Casting Bren

I have a reading tomorrow at the Public, a play called STORYTELLERS by Tom McCormick, the author of ENDPAPERS from a few years back.

I visited Tom at his apartment on CPW and met his wife. We had a nice lunch, and talked about baseball, the west wing, Shakespeare, and of course, his play. I believe we are on the same page. My task today: To go through the script and determine which stage directions are to be read.

Our biggest concern has been the casting of Bren: a Sam Shepherd type in his mid to late 20s if he went to Princeton. We rejected some great names because Tom wasn't convinced these actors would have the weight. With Oskar's blessing and input, we've cast Ben Walker - looking forward to meeting him.

Which is of course the funny thing about casting, if you don't get to cast the folks you know: you must implicitly trust the castind director's choice. Fortunately, I feel very confident that Heidi and Jordan at the public have come up with a wonderful cast for us. They put in atypical workload for this kind of reading.

I am hopeful Tom will get a lot out of the reading. The objective: is Bren a viable character as writtern. We'll see...