CASTING

CLARA

Character Description

CLARA (18-29)

**Must have ballet background**

She is shy, young, and anxious. Strong and driven in her craft, she is restless and unsure of herself deep down. An introvert in her early 20’s, she feels more herself in baggy clothes than tight fitting leotards and tutus. Confused if she still feels at home in the high femme world of classical ballet and dance influencers, but unsure of how to find a new path. She has built up a hard exterior, repressing any emotions surrounding her Dad’s absence and her own sense of self. But in this new part of life, these behaviors prove tenuous as an unrest boils up in her in the form of panic attacks and insomnia that she can’t subdue. A social media addict who lurks but fears posting, she struggles with no one in her life to help guide her through this difficult time as her body—the instrument she could always depend on—is sending her signals that something is not right. While intensely observant, words are not Clara’s strong suit, and to understand her is to follow how her movement and breath change over the course of the film. An artist at her core, dance is her calling, but how to hold onto that our in the world she’s yet to understand.

CASTING NOTES

Clara’s character needs to exist as a counterpoint to the mainstream world of classical ballet and the “typical ballerina girl”. There is an emphasis in classical ballet on the feminine, the traditional, the polished and refined, the straight lines and rigid movement language, the outgoing and charismatic personalities, the bright colors and make-up covered presentation, the perfectionism and dedication, and the smile on the face that covers any sense of weakness and fragility that is underneath. This is defintley a generalization, but I still think it’s helpful to think about this as one end of the spectrum of personalities.

Clara can perform all of these things. She has to to be in that world. But deep down she is more messy and unsure of herself, muted in her gender expression, shy, agitated and manic and angry at times, slouchy and depressed at others. She prefers loose fitting cloths, darker, moodier colors, loud edgy music to the romanticism of traditional classical music. She lurks at the edges, afraid to be the center of attention, but so desperate to express something in her that is pent up feeling, a desire to achieve in a hope that it will solve this unrest. While in her shyness she can be reserved, she also has an edge to her. A balled up discontent, and anger and frustration that she doesn’t know what to do with of this dissonance she is feeling between her inner self and the world she exists in. She is clearly talented, and the audience should feel this from the start, but also we should feel a tenderness towards her in her inability to confidently express herself without fear of what might happen.

It’s as if each time she goes on stage, she is pulling herself up into being a different person. Putting on the make-up and costume to do her job, then rushing to get it off afterwards. The actor needs to have a deep interiority, who can be silent on camera but still communicate an inner world in turmoil. She needs to be hard working and focused, but also be able to express an uncertainty in herself. It could be something in a physical trait too: a distintive shape to her face, or birthmark, or some characteristic in her physical body that right away the audience feels she is different. It could be in her ethnicity or race, the color or texture of her hair or eyes. This isn’t a requirment, but I just mention it as a possibility of more ways to set her apart visually. In the end it will of course come down to the essence of this person, and that could come in many packages. In most of my scouting images I’m sharing below it’s of dark haired, white girls, that have some masculine or ambigous gender presentation, but that’s not to say that’s the only type possible for the role.

I’ve just begun my time out here in Milwaukee with the company and already I’m feeling how important it is that the person in this role can actually hold her own in a ballet company. When I think in my head of where we might find this person, I go back to many of the dancers who I interviewed, or who are friends, or whose story’s I know of who were classically trained, and at some point broke with that world and are now in the contemporary dance world, and I wonder if we might find our dancer there in one of those companies. I also think defintely looking at Ballet companies around the country, and also at some of the young artist programs or second companies. I was talking to a dancer in the second company here in Milwaukee (sort of like the jr company of younger dancers) who is about 20 and like Clara very much unsure what her future will be in Ballet, whether by choice or otherwise, but has spent her whole life doing this. I watched her afterhours as she is preparing a piece for an audition at another company and her determination, late at night in the rehreasal room to get it right. So all to say there are a lot of dancers out there in that 18-25 age range who are figuring out if this is a world they will stay in, and struggling with that tension of having a passion and feeling the force of making it into a career.

