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Food for Thought

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Food for Thought

Interested in having some further provocation to deepen your own thinking? Want something to fuel conversations with colleagues? Dip into this section for some food for thought.

We spoke with many people who are directly or indirectly engaged with casting when creating this site. During our conversations a few phrases repeatedly cropped up. We include them here because we think they’re worth thinking a bit more about…

“I’m pretty much on top of this – it’s other people who need to do the work”

In theatre we’re often used to thinking of what we doing as having a clear finish line: the last night of a run, or the end of a financial year. But the kind of change we’re requiring in terms of casting requires continual improvement…

“We just work with the best actors – diversity doesn’t come into it”

Auditions aren’t level playing fields – different people will perform differently in any given scenario. Take auditions: some actors will nail them. Others will struggle. ..

“What if we fail? What if we get it wrong?”

Setting yourself up with no option but to fail is the best way to ensure you and the people around you admit defeat. It gives detractors the chance to say “see, we tried to open up our casts but it didn’t work – this proves it’s impossible…

“It’s out of my hands”

Sometimes you may feel you are surrounded by colleagues who don’t share your commitment to change or who make the right noises but don’t exhibit this in practice. This can be disheartening but try not to give up…

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