Prejudice in Art

OH my. I am casting a play right now. Word went out on the wire for six roles. Over five hundred people submitted their pictures.

Then, I got out the strainer. It is such a ruthless enterprise, casting. It is racist, weightiest, hairest and who knows what else.

You start looking at the submitted pictures online. Your heart goes out to these people, but a job must be done.
First, you get rid of all the wonderful people who are hair challenged, weight challenged and all people of color. (My fault. I should have stated Caucasian.)
Then, people with real long faces or very pointy chins. Gone.
Then, anyone with inappropriate clothing, overly dyed hair, strange prop glasses or scarves. Delete.
You keep going, until what you have are a lot of regular looking people. No one trying too hard. No one aching for attention. It’s the simple photos, backed by great credits. That’s it. That’s the trick. Them.

One tends to gravitate toward very neutral features. It seems. Especially when building a family. You figure, if you choose toward the middle with everyone, you can probably pull off casting a somewhat believable family.

There are so many extremely beautiful people, too. But for some reason, they don’t seem that useful for a family drama/comedy on a small stage. And then, how would you get enough talented-beautiful people to make a group? Impossible.

I started into the stack yesterday. I felt terrible not choosing people. I felt their souls. I felt the pain of actors posting and being ignored. Within twenty-four hours and five-hundred pictures later, I simply became, “Man, I don’t think anyone wants to look at a face like that for more than five minutes.” Delete.

It’s awful. Maybe people are just awful for the sake of speed. Casting requires swift decisions.

Other odd note: It is the most neutral looking people that seem to have the best credits. So, this process of the bland evolution is happening from the get-go. Those people are being chosen for to have careers. Interesting.