I like to look at some of these references side by side to feel that tension between the two. The mainstrem ballet/influencer world on the right, and the panicky, loner that Clara is on the left.

TOM

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

TOM (36-55)

While at his core a deeply sensitive soul, he struggles with the demands and pace of society. What we learn firsthand about Tom is what we see through the videos of him online:  as a younger man, he is wide-eyed, curious, a bit shy and naive, yet wholly dedicated to his art. In his interviews a decade later, he is thoughtful but defensive, depressive, and beaten down by life. And in the final cascade of paparazzi videos he is manic, aggressive, and unsettled. What we learn from him through the objects he left behind and the words of those on the island is that he was someone who was privately struggling, searching for some way to deal with an emptiness he had inside and shame about his past behavior. Whether he found some peace on the island or was caught in up unrest until the end remains unknown, for as Anne says, “we can’t know what he did with his private moments.”

**Only 5 shoot days**

CASTING NOTES

Tom has both a soft, senstive core, and also an aggressive side. His mental state can go from introspective and curious about art and life, to frustrated and angry with the way things are, to fully manic, verging on psychosis. I at least read him as manic/depressive or even bipolar, states that are triggered in his controntaiton with the media and success. Yet he also has a side that wants to move to a remote island, a more introspective and searching side, even tender and playful with his daughter, but also much shame he holds at his absence.

One conversation we need to have is on age. I would like Tom to go from this early/mid thirties guy in the first interview where he is young and open, to this worn down, frustrated man of his mid/late 40’s that we see in the final long ineterview. In the paparazzi videos, he runs this gamut of age ranges as well. I think for the right actor, we could bump all this later, say, starting at 40, then seeing him ten years later at 50, as though he had success and a kid later in life. But what I need to understand is if we have to cast someone younger and age them up, or if it’s possible to cast someone older, and age them down (which feels more dificult to me). A conversation across many departments, but I’m curious your opionon. There can be a shift in weight in the body of a younger to older person, that may make it hard to age down, though most of the actors I’ve been thinking of are late 40’s/ 50ish.

I’d for awhile been thinking about Peter Sarsgaard in the role. He can have that more biting, confrontational style of course, but he also has a sweet side (if you haven’t seen Michel Franco’s film “Memory” I would recommend that). That said, my hesitation is how young we could get him to appear? More recently I’d started thinking about John Magaro (Past Lives, First Cow, want to see the new film Omaha he’s in). He’s a bit younger, is masculine but has that tenderness (and midwesterness) and could do the shy, sheepish thing, but I also think could do the more reactive parts as well, but at his core I think his sensitivity comes through. But I haven’t had time to think of many others in his age range.

In researching some actual public figures who could be models for Tom (in terms of their place in culture, but also their demeanor), I found their something interesting in imagining this interview with an early Keith Haring and a late David Foster Wallace to be the same person, 10 years later. In the first I imagine he’s having his first foray with the spotlight, on a local tv network, a sweet man who is earnest, but a little shy. In the later one with DFW, he has that more standoffish feel. You can feel his brain running faster than he can talk, he’s overly self-consiousness and uncomfortable with the whole interview, and there’s this sense of confrontation, of having been put through the ringer by the media before. Yet, he is not this huge bombastic personality, he still has that humility, but also this deep pain that is felt.

Then I like to watch these paparazzi videos. Imagining the same man still. Pushed to his brink and breaking.

The I imagine him in his little cabin on the island. I made this playlist for the painter who is painting Tom’s work for the film so she can listen to it while painting. Music that fits the mood of his introspective life on the the island in his “spiritual search”. I thought i’d share it with you too.

Tom’s house

ANNE

I listen to this track a lot when I’m visualizing Anne’s property with it’s windchimes and gardens, hand built little shacks and outdoor kilns, and I feel it’s a good reference for the mood of her world that she’s built on her property and Clara enters into.

