Age and Acting

Hans Rosemond (aka Lloyd on STBD) turned 30 this weekend, which -- as is expected around "major birthdays" -- led to a bit of soul-searching on his part. Having recently turned 30 myself, I know the drill:

1) Realize Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane when he was 25.

2) Realize you haven't, and you're 30.

3) Drink a lot.

Old Is the New Young

Traditionally, actors tend to be a few years older than the characters they portray. The conventional wisdom here is, "You have to have lived THROUGH something in order to convince OTHERS that you're 'living through' it." (This would explain the careers of many Hollywood actors, who portray teenagers well through their first real-life divorces and / or plastic surgery mishaps.)

On Something to Be Desired, our cast also plays characters whose age differs from their own -- but not always in reverse. In fact, Ann Turiano (Caroline), Shaun Cameron Hall (Dean) and Will Guffey (Leo), among others, are all a year or two younger than the characters they portray.

However, the ambivalent passage of time on STBD means that the characters' ages are always a bit vague (i.e., Caroline may have graduated college in 2003, but that doesn't mean she's 26 now). Meanwhile, the actors still keeping aging like clockwork. This means that Ann Turiano is now likely older than Caroline, despite having been younger than Caroline when she began playing her.

And you thought The Simpsons had questionable chronology...

Don't Confuse Age With Experience

Just because an actor is a certain age, it doesn't mean he or she is naturally able to inhabit "younger" characters. Likewise, just because an actor is younger than a character on paper, it doesn't mean he / she can't play older.

The dividing line isn't age; it's experience.

On STBD, I was confident that Ann Turiano could play an older role, so Caroline was created with Ann's "mature" side in mind. Meanwhile, Dean and Leo have never been paragons of responsibility and common sense, so casting actors a year or two younger than the characters themselves seemed appropriate.

(Full disclosure: The characters of Dean and Leo were written as being 22-24 years old well before we actually considered casting. When I realized that the actors I could collaborate with were primarily college students, I resisted the idea of "younging up" the characters to match the actors' ages. Instead, I trusted that their skill would carry us through to believability.

I think we've done well thus far.)

And, if you need further proof that age is nothing but a number, think back again to Citizen Kane: Orson Welles may have been only 25 when he directed it, but he portrayed the title character throughout 60 years of the man's life. Now that's convincing acting. (And great makeup.)

Where Have All the Yinzers Gone?

One question we hear a lot from current AND former Pittsburghers is: "Where are all the yinzers on STBD?"

For those of you who've never graced our fair city, "yinzer" is a term lovingly applied to a subsection of the local populace. It's based upon the colloquialism "yinz," which is Pittsburghese for "y'all."

Yinzers tend to be hard-working, blue-collar, lifelong diehard Steelers fans (or "Stillers," if you speak the lingo). The most defining characteristic is the dialect, and it's that accent that's as inseparable from local Pittsburgh culture as the linguistics heard in Minnesota, Buffalo, Texas, Boston, Los Angeles... really, in most other major population centers.

So: where ARE the yinzers on STBD?

Simple answer: we've never had one, and we probably never will. At least, not on purpose.

Believe it or not, most of the STBD cast are native Pittsburghers. And yet, you've never heard Leo, Caroline or Liz utter a drop of Pittsburghese. That's because they never picked it up during their formative years -- and, even if they did, they lost it during dialect classes in college.

About the closest we've come to a "yinzer" accent comes from Rob Stone, who plays Rich's infrequently-seen lawyer Alex. But we're not going out of our way to play up that angle, mainly because we refuse to believe Pittsburgh should be defined by its dialect. It's the same reason some folks thought Fargo was a negative reflection on the northern midwest: people trapped in that speech pattern tend to come across as "yokels."

We like to think STBD represents a more universally engaged version of Pittsburgh. We think we can accurately portray the denizens of the city without resorting to accents as cultural shortcuts.

Now... if we could only do something about the diversity of our cast... (Though, some might argue, a lack of diversity is also, sadly, an accurate depiction of Pittsburgh...)

The Incredible Shrinking / Expanding Cast!

When STBD began, we had 8 cast members.

4 years later, we have over 25.

On one hand, it's incredibly gratifying to know that so many talented actors want to be a part of the STBD experience. On the other, it's daunting to juggle so many cast members (and their schedules), because it makes focusing on a condensed (and achievable) story that much harder.

