Well, to start, I thought all of you did a fantastic audition. But there is such a thing as type. Have you all heard that word before? Type? Well, type means can you play the role without making people go ‘Huh? What? Why is that fat girl playing Skinny the Mouse in Skinny the Mouse Puts on a Pretty Dress?’ Remember last year’s Christmas play when Mrs. Denton cast Juanita Alonzo as Mrs. Santa Clause? I bet all of you were thinking—‘Hey! Mrs. Santa Clause isn’t a stuttering Mexican!’ Mrs. Denton was casting against type—and that is wrong, children. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. It’s wrong. Type is there for a reason. You can’t say the sky is green just because artistically you think it should be green. It’s not. It’s blue. Just like Mrs. Santa Clause is white and pretty and doesn’t have trouble saying ‘s’s and Skinny the Mouse has to be skinny. Her name isn’t Chubby the Mouse, because I mean, who would read that book? Not me. And none of you would either, because I wouldn’t assign it.
So right away giving some of you lead roles in Bambi would have been casting against type, and I just couldn’t do that. Tara, you gave an amazing reading as Fawn, Bambi’s lover, but you’re older than everyone in the class because you couldn’t master long division and so this is your second year in the third grade. That means that no matter who I gave Bambi too, you were going to look too old to be their girlfriend—unless of course Bambi has a thing for older women, which I don’t think he does—Hahahaha—Anyway, that’s why I made you Rabbit #3. Now, this might seem unfair, but is it any more unfair than having the rest of the children be ignored while I try to push long division into your little head like a man rolling a stone up a hill? I’d say they’re about equal. You understand equal, don’t you, Tara? Keep plugging away at those worksheets, now. I don’t want to have to relearn the spelling of your Polish last name again next year—all those ‘x’s and ‘t’s strung together like ugly dish towels and cardigans on a clothing line.
Maybe this would be easier if I explained why I did give roles to people. I mean, honestly, if I spend all day telling those of you who didn’t get roles why, most of you would go home and cry into your Pokemon bedsheets for hours and not get your state capitals homework done—and state capitals are important.
Let’s start with the crucial role of Bambi. In casting Bambi, I was looking for someone with a rogue sense of innocence, someone who could project innocence lost and regained in the love of another. That’s why I went with Cooper St. Pierre. First off, I don’t know how many of you have seen The Boy with the Red Balloon, but it is a masterpiece of French cinema, and Cooper looks just like the little boy in it. Since I’ve always seen Bambi as a mammalian version of the Boy with the Red Balloon, it seemed like a no-brainer to me that Cooper had to play the part. Not to mention, he seems to be the only boy in the class who doesn’t scarf down a happy meal immediately after leaving school every day, and so he was the only one I could count on to please our theatergoers when Bambi sheds his clothing and does a dance of spring in the middle of act two. This, by the way, is something I’m adding into the production, as I feel it will move people far more than that ridiculous “Twidderpated” song that Mr. Owl is supposed to sing.
While we’re on the topic of Mr. Owl, I would like to extol—extol, by the way, means to say really nice things about someone you think is godly—the virtues of Jonathon P. Creslin. I don’t know how many of you got a chance to see the Abbigdale Community Player’s production of Seussical last spring, but Jonathon played the little boy in it, and he was fantastic! Two thirds of the way through his solo in “Alone in the Universe” I had a flash of casting genius. ‘He must be my Mr. Owl,’ I said to myself, and to my partner Krista, who was sitting next to me. Now, I know many of you are thinking: If you already knew who you wanted as Mr. Owl, why did you bother even having auditions for the role? To that I ask, why do I let all of you go to Art every Tuesday with Mr. Burke when I know there’s only one or two of you who are capable of doing more than picking snot out of your nose, smearing it on a piece of green colored paper, and calling it avante garde? Because I’m mandated by the school? Yes. But more than that, because of possibility. There’s a possibility that maybe one of you would be better than Jonathon. Granted, it was a minute, almost non-existent possibility that any of you would be better than Jonathon, but still. It's hard to beat someone who has such experience—nothing beats experience, children. There are no more solid debuts in theater anymore. No more break-out stars. If you want a good show, you have to go with what you know. See that? Mrs. Brugel just rhymed. I saw some of you recognize that. Pat yourselves on the back. So anyway, I went with Jonathon. Granted, he does miss almost every other day of school due to his being cast in several high-profile Juicy Juice commercials, and yes, he did quit the Thanksgiving pageant last year leaving me to play the role of Perky Turkey with little notice—not that I didn’t relish the opportunity to step back in the spotlight, to rave reviews I might add—but when working with an artist of Jonathon’s caliber, exceptions must be made. And so what if he ends up transferring to Park View Elementary next year, as many of you have pointed out he might? Jonathon’s Dad has given me his solemn vow that even in that instance, he will gladly drive Jonathon to practice on Tuesdays—the only day of the week Jonathon doesn’t have Method Training—and I trust him, and am very exciting about the opportunity to work with such professionalism.