Character Description

ANNE (48-70)

She is strong, grounded, with a practical wisdom. She doesn’t have all the answers, but has found a balanced life in her homesteading and solitary ceramics practice on the remote island that she tries not to question. Though she still struggles with an inner unrest, she has made a choice to compassionately confront it, and while it may not work for others, it works for her. Fiercely independent, her wisdom on life comes from lived experience and contemplative practice that allows her to speak with a clarity of mind. An introspective and solitary person who could spend days alone tending her homestead, she has a self-assured gravitas, exuding a calm and grounded presence, yet doesn’t take herself overly seriously, knowing when to bring out her dry wit. She emerges as the unexpected mentor Clara needs as she tries to find her own way.

**Only 7 shoot days**

CASTING NOTES

At first I thought she must be a very “northwoods” person (and maybe she will be that!) and that’s sort of how I wrote her for now. But in her talking about how she’s moved around all her life, I can also imagine her being from somewhere else entirley and having ended up, as much a shock to her as others, living on this midwestern island. In my own experience living on the island, I encountered both type of people hiding out in the woods: some who’d grown up in the area, and others from as far awy as palestine and russia who had somehow ended up making a little homestead in this remote place. So while many of my initial ideas have been focused on that northwoods spirit, I’m open to unexpected choices as well.

She needs to be able to effortless hold this space of ease and calm that doesn’t feel put on. But I think she also has a bit of unrest to her still. A heaviness that we feel she’s lived many lives at this point, and where she is now is one that took her a lot of failure and hardship to come to. But where we meet her she is living out a spiritual practice of sorts that is her life, her garden, her creative practice, her personal relationship to the plants and the animals of the island, and sense of community and friendliness. Her and her world should be immedieatly intriguing to the audience (as it is to Clara). She also has that northwoods independence and frugality, as well as something of a dry wit. I see her mostly in old work clothes, thrift store items patched and repaired, someone who values materiality.

She could be a wide range of ages. I believe I wrote “50’s” in the script, but I could see from late 40’s to 70’s. I don’t want her to come across as some cartoon “wise grandma type.” I think it’s why I’m open to someone a bit younger too, that puts more questions about what she is doing here at only 47.

I also think about a lot of outsider artists, like Agnes Martin or Ruth Asawa, that sort of Black Mountai College artist that rejects the mainstream. Craftspeople who move to the woods and live out their practice as their life. There was a woman who lived in my small town growing up, she was the first “artist” I knew. She was a friend of my parents and I’d go to her house as a young kid. She was a painter, a sculptor, a print maker, many things, but it was the collection of all these things in her property in the woods that has stayed with me. The way she tended her garden, built her furniture, or filled her space with little stations to do her crafts. It was all an extension of her art practice. And I know some of these people on the island too. Always an inspiration.

Recently have started to wonder about if there’s someone from a non-film medium who already exists as a figure like this in cultural (like a Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith type character)? I’ve also wondered if there is someone, actor or non-actor, with some sort of meditation or contemplative background. I know I’ve had many teachers who have influenced me and this character who somehow seem to be able to speak in these ways about things that don’t feel cliched at all.

This book (which you don’t need to read, though I highly recommend!) Bare Bones Meditation by Joan Tollifson which is something of a spiritual biography that I found usueful in understanding Anne’s character. It’s basic the way she holds both a strong meditative practice and sene of spiritual understanding with the fact that so many of her flaws of characater, of behavior, are still there even in old age, even with all the wisdom she has. It really grounds her in this way that her teachings about meditation and consciousness don’t feel like they are coming from some otherworldy guru, but someone who understands that this things exist together. And Joan is a midwesterner so all the more a helpful reference in her down to earthness.

I”m trying to find an article in her newsletter that might speak to this, maybe try this one: https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/sufficiency?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2 I think it’s that way she acknoldeges her finger biting complusion, and using it not as something to solve or fix, but as a way to teach about being with the way things are. Anyway, Joan is an inspiration!

I don’t have great examples of who she might look like. But here’s some images from some films I’ve looked at (for production design mostly). If you haven’t seen Dominga Sotomayor Castillo’s “Too Late to Die Young” I love those scenes of the main character and the painter woman in the community!