Written by Matt Putnam in 2023

This guide is a must read for all first time directors, music (vocal) directors, choreographers, and CRB members.

MTG does things a little differently. In addition to all of the normal people involved in auditions, MTG creates a Casting Review Board (CRB) which oversees the process, and there are a few extra steps and considerations in order to make everything run smoothly.

CRB

CRB is a 5-member panel formed for each show, and composed of board members and other experienced MTG members who are not on dirstaff or auditioning for the show. Two members, the CRB Representatives, are present at auditions and callbacks to oversee the process, and the other three (the CRB Chair and two other members) do not see auditions and only receive an anonymized report about casting. CRB must approve of the dirstaff’s proposed cast before the show can proceed.

CRB’s main purpose is to ensure that 1s (current students) are given preference over 2s (MIT community and MTG members; see CRB documentation for a more detailed definition) and 3s (everyone else). As MTG is an ASA-recognized student group, we must maintain a certain percentage of our membership as current students, and it’s only right that an organization funded by MIT student tuition and using MIT spaces should be primarily for students.

However, this does not mean that students must be given roles before non-students regardless of skill. Any auditionee must still meet the requirements of the role, and 2s may be cast ahead of 1s if their skill is so much higher that it represents a significant improvement in the quality of the show. 3s may only be considered for a role if no 1s or 2s can reasonably play it.

CRB’s secondary purpose is to ensure that auditions are run fairly. In order to prevent dirstaff from gaming the system in an effort to portray one auditionee more favorably than others (for example, a 2 that they would prefer to cast, or simply their friend), all auditionees must be given the same opportunities to present themselves (within reason). For example, the amount of coaching for a particular reading must be the same among all auditionees.

The CRB Document

In an effort to keep all of this as objective as possible, the dirstaff must create and CRB must approve of a document (the CRB Document) listing all of the requirements of each character. If you are new to this, ask the producer for an example from a recent show to crib off. Although this may be a pain and often seems overspecified in retrospect, it’s at least a good way to make sure the dirstaff is on the same page as to what they’re looking for for each role.

First, divide your characters into tiers, typically 3 of them. This often follows billing tier (leads, supporting characters, minor characters/ensemble) but it doesn’t have to. The purpose of these tiers is to prioritize which roles get filled first, so you want the highest tier to be made of the most difficult roles to fill. A side character who might be billed lower but has difficult technical demands might go in your top casting tier. CRB should be more forgiving of casting non-students over students for higher tiers. CRB should consider whether or not characters are tiered appropriately when approving the document.

Then, for each character:

• Determine which performing aspect (acting, singing, dancing) is the highest priority. This is to break deadlocks if, for example, the director prefers A’s acting but the vocal director prefers B’s singing. It also helps to prioritize the requirements (see below). CRB should make sure that this choice makes sense.
• List what qualities you’re looking for, typically broken into the categories of Must Have, Strongly Prefer, and Nice to Have.
• Must Haves are very strong and failure to meet them should disqualify a candidate regardless of other skill. Dirstaff should make sure that these really are essential, as trying to break or fudge them later will bring the entire Document into question and undermine any argument for casting 2s over 1s. Similarly, CRB should make sure that these items really do seem essential.

• Strongly Prefers are the place to make a case for 2s over 1s. A 2 who hits all or most of the Strongly Prefers when no 1 does should be a top contender, even when the 1s hit all of the Must Haves. Again, CRB should make sure these are all important qualities.

• Nice to Haves are very weak and are really only used to break ties among candidates of the same CRB tier. CRB should glance at these when approving the Document but not allow the dirstaff to cast a 2 over a 1 because of them.

