| Graduating seniors audition for future BY SALLY ACHARYA Remember the name: Whitney Whitaker. Or maybe Amelia Meyers. Or Ryan Nealy. They’re all graduating seniors in AU’s performing arts department, and as they planned the next steps in their dreams of theatrical careers, they had a chance to audition for ABC’s East Coast prime-time casting director, Geoffrey Soffer. One by one they filed into the office of Professor Gail Humphries Mardirosian, performing arts, and performed their monologues perched on a settee a few feet from the observant Soffer. It was all very low key, which is how the television talent scout likes it. This wasn’t about projecting to the last row. It was about intimacy. Being real. Soffer was invited to AU by Steven Varon ’00, a theatre alum who is now a member of Blue Man Group, a New York-based performance troupe that is well-known enough that when Varon was introduced as a member, a few of the students let out a gasp. Varon has got what these students want. Not fame, necessarily —although they’d like that. But a job, in theatre. And Soffer is the real deal: a casting director whose job it is to recommend actors for jobs on ABC’s nighttime schedule. Whitaker came into the room full of confidence, armed with a professional photo and a monologue that she had prepared with a southern accent. It took only a few words before Soffer stopped her. “Just do the monologue as yourself,” he said. “For my purposes, we don’t do much character stuff. There’s not much of a transformation process in TV.” OK. She could handle it. A moment of thought, and then she began again. The accent kept peeking out, but not too much. And afterwards, when Soffer asked about her plans, she got a clue what he really thought. She was going to France, she said, probably to teach. “So,” he prodded, “when do you think you’re going to make the jump to New York or L.A.?” She thought it would be best to get a job first. Soffer thought differently. “The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. Everybody moves to New York without a dime, sleeping on their friend’s couch . . . Coming from AU, you’re a great candidate to get a temp job where you’re making $20 an hour. It’s not what everyone wants to do with their AU degree. But for Whitaker, he said, it could be a wise career move. “I think you exhibit the right qualities for someone who can work in the industry,” he told her as she left. “She kind of reminds me of a young Sandra Bullock,” he said later. “You have to ask, ‘Could you see America falling in love with her?’ She doesn’t have it yet; she’s green; she needs a lot of experience and coaching. But she has an openness. She has the right qualities. I could see her being one of the people who can evolve.” A few of the graduating seniors already had jobs, like Ryan Nealy ’06, who gave precisely the right kind of low-key performance for Soffer. He has already been cast for a full year’s season at Round House Theatre. Ben Gibson ’06 also has a job, having been cast in a touring musical by the National Theatre for Arts in Education. His ace in the hole: he speaks Spanish, which helped him get the stint in the Spanish-language cast. “Those special skills always help,” Soffer told him. Not everyone was a senior. Sophomore Cynthia Caul was urged to try her luck by Mardirosian, and although her monologue involved quite a bit more theater-decibel projection than Soffer would prefer, he could see why Caul was being encouraged to audition. She had an openness that was promising. After junior Ben Naramore’s monologue, in which he transformed himself into a near-psychotic, Soffer gently suggested another approach. “Focus on a lighter, friendlier, more early ’20s style. I think that’s more your type,” he said. As Naramore develops, he might become precisely the “type” to interest a TV casting director, Soffer said. For visiting high-school senior Elise Bernlohr of Roanoke, Va., now making her final decision, Soffer’s visit and the tips he gave were impressive. “I thought it was really great to hear how well the university helps students transfer into the professional world,” she said. For Bernlohr, the visit might be a vote in favor of AU; for Meyers, a graduating senior, it was a vote of confidence. She’d already interned in Los Angeles as a script supervisor, and plans to move to L.A. after graduation and do whatever she can to break into the business. “You have to be persistent, and you have to want it. And you seem like you do,” Soffer told her. “And that’s the truth,” he added after her audition. “One day, she’s going to be turning down phone calls. She seems very driven.” So remember the names. They may not be ready for prime time yet, but Soffer could see the talent. And he knows it when he sees it. |
