Dissertation: "'Painting with Faces': The Casting Director in American Theatre, Cinema, and Television"

Certified Fall 2013

For several years, I worked as a professional dramaturg/literary manager and casting director in New York and Los Angeles. This experience inspired my dissertation, "'Painting with Faces': The Casting Director in American Theatre, Cinema, and Television." Written under the direction of Valleri J. Hohman (Theatre) and José B. Capino (Cinema Studies), this interdisciplinary project examines issues of gender and the material conditions of labor in theatre, film, and television production.

"'Painting with Faces'" challenges the auteur theory by claiming that casting directors, predominantly women and rarely credited with substantial contributions to the production process, participate fully in creative and financial decisions. They do so through their control over auditions, input into hiring, and ability to attract talent. Industry scholars and practitioners often characterize casting as clerical, rather than creative, work – a gendered hierarchy of labor traceable to women's days as secretaries in the Broadway production offices and classical Hollywood studios. By examining archived production materials and interviewing well-known casting directors, however, I argue for their status as decision-makers by providing case studies of casting personnel who discovered future stars, effected crucial casting choices, and/or attached high-profile actors to unfinanced plays and films, facilitating these projects' completion. In the process, I analyze how casting directors talk about their work and performance, and theorize some taxonomies -- face, voice, ethnicity, and gender -- upon which most casting decisions are based.