The process, pt. II: The Cast

We got the cast and crew from a variety of sources, from personal calls to Craigslist.

Brittan Egnozzi plays Ellen Brody. She was sort of familiar with the movie. One of her lines is “You’re gonna need a bigger tote” and it was fun explaining it to her. To Brittan belongs the show’s only power ballad, “Eating Me Softly”. We knew we needed one and we knew we wanted to femme-up what was essentially a boys-only production. Brittan sings like an angel. A lambrusco-drinking angel.

Jason Sechrest plays Bruce. At first we conceived Bruce as being like Lenny in “Of Mice And Men”, and on the poster he definitely has an oafish, earnest look about him. But the songs just evolved into Bruce being a more predatory character, like Frank’n’Furter in “Rocky Horror Picture Show” mixed with Joel Grey in “Cabaret”. Jason, who knows his way around cabarets and happens to be the #1 chronicler of the gay side of the porn industry (NSFW) made the part his own from the first rehearsal.

After several trips back and forth to Wrightwood, hitting an unique confluence of Las Vegas and L.A. traffic, Jason remarked: “You know, I’m paying to be in this show.” Welcome to Hollywood, Jason!

David Kaufman is a dark horse. We found him on Craigslist and it was only after he auditioned the Quint song as both Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan that we found out how many lives he leads. He happens to be a leading George Harrison in Beatles tribute bands, the latest being Ticket to Ride. He told us that the John Lennons are traditionally difficult to deal with. We asked him if the Eric Claptons from Cream tribute bands ever tried to steal his wife. Start stalking David online here. You’ll be glad you did.

Marc Antonio Pritchett speaks with a manly baritone. As “All That Jaws” counts as a special influence “Jesus Christ Superstar”, we long ago thought that it would be cool to have a Man of Color play Hooper, in the same way Carl Anderson played Judas (in the rock opera, we have Hooper rising out of the ocean on his anti-shark cage the same way Carl Anderson descended at the end of “Jesus Christ Superstar” … and Hooper’s final song is called “Jesus H. Christ, Hooperstar” after all…)

But we did colorblind casting. It just so happened that the best person for the job was a brother from another mother.

Meet the cast here.

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