“Uncommissioned–The Self Made Artist” reflects on what it means to build an identity as an artist, and what inspires and directs the art that we create as young people today.
Let’s look together at Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of the word “cult”:
A religious group, often living together, whose beliefs are considered extreme or strange by many people.
If we consider a worship of Dan Egan’s pedagogy a form of religious adoration, I can say with confidence that this definition suits the Yale theater community to a T. The beliefs are “strange” because saying you’re a theater kid provokes the same reaction as telling someone you have a contagious infection, and “extreme” because everyone who’s ever signed up for a show has at one time entirely retreated from society to one of the dozen stuffy cable-clustered theaters on campus and stewed in mountains of half-chewed takeout piling on the tech tables. The “living together” is self-explanatory.
In defense of this cult, of which I am a happy, willing member, it really is about the friends you make along the way—but maybe that’s the problem… more on this later. Some of the strongest bonds I’ve formed were the result of backstage bonding and prod-meeting kiki-ing. A great example of this is my friendship with Emiliano Cáceres Manzano, BF ’26, whom I met through the Dramat and have collaborated with on some of the projects he’s directed since. I sat down with him last week to chat about these relationships.
“Friendship is so much about proximity and who you’re able to spend your time with,” he said. “And theater is such a time consuming and communal process that you end up spending so much time and so much energy together, and theater’s also so vulnerable it ends up being very beneficial, I think, to your friendships.”
Cáceres Manzano’s point rings true: theater is so time consuming that, in order to fully immerse yourself in this realm, you must forgo other activities and experiences. Being busy juggling multiple productions meant I had to drop my beloved Yale Review class halfway through the semester, attended a total of three FILM 150 lectures and self-study the entire curriculum for the final, and came to be known amongst my Edon class as the “most tapped out” member. It is, in the truest sense of the phrase, a commitment to time.
But sometimes the process is reversed: students decide to involve themselves in productions to strengthen their friendships, making this a cyclical reinforcement of artistic and social collaboration. But where does this start? Does theater originate in the social or does the social emerge from theater? The truth is that it is impossible to distinguish between the two in the ways an interpersonal connection blooms:
“I think that it’s silly to pretend that it’s not a social thing here at Yale,” Cáceres Manzano said. “And I do think that there is a certain kind of reward to fostering in parallel with a rehearsal room, a sort of social scene that goes with your production. I’ve always said that my goal with every production is for anybody that I work with to want to work with me again. ”
There are upsides and downsides to blurring the line between art and social life: knowing an actor’s practice, person, and character can allow for more room for play in casting processes.
Cáceres Manzano continued, “I think I tend to collaborate with the same groups of people, the same actress, same designers over and over again, because there are people that I am friends with and that friendship builds a good foundation of trust. At the same time, it’s so important to audition people—you never know who’s gonna come in and refresh your process or what new friendships might emerge from letting new people in, so really it’s all about balance.”
Familiarity with actors can also allow a director to challenge themselves to explore texts in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. It is for this reason that Cáceres Manzano is a proponent of pre-casting, a path that often upsets those eager to audition, but that can truly enrich the production when considering its logistical advantages, like wanting to put on a show early in the year.
What is it about pre-casting that feels so unfair? The social scene of Yale theater makes it hard to feel that there isn’t an added consideration given to those who are both talented and close to the teams that put up these shiny productions. And I cannot blame them. The passion and eagerness that theater friends bring to the table allows for incredible productions, and pre-casting effectively takes away the opportunity for those who would like to be involved to do so. It feels like a question of convenience: if you pre-cast, you can be in rehearsal and with your friends at the same time. When being a part of these sold-out-in-thirty-second productions provides a platform for actors to establish themselves within Yale theater, it does feel unfair. Once you’ve reached a certain recognition of talent on campus you are no longer asked if you “will audition” for something but rather if you “will be in” something. In a school as small as ours we cannot deny that talent and recognition make you a hot commodity, but you need the means to achieve that stance in the first place, which is often about what shows you get to be a part of.
At the same time, so much about making meaningful art is based on a belief and a vision. An actor can be a ‘perfect fit’ for a role because they’ve gone through something similar as their character and can explore those emotions through performance, or because they’re curious to explore their range by stepping out of their comfort zone. If pre-casting is part of the reason why the final product feels more meaningful, is there really anything wrong with doing it if done with transparency?
It is undeniable that separating friends from actors can become challenging, especially when casting can feel like such a consequential process for actors