When we surveyed our fans back in February, we learned what we pretty much expected: Caroline, Dierdre and Leo -- our three longest-running characters -- resonate the most with the audience. Of the newer characters, Rich and Tim seemed to stick in the audience's minds the most. The rest are seen as "supporting characters" -- at least until they have more opportunities to shine.

Off-Season Switcheroo

When we return with new episodes of Season Five in September, several of last season's cast members won't be returning. Most have moved away from Pittsburgh, which is hard to argue against (since we're not paying them). Series-wise, their absence may actually be a blessing in disguise, because it dulls the fight for screen time and allows us to focus on the characters the audience is already responding to.

Meanwhile, we're adding at least one new recurring character and expanding the role of another significantly. Why? Because we appreciate the value of two elements on STBD:

A) The continual need for "fresh blood," and

B) The need to be able to tell certain types of stories.

So we looked around and said, "What character TYPES are we missing?" And then we evaluated the actors we've underused, or those who've been patiently waiting off-camera for a chance to act on the show, to see who might be able to fit our potential needs.

The (Too) Big Picture?

Under these circumstances, it's far too easy to have a cast balloon to unmanageable proportions. It's doubly dangerous because, unpaid, there's no guarantee that actors we've come to rely upon to tell our story will actually be there for the long haul. This makes telling a concise story with a reliable payoff quite dicey.

If you're evaluating potential actors, or merely wondering how many roles you CAN include in your story, stop and ask yourself a more pertinent question: How many roles do you NEED to tell your story?

In web video, as in all things, keeping it simple will save you acres of headaches later.

(And, as in all things, always be open to taking a chance. You never know what casting choice or character invention might pay off in unexpected ways.)

The Lloyd Problem

Having read through the STBD Fan Survey results, a few interesting points jump out to us. One, which we're pretty proud of, is the continued affection viewers feel for the characters of Jack and Dean, who have left the series but haven't left the minds of the viewers.

One thing the viewers don't always realize -- and may not necessarily care about -- is that Dan Stripp (who plays Jack Boyd) and Shaun Cameron Hall (who plays Dean Dockerty) left STBD due to opportunities and obligations that superseded their connection to the series.

In real life, Dan and his wife had a baby and moved closer to her family, while Shaun decided to explore grad school opportunities in Virginia. Neither of them wanted to leave STBD, necessarily, but they realized their next steps would take them away from Pittsburgh.

This doesn't mean Jack and Dean have ceased to exist. On the contrary, Dean made a cameo appearance in a recent New Year's Eve episode of STBD, and Jack's next visit is always just off the horizon. In fact, their continued commitment to the show, even from afar, speaks volumes about how much they continue to enjoy their STBD experience -- and justifies how much the audience continues to miss them.

Which brings us to The Lloyd Problem.

At the beginning of Season Four, we contacted Hans Rosemond about possibly utilizing his photographic skills to help promote the show. After a brief conversation, he mentioned he'd also acted in the past, and would be interested in auditioning for us.

Long story short, his natural energy was something we realized we needed on the show -- especially since Dean had departed -- and so Hans joined the cast as Lloyd, a role we'd been trying unsuccessfuly to cast for over a year.

Lloyd had an uphill battle to fight in the eyes of the audience. Not only was he "not Dean," he also wasn't a character the audience could easily get a handle on. Depending on whose point of view you sympathized with, he was either a cocky bastard, an object of desire, a manipulator or an innocent man caught between multiple women. As opposed to a Jack or a Dean, Lloyd was a much more complicated "sell" as a leading man.

Still, the audience slowly bought into Lloyd over the first half of this season. His self-deprecating humor and manic energy helped win him fans, even as people continued to wonder what he was really all about.

And then Hans decided to leave Pittsburgh.

It's impossible to blame him, since his choice was the best one he could make for his career. He realized he'd have many more opportunities to succeed as a photographer in Chicago, where he'd attended college, than here in Pittsburgh, where the market and the rates (and the expectations) are significantly lower.

Unfortunately, his decision came in mid-December, and his departure date was just past New Year's. After taking most of the season to establish a tenuous love triangle with Caroline, Liz and Lloyd, we now had only three weeks to write Lloyd out of the series. That's one of the many loose ends we'll be wrapping up after our 6-week hiatus.

So now Lloyd follows Jack and Dean in the tradition of STBD leading men who leave the series prematurely. This leaves a bit of a hole in both the plot and the cast. How will we rebound? Tune back in starting March 26th and see how we adapt...