A thing that happens when you make a show is that, suddenly, a lot of people want to be your friend, and think you’re really cool.
This is very flattering the first time it happens, but after a decade starts to become a little depressing. Because what these people mean is usually “your show looks interesting/well-paid, and I want to be a part of it and think this will help”. This attempts to sugar-coat the very reasonable question one might ask when applying for a more conventional job: “how do I demonstrate I have the skills required for the role?”
This is my attempt to answer the actual question. Both for Virtually Opera, but also in general terms.
Can You Do It? The Two Skillsets
This is an interactive immersive opera. That means that it needs performers who can use a whole range of skillsets.
For interactive theatre, my rule-of-thumb answer is Zoe Flint’s one of acting, teaching, facilitating, audience managing, and ensemble-awarenessing. That is to say, performers who can thrive with the freedom IIT gives them, and perform their role well while supporting the audience, the ensemble and the show.
I’d add ‘mechanics-comfortable’ to the above list. In my experience, the performers who are most comfortable with show mechanics are the ones who are most adept at teaching, facilitating, and managing those mechanics.
There are various ways to develop these skills; devising processes, teaching of any form, and playing TTRPGs (especially as a gamesmaster) are all ways I’ve seen people hone relevant talents. If I’m teaching someone, I normally use TTRPGs as a safe, low-stakes place to develop several of these skills separate from any sense of preparing for performance.
For Come Bargain, the extra ask is ‘improvised singing’. While there is usually an actor in our shows, most characters sing all the time. Being a singer with strong improvisational and ensemble skills is very important.
This can come from many roots - opera, jazz, musicals, church choirs. The improvisational and musical ensemble skills are the key creative talents. But good vocal technique is essential - someone singing a 2-3 hour show multiple times a week who doesn’t know how to maintain their own voice is likely to do themselves an injury.
I’m not a singing coach, but it’s a field where there are many experts out there who can help develop that. Of course, it’s not all about technique.
Do You Want To Do It? Passion About The Wyrd
This is a weird little show, and it asks you to be weird about it. Are you the sort of person who wants to conjure a supernatural world for audiences, night after night after night? Do you understand the touchstones? Do they bring you joy?
If you’re excited by urban fantasy, from Interview With The Vampire to Good Omens, or love folklore, Pratchett, Le Guin, or any of the other touchstones of this show, it’s going to stand you in good stead.
Someone who shares our passions is probably going to have some of the core assumptions of it built into their head already. Someone with solid skills and great passion might be better than someone with impeccable craft and experience, but no interest in the fantastical.
That is to say: a person who’s going to love this show is going to share something important with those of us who make it. I think that’s true of any interactive show on the fringe.
Do We Want To Do It? Being A Team
The rarely-spoken secret of interactive theatre casting is this: it’s all about the ensemble, so people are likely to put together teams that form a good ensemble. People who are going to produce great work together.
What that means is different to each company.
Each company has its own culture, shared assumptions, and values. Once a company’s started, an essential question is “how do newcomers fit in?”
At its best, companies are very thoughtful about this. They think about what skillsets are actually essential to their work, and are thoughtful about what shared assumptions are accidental and unhelpful.
For many companies, mutual support and kindness are essential. For some, an academic approach that involves performers rigorously analysing and memorising source material is required. For others, they want people who work in an intuitive way, radiating empathy and forming a tight-knit community willing to pitch in outside the performance. All of these things are reasonable, and call for a different sort of person.
Ickier examples I’ve heard about or experience include when unspoken assumptions might be about sharing social norms associated with the white (male) middle class, a sense of what a ‘professional’ does that centres power in ways that leaves some company members vulnerable, or shared knowledge, etiquette and values rooted in a particular background, religion, training, or otherwise.
It’s something to be mindful of. Opening up Come Bargain to people trained outside of classical music was an incredibly good decision that meant we got to work with some fantastic performers who brought a lot of warm ideas. During my work on The Key of Dreams, I’ve got to work with people whose interactive background is in LARP and historical reenactment. I was initially snobbish in ways that were rapidly proven wrong - it’s a different set of norms, but one that can combine really interestingly with my more theatrically-rooted ones.
How would I describe the things we’re looking for in the Come Bargain company? Certainly mutual support and kindness; we need to be able to trust each other. People who are going to take playing and having fun in the world seriously. At some level, it’s as intangible as ‘do we like spending time together? When we do, do we make beautiful things? Are your instincts going to lift up the people around you?’
Which can, of course, rapidly lead down a dangerous path. I hope that we’re mindful of how our norms ought to be questioned, but I’m sure that there are things I don’t know I’m looking for. I’m lucky to work with people who tell me when they think I’m making an assumption that’s unfair, and support me in my efforts to make sure we work with as broad a range of people as possible.
Because the short answer is “do we feel like we all want to make a world together?”
Wrapping Up
I hope that’s enough to be working with for now.
It’s not comprehensive, but ‘who are you drawn to working with’ is inherently quite a soft, fluffy, intangible question. If you feel excited by what you’ve seen of the show, that’s probably the best place to start.\
But other people will have more to say. What are you looking for in a performer? If you’re a performer, what more would you want to know?
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