In late 2000, filmmaker Barry J. Hershey set out to cast actresses for a dramatic film that he had co-written and intended to direct. The plan was to incorporate some of the casting footage into the fiction film, an idea arising from Hershey's first experience with casting at film school more than 20 years earlier. After reviewing the more than 70 hours of casting tapes, a decision was made to shape this rich material into a film of its own. The film presents footage of 184 actresses--from
audition sessions held in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles--many of whom perform monologues from the work of renowned contemporary playwrights such as Eric Bogosian, David Hare, Richard LaGravenese, Susan Miller, Keith Reddin, Nina Shengold, and Alfred Uhry.
The most powerful moments find the movie surrendering to its female subjects' charisma, fixating on their hand gestures or settling into a static position, the better to watch a woman speak a stranger's words and become someone else.
Casting About is less a documentary than a lyrical tribute to women in general. Strong women, confident women, nervous women, goofy women, beautiful women and just normal-looking women. This film adores them all.
Slowly evolves beyond highfalutin concepts like 'the craft of acting' into universal questions about surface beauty, inner depth and the double-edged sword of following a dream.
Those viewers who tend to regard glasses half empty rather than half full will be appalled at what could pass for outright exploitation by the filmmakers.
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