[1]Posting a casting notice for a robotic performance of Brighton Beach Memoirs in BackStage still seems like a big hurdle for our project. Or perhaps more like throwing down the gauntlet.

In the years we’ve been experimenting with digital media in theater, actors have often said “Oh, you’re trying to replace us [with digital puppets, projections, etc.] !” Actually, I think we’ve always been trying to magnify them … put a focus on the live and human by contrasting it with a constructed other.

A notice in BackStage seems like the ultimate incendiary act, throwing propane on the flames. It’s a bastion of traditional theater casting.

Here’s the link [2] to a typical casting search …

But without it, the experiment doesn’t seem complete.

We’ll see. Posting the notice might be premature, if and until we get some kind of approval to use the script. And I’m not at all sure that we will get that approval. We need some kind of backup plan.