The Casting

Real auditions for amateur actors, opened up to the eyes of an audience.

“When you watch a portrait you don’t see just a face, but what’s behind that face: personal projections. So what is hidden behind a portrait is you!”

Benno Steinegger, notes for The Casting

The Casting is a project about beauty. The way we look at things is a highly political matter. The project searches for beauty where one does not expect it, finds the spectacular in the ordinary and vice versa, and above all feels the beauty in the ongoing effort to change one’s point of view, and so to open up to change. On stage as in life.

The performances are real castings for amateur actors. The casting director has met and observed them in their daily lives, and draws a road map that guides each participant through the performance. Staged portraits are “drawn” live by the performers and the conductor: by portraying themselves inside the frame he gives them, the performers come to look at themselves from a different point of view.

The Casting speaks about the courage of these performers to question what and who they are, what they could be, and what the world they live in is and could be. To look at oneself from a different point of view already means to change something.