• For all of these qualities, CRB should make sure that they are judgeable. Try to imagine what you would look for, and what kind of a performance would exemplify, barely meet, or fail to meet that criteria. If it’s difficult to imagine, ask dirstaff to clarify.
• For any quality that’s highly specific to a particular moment, make sure that the callback material covers that quality. For example, if you say that a character “must be able to instantly switch from calm to enraged”, that sounds like you’re talking about a particular line in the script, so do that for the callback.
• Consider splitting the vocal range requirement between Must Have and Strongly Prefer. Say a character is written to sing a sustained G but riff up to an A, consider listing the G as a Must Have and the A as a Strongly Prefer. And again, be careful about Must Haves–if someone is otherwise great but can’t quite reach that G, would you disqualify them, or would you be willing to change the key or rewrite the line to accommodate them? If you make it required but then try to fudge for someone you otherwise like, you will only undermine yourself.

For ensemble roles, the qualities should be broader and more forgiving. For very large ensembles, consider splitting requirements between a dance ensemble and a vocal ensemble. The Document should list a minimum and maximum ensemble size. The minimum is used to justify a second round of auditions if it’s not met, and qualified 1s should be accepted into the ensemble until the maximum is hit.

At the bottom of the document, we typically list general qualities that would make someone uncastable for any role, including ensemble. See a previous document for our usual wording.

The Audition Process

Before and During Auditions

Before auditions, dirstaff needs to decide what they will have each auditionee do, and treat each person the same. Typically we do one audition song and one reading, but whether the reading is done once or twice and when/how direction is given can vary. Whatever the format, it needs to be the same for each person.

In addition, dirstaff will need to pick and prepare all of the callback materials before auditions. This is because sometimes people will have a conflict with callbacks, and so we will do an insta-callback for them at the end of the audition day. Since we may not have seen everyone yet and don’t have a complete idea of who will be called back for what, we will run them through the callbacks for every character that they fit just to be safe. We cannot cast someone for a role they were not called back for, unless all of the other auditionees that were called back end up cast in other roles, vacating the candidate pool.

Carefully consider how many callback songs/sides you need and how long the cuts need to be. The more material, the longer the process will be. At the same time, you must test for everything you intend to judge auditionees on. Try to double up materials (use the same materials for multiple similar characters) or use a song as both a vocal and acting callback as much as possible.

For dance auditions, the longer and more difficult the routine is, the more teaching time it will require. Consider designing a relatively short routine that starts very easy and gets harder as it goes. If you need to identify different tiers of dance skill for particular characters, design the routine so that those characters must satisfactorily perform up to certain points in the routine. For example, you might have the routine be four 8-counts that go trivial, easy, intermediate, and advanced. Define in the CRB Doc that all auditionees must complete the first to be castable, named characters must complete the second, and particular dance heavy roles must complete the third and strongly prefer the fourth. Then let the auditionees know where the cutoffs are and let them drop out if they don’t want a dance heavy role.

During all of this, the CRB Reps’ job is to see that this is done as fairly as possible. They should check that:

• Each auditionee is given the same amount of coaching on the reading
• If the reading requires another person to read against, that that person is giving as uniform of a performance as possible. Often, it’s a CRB Rep who reads against the auditionee.
• Each auditionee sings roughly the same amount for their song, within reason. You don’t need to sit there with a stopwatch, but don’t let one auditionee sing an entire song when everyone else has picked (or is cut off to) a normal audition cut length. Sometimes auditionees won’t make a cut, they’ll just start at the beginning and sing until someone stops them, so stop them if the accompanist doesn’t. You can listen in when the auditionee is showing their music to the accompanist and make sure it sounds like there’s a cutoff planned. One exception to this–sometimes, if someone starts off weak but finds their confidence midway through, we will let them keep singing for a bit longer (if their cut allows). Although we’re letting this person sing longer, it’s still fair because we would let any auditionee do this. Same idea if they crash and burn and need to restart.
• Different dance audition groups get the same amount of time and basically the same instruction

Deciding on Callbacks

Putting together the callbacks schedule is a huge mess, but the leaner you can keep the schedule the more smoothly everything will run. You should be able to tell from the initial audition who the frontrunners for each role are, and you don’t need to waste everyone’s time calling back someone who has no reasonable shot at getting the role. At the same time, you cannot cast someone for a role they aren’t called back for unless all other candidates are cast elsewhere, so you need to be thorough.

