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April 21st, 2008
09:39 am - Casting Has Begun
Casting for Lullaby of Broadway has begun in earnest. I’ve done the first pass casting; that was easy.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons running “media larps” over the years. One of the biggest is that when you ask people who they want to play, most people will choose the big names everyone has heard of.
This isn’t surprising actually. More people have heard of Eliza Doolittle than Rosemary Pilkington, so more people will ask for her. But there is only one Eliza Doolittle and I always feel kinda bad when I can’t give the character to twelve different people at once.
I mentioned that NBStPD could have been the all Jack and Sally game for what I got for casting. This time it was Dolly Levi, Eliza Doolittle, and Miss Adelaide for the ladies and Henry Higgens, Sky Masterson, and Leopold Bloom for the gents.
In any case, the first pass casting is done. That was the easy part. People who asked for specific characters that nobody else asked for got those characters, even if they were the second choices.
The next step is to whittle down the rest of the crowd, looking at what kinds of characters they want to play, above and beyond their first three choices.
LoB has some extra casting challenges. Oh there is the typical I can’t put X and Y in a romantic relationship; they hate each other. But I also have the added concern Z wants a character where he can perform in front of others, while A wants to never sing or dance at all.
Gotta be careful with the casting there. Even if A put down Sky Masterson, he’ll be put out if he’s asked to do “Luck Be a Lady Tonight.” I have contingency plans, of course. I always have contingency plans. We can do lip sincing, have stand ins just for songs, or – if worst comes to worst – skip the song part. While I feel it would be a better game if Dolly could make a grand impression to the strains of “Hello Dolly,” she can make just as grand an impression without the song. (These are just examples; neither Sky nor Dolly have been cast as of this writing).
Ah well. If I wanted easy, I wouldn’t have chosen the games I do. I’m not complaining, and nothing is going wrong. Just hoping to share some of my life lessons of larp.
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Comments:
Leopold Bloom, as in "Bialystock and Bloom! Bialystock and Bloom!"
If so, here's the really pathetic part: even though I so totally wouldn't fit the part, I would so have wanted to be cast as Ula if I could be at Lullabye.
Yeah, I'm sorry you can't make it. Ulla is a fine character and you would have done her good (although truth to tell, I'm happy with who will be playing Ulla in the game; she'll also do a great job).
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/76579014/1057826) | | From: | ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) evcelt |
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| Date: | April 22nd, 2008 01:37 am (UTC) |
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I am so out of the "musicals" loop that I thought, "Leopold Bloom? What is a character from Joyce's 'Ulysses' doing in this game?" |
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