Now, I know the person most of you are, shall we say, befuddled to see on the list is Camille Ronstadt. I know what many of you are saying. Why not give it to Tara? She’s old. She looks like she’s given birth to a large mammal sometime in the recent past. First off, let me say, her getting the coveted role of Bambi’s mother—who in this production I will be calling Lucinda—has nothing to do with Camille’s mother buying all the lovely ‘Reading is Fun’ posters you see hung up all over the room. Nor does it have anything to do with the kiss some of you may have witnessed between myself and Mrs. Ronstadt last Thursday after auditions. I would like all of you to know that I am very much in love with Krista, and though we are going through a rough patch right now, I would never cheat on her, not even with a beautiful, talented, passionate widow like Mrs. Ronstadt. I would never never do a thing like that—never. Camille got the role because she’s dedicated, easy to get along with, and non-threatening. A quality I thoroughly enjoy. After all, though many directors will deny this, nobody wants to work with someone they feel is better than them. I mean, how can you direct someone if they have more talent than you? It would be like steering an ocean liner with a toothpick. Luckily for me, none of you are even close to being talented enough to intimidate me—okay, maybe Jonathon—but I’ve got my toothpick ready for him! I like Camille because she’s clay—clay I can mold and make into a beautiful ashtray that will get shattered every night at the end of Act One by a greedy hunter who will then—in the form of kabuki theater—bring her onstage, skin her, and eat her hungrily while Bambi watches, praying for it all to end quickly. Camille, I hope you’re ready to take on that kind of challenge. It might require you developing several nervous tics until you finally get it right, but I’m willing to embark upon that journey if you are.
Next we have the role of Thumper. I’ve noticed that many of the girls are in the class had their hearts set on the role. Girls—Thumper is a boy. A boy. Again, type is crucial. I can’t have a girl romping around onstage pretending to be a boy. What would that say about feminine identity? You don’t need to steal roles away from boys to make yourselves feel good enough, girls. I know roles for women are limited in theater, but that just means you have to work twice as hard and not care when you have to step all over somebody to get what you want. As the great Alan Thicke once said to me, ‘Go numb, my fearless lass, go numb.’ The role has been given to Juan Alonzo, Juanita’s younger brother—and clearly the brighter light on the Alonzo family marquee. Although his English is what some of you consider ‘erractic’ a word that means—not always something you can count on—I’m sure with a little coaching, and a lot of repeated viewings of the movie, he just might steal the show.
Flower was an easy role to cast. It’s going to Jesse Stangler. And I’m going to use this opportunity to teach you all a very important lesson about fate. I want all of you to turn and look at Jesse. He’s unclean, he’s smelly, and he’s incredibly effeminate. These are all qualities that I have beseeched—a word that means asked over and over and over again—his parents to do something about this, but to no avail. Jesse’s parents come from the school of live and let live, which is ironically why most of their children will probably die young—and in motorcycle accidents or of undiagnosed hepatitis. So I took Jesse on as a personal mission of mine. Oh sure, scrubbing him clean with a sponge every day during recess might have been a little much, but I bet Tobey Langworthy who sits behind him didn’t mind not having to wear a surgical mask to school every day, didn't you, Tobey? And yes, maybe nicknaming him ‘Tootsie’ to try and break him of his more girly habits was a bit humiliating, but if there’s one thing I know to be true, children, it’s that you can’t get into Tish if you can’t get rid of your swish. That’s right, rhyming again. Points for you, Jonathon. I know you picked up on it. But imagine my surprise when Jesse read for the role of Flower, a gender bending smelly animal that seems to win the hearts of the other animals in the forest—how I don’t know—and suddenly Jesse seemed to come into his own. It was then I knew I could do something called ‘typecast’ him. Typecasting means giving someone the role they were born to play, and there’s nothing wrong with it at all, children. Nothing at all. Up until Jesse read, I was determined to turn Flower into a Woodchuck and cut the role in half. Now, it’s become the role of a lifetime for a prissy little stinker who might die on a Harley one day—and when he does, he’ll remember that one moment on stage clad as a skunk and frolicking off-stage left with glee.
Finally, we come to the most important role in the show: Fawn. It’s true that Fawn—in the original, should I say--male-oppressive script—that Fawn barely had any lines and was merely an after-though to Bambi’s sexual awakening. But I had a vision of her being her own deer. Being a female who could take charge and one day, perhaps, lead the forest as a kind of Eva Peron for the four-legged population. And once I realized how important the role was to the show, I couldn’t give it to just anybody. I simply couldn’t trust any old Mary, May, or Margaret with a role of that essence. And so, after auditioning every single one of the girls in the class, and after two days of callbacks, which I know caused some of you to stop eating for prolonged periods of time—something I see nothing wrong with, as most of you were in dire need of dieting—I decided there was only one option: I had to play the role.
I know many of you are angry with me about this, and I know that you’re saying it’s hypocritical—a word meaning I say eating too much is disgusting and then go home every night and gorge myself on ice cream until the hurt goes away and get away with it because I have fast metabolism given to me by my mother, thank God—that it’s hypocritical to give myself the role, thereby making myself the romantic interest of Cooper and creating a very odd pairing, and then claim Tara would be wrong for it because of her age and general sloppy demeanor, but a director need not always have rationale for her artistic decisions, my children. Sometimes when a talent is so great, exceptions to rules must be made, for the benefit of the production. I know you're all saying Fawn has a song. Can Mrs. Brugel sing? Children, acting isn't about singing, just like singing isn't about singing. Singing is about acting. Remember that. Do you all think I want to go home every night and learn lines while Krista complains that we never have se—um, that we don’t play—um, she just gets mad. Do you think I want to go to a tailor in town and ask them to make a deer costume for a thirty-seven year old woman to wear in a third grade production based on a second-rate Disney movie? Do you think I want to stroke Cooper’s bare chest onstage presenting post-coital bliss in a forest tableau that I will also have to construct myself without any help from any of the other faculty because they claim what I’m doing is disturbing and perhaps, qualifies as child pornography? No! No-no-no-no! I don’t want to do all that, but I have to. I have to because art is important, children. Art is important.
So I hope that settles all the rumors, and that now we can all move on with our lives. Please take our your workbooks, and remember, I expect to see you all here tomorrow at five am for dance practice. There’s no way we’re going to be able to master that twenty-minute ballet at the beginning of the show unless we start right now. You’ll all thank me later when someday you go to a New York callback for Oklahoma where everyone is puking in the bathroom and you’re smiling and singing and dancing your way right into happiness.
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