CRB should make sure that dirstaff is calling back enough capable 1s for each role. A malicious director may try to game the system by calling back mostly 2s and omitting 1s, usually referring to the CRB Doc and applying the must haves too aggressively. Callbacks are the place to prove whether or not an auditionee meets the role requirements, not initial auditions. Vocal range can be a hard requirement–no sense in calling back a bass for a tenor role–but you should give a little leeway. If a role requires a high F but the notes from auditions list the range up to E, you should probably give them a shot (if they are otherwise reasonable to be called back).

During Callbacks

CRB should ensure that:

• Everyone is given the same instruction and length of time to prepare.
• If there are insta-callbacks, or scheduling requires that a particular callback be done in different sessions, use a stopwatch to make sure that the instruction portion is roughly the same length each time. For an insta-callback (happening first and usually one-on-one), the directors should think about how long they will want to give the main group and give the insta-callbackee that much time as well. It’s typical when working one-on-one that the instruction is more efficient and happens faster, but the auditionee should not be rushed. The auditionee may waive their extra time if they are ready.
• It is unavoidable that the person who performs last will have more time to think about their performance than the person who goes first. To compensate for this over the course of all of callbacks, try not to have the same person go first or last multiple times. Some people like going first though, so you can ask for volunteers to go first and that may solve the problem.
• At least one CRB Rep is present during each performance section, and ideally during the teaching sections as well. We usually parallelize callbacks, so this does involve some running around. The schedule should plan for this, but if things get off schedule, performances must wait for a Rep to be available.

Casting

Congratulations, you’ve survived callbacks and now it’s time to cast the show.

First of all, if you’ve scheduled callbacks to start in the evening, then they’re going to run until very late, so consider waiting until the next day to reconvene and decide casting. People are tired and cranky after hours of callbacks, and it’s maddening to try to start calling people at 2am. Do let the cast know that this is the plan, as they will be nervously awaiting the results.

Deciding on the Cast

Casting is a difficult puzzle to put together, and CRB may be nagging you, so stay patient. If you’ve done your job right, and make an effort to be a bit forgiving to students and a bit more stringent towards non-students, this should go okay.

Start with your top tier and work down. You should not deny someone a top tier role because you “need” them in a lower tier role. If that happens, then perhaps that means that the lower tier role should be higher (you are reading all of this before auditions, right?). You should also not bump someone from a better role because some other configuration and shuffling of roles makes something fit better in a lower tier (shuffling within a tier is fine).

This portion is where the CRB Reps’ job is much more subjective. When dirstaff proposes casting a 2 over available 1s, it’s your job to judge if that 2 really does meet the requirements more strongly than any 1. Be stricter in your judgment the higher the tier (meaning, 2s can take roles because they really are better), but more forgiving of auditionees’ imperfections in lower tiers. In particular, a 1 has to display a pretty severe lack of skill to be uncastable in the ensemble. 3s should not be considered unless no 1s or 2s are available (due to small audition size) or capable based on must haves.

CRB does not care about 1s vs. 1s, at least as long as the dirstaff is not unfairly favoring their friends.

Additional Auditions

If there were not enough auditionees to fill the cast (either by sheer numbers, or due to nobody meeting certain role requirements), it may be necessary to hold additional auditions. You will still cast the show to the best of your ability, and part of your presentation to CRB will be the need to hold additional auditions.

CRB should be skeptical of this need, and should push dirstaff to try to complete casting from the available auditionees. It’s a bad look to reject auditionees and then hold additional auditions, unless the reason is to fill particular roles with particular requirements that were clearly not met. This usually happens with race and gender requirements.

The CRB Meeting

After dirstaff has decided on their desired casting and the CRB Reps are satisfied, there is a final meeting with all of CRB for approval. At this meeting, the dirstaff presents CRB with their casting, but with names omitted. To keep track of everyone, names should be replaced with numbers or some other identifier. CRB sees the size of the audition pool and 1/2/3 status of all auditionees, who was called back, and who was cast. They may ask why 1s were passed over, and dirstaff should be able to point to the requirements on the Doc that they failed to meet. Once all questions are answered, CRB meets privately to approve or reject.

