Kimberly Pomerleau ’11, actor, before Foster (left) and Fabrizio. Photograph: Lee Pellegrini

Looking into the lobby of the Robsham Theater complex on the afternoon of Friday, September 5, a visitor would have observed this scene. The place was busy; at two tables students manned sign-up sheets and directed traffic between the main stage theater on one side and the smaller, black box Bonn Studio on the other. Along a wall of windows looking out on Campanella Way, other students paced in slow circles or crouched over dog-eared photocopies of scripts, silently mouthing monologues. Had they given voice to their silent speeches, the room would have filled with dozens more characters—from Hamlet and Marc Antony to Linda Loman and James Tyrone. It was the beginning of the fall audition weekend, and three directors were holding casting calls simultaneously: Professor Stuart Hecht for Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America (a theater department production); Dan Fabrizio ’10 for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (a student Dramatics Society production); and Kimani Gordon ’09 for The Last Five Years (a 2001 musical for two actors being staged by the student-managed Contemporary Theater).

In the largely bare Bonn Studio, Fabrizio and his stage manager, Nick Foster ’11, sat American Idol–style, behind a folding table strewn with schedules, notepads, and half-empty bags of Doritos, awaiting their first auditioner. “When we do Shakespeare, a lot of people come out,” Fabrizio said, scanning the 72 names on his sign-up list. (In this production there were to be parts for 16.) In addition to preparing a Shakespeare monologue, candidates had filled out a form that asked for previous experience and special talents, as well as a few less likely questions such as “What is your favorite Shakespeare play?” and “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” The responses became fodder for the conversation Fabrizio had with each potential cast member. “Do you really like Titus Andronicus?” Fabrizio asked senior Molly Murphy, registering a double take at her answer. Murphy smiled sheepishly. “Ehh,” she shrugged, “I actually like Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing, but I wasn’t going to write those in.” For the record, Twelfth Night and cookies and cream were the runaway favorites.

The odds of winning a part this weekend were daunting (in Angels, 65 actors were trying out for 10 slots; in Five Years, 40 auditioned for the two parts plus two understudy positions). The competition might have been intense and stomachs may have been churning, but the mood on the surface was loose. Conversations among those lingering around the theater lobby tended less toward auditions and more toward how classes were going, plans for the weekend, or the unfortunate scheduling conflict with Saturday’s Georgia Tech football game. This low-key atmosphere reflects the sense of community within the department. Many students who don’t get acting parts will join stage crews. As Sarah Lang ’10 put it in describing the tough semester ahead of her and her fellow thespians, “These are the people you choose to be around instead of sleeping.”

In an otherwise empty Robsham Theater, Stuart Hecht had stationed himself in the center of the sixth row. At an information meeting earlier in the week, he’d asked students auditioning for Angels to prepare two monologues of their choice and also to be ready for improvisation exercises. As Hecht had put it: “I may or may not ask you to do something foolish.”

Evan Murphy ’12, for instance, after offering an intensely angry, profanity-laced piece from Glengarry Glen Ross, was asked to perform a magic trick. Numerous students were asked to tell a joke. The most common answer, after a troubled pause: “Hmm. I can’t think of any.” Second most common answer: “Is it okay if it’s dirty?”

These “humiliating public acts,” Hecht explained, were designed to reveal something beyond what he’d seen in the monologues. “The purpose of the audition,” he said, is to try to glean “as much about each individual actor as possible. What’s their potential range?”

“See that purple scarf over there?” he asked Seth Byrum ’11. “Put it on. We’re staging the all-male version of Swan Lake, and you’ve been cast as the prima ballerina.” Byrum looped the scarf around his neck and, for the better part of two minutes and with unexpected grace, delivered a series of leaps and pliés across the empty stage in gray slacks, a button-down shirt, striped tie, and black loafers.

Late on Saturday afternoon, senior Kimani Gordon and junior Jay Kloo were scrambling to get ready. They had been locked out of the common room in Vanderslice Hall where they’d planned to hold auditions for The Last Five Years, and were forced to relocate to the Robsham main stage. They had to drag a piano from the Bonn Studio and post notices of the venue change. Finally, their accompanist, Steve Bass ’11, was at the keyboard warming up. “What song is that?” Kloo asked.

“‘Clair de Lune,’” Bass replied, and after a pause, “It was in Ocean’s 11.”

The Last Five Years, written and composed by Jason Robert Brown, may be the most unconventional play on the fall schedule. The story follows the five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein and Cathy Hiatt; Jamie tells his side going forward, from meeting to break-up, while Cathy tells her side in reverse.

After auditions on Friday and Saturday, Gordon called back six men and six women for a final round on Sunday afternoon. This time they were in a lounge in Vanderslice. The actors were seated together in chairs set up for them (they looked like a jury) and waited patiently as Gordon called them up one by one. As the men and women belted out their tunes, Gordon, wiry and slight, perched on the edge of his chair or leaned way over the table at which he sat; sometimes he crouched on the ground, all the while furiously writing on a white legal pad.

Auditions are a nerve-racking cycle of long waits interrupted by brief bursts of intense animation. And after a weekend of rehearsing, performing, and waiting for callback lists to be posted, this fall’s auditioners had to play the waiting game one more time, as the three directors met Sunday night in a room off the scene shop to choose their casts.

Each director came to the meeting with a dream team in mind, knowing he might lose a preferred leading actor to another show. Over the years, Hecht said, that knowledge has produced its own brand of anxiety. “Here’s another director sitting across from me, and I’m angling for a certain actor thinking, ‘This other director is definitely going to scoop this person up.’”

This time around, however, the only issue was Sarah Lang being double-cast in Angels and Much Ado. Fortunately, the timing of the shows would allow her to appear in both, an arrangement she happily accepted. As Hecht noted, “even though you might have 100 people audition, you’re crossing your fingers and toes that you find your Hamlet.”

Read more by Tim Czerwienski