are only played by actors who share the same skin colour as the role itself. For example, if your Aladdin script is set in Old Peking, the characters that inhabit that place should all be played by East Asian actors. In the past, stereotyping was common in pantomime practice but is largely looked on as bad practice in contemporary productions.
Auditions
I always find that holding a couple of pre-audition workshops is a good chance to get to know any new cast members, and help everyone to feel at ease about doing their auditions.
Workshops can take everybody through the audition materials (usually a song and some pages of scripts known as ‘sides’). This ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to understand the material and what is expected of them at the audition.
It’s also a sneaky opportunity for your director to see what everyone is like to work with, and how they take direction!
I’ve previously written about some top tips of mine to make your auditioning process better for everyone involved. So be sure to check those out and evolve your process as required.
Prior to auditions, it’s worth having a good discussion with everyone on your audition panel, and in your creative team about what you are looking for in each character. This helps to ensure you are all on the same page when it comes to assessing auditions.
For example, there are very specific aspects of playing the pantomime dame which it’s helpful for everyone to be in-the-know on.
There are also more widely accepted best-practices in delivering and directing comedy which are worth refreshing in your mind. Your musical director and choreographer will be able to asses cast member’s singing and dancing ability.
Rehearsal
Remember, always sleep on your final casting decision! Your mind can change overnight. Including a mix of experienced veterans and new voices is a good way to consider your overall casting mix.
And if possible let people know the outcome of their auditions in writing. Everyone will deal with the news differently, and that way they have some time to digest the positive or not so positive news before attending an in person rehearsal.
Once auditions are done, and casting is announced, it’s onwards towards your rehearsals where you can hone in on the talent of your cast and begin shaping your pantomime in the rehearsal room.