From the perspective of a non-Rep CRB member, if the Reps did their jobs thoroughly then there should be little to discuss. Dirstaff should not be presenting CRB with a casting that the Reps disapprove of. This meeting should be a time to finalize any discussions about any wrinkles that appeared along the way and make sure that they were resolved, and make sure that the Reps were not badgered by the dirstaff.

If CRB decides to reject the casting, the dirstaff will have to amend their casting to satisfy CRB’s objections. If there are more than one or two small and easily fixed problems, then something has gone horribly wrong in the process.

Notifying Cast

Once the cast is approved, dirstaff should begin notifying people of their roles. This should be done from the top tier down, because if anyone rejects you will need to adjust. Rejections should be very rare. If you get more than a few, then the audition form was probably not thorough enough in its character descriptions, or did not offer auditionees an adequate way to describe their preferences.

Anonymity should be preserved with CRB until roles are accepted, in case of rejections. CRB needs to re-approve if dirstaff wants to replace a rejected role with someone of lower 1/2/3 status. No CRB approval is needed to replace at the same or higher status.

If additional auditions are run, CRB still applies. If another general casting call goes out, then this will run much the same way. If no general call goes out and instead dirstaff wants to poke people directly (common if we’re looking to fill one role with specific requirements), then CRB should make sure that it doesn’t seem like dirstaff is only poking their friends and trying to avoid potential 1s. This may be hard to determine, so just try to make sure that it doesn’t feel shady.

Appendix

Why do we even have this process?

From MTG’s creation in 1971 until some time around 2004, there was no CRB, and dirstaffs would simply try to cast students as much as possible. However, MTG’s momentum grew and its membership came to include many alumni as well as people unaffiliated with MIT. One fateful show (exactly which has been intentionally forgotten), a non-student director invited all of their non-student friends to audition and cast them (and cast very few students). That particular incident ended with the director ousted and the show recast, but the student members decided to create CRB in an effort to keep that from ever happening again. CRB has been amended several times since its creation.

CRB was created at a time when a typical audition pool might be 50% 1s (with talent ranging from great to bad), 40% 2s (most of which were very good), and 10% 3s (almost invariably great). At the time of this writing (2023), COVID caused an almost complete reset of MTG’s membership, with most of the alumni finding other activities to busy themselves with and not returning. So the membership is currently mostly students anyway, and CRB’s job is much simpler for the moment.

Amending the CRB Document after auditions have started

Sometimes you realize that something in the Doc is just not working the way the audition pool is shaping up. Maybe you have a dearth of men and have to scramble to redefine roles as cross-castable. Maybe you realize that a requirement is too strict. Maybe you realize that a character is in the wrong tier.

All is not lost, it is possible to amend the Doc. Tell the Reps what you want to change, and the Reps will notify the Chair of the request. The Reps should ensure that this is not being done for any underhanded tactical reason, and if they’re ok with the change then the Chair should approve.

Amending callback materials after callbacks have begun

This especially happens with insta-callbacks.

Sometimes you realize that the callback materials aren’t ideal. If you realize that a callback side/song is unnecessary and want to drop it to save time, we can simply pretend not to have heard anyone that has already performed it. However, if you want to add something, that may be difficult. If this happens during regular callbacks, it may be possible to call someone in (especially if they’re still there), but if this isn’t possible you should strongly consider not trying to add it.

We do have an allowance where someone who is known to MTG (and the dirstaff) but has conflicts with all of auditions can use their past performances in lieu of an audition, so it’s conceivable that if such a person did an insta-callback and then we wanted to add more material for regular callbacks we could apply a similar judgment.

The CRB Reps will have to exercise their judgment in these cases. In general, CRB should be more understanding of breaches of protocol when it comes to insta-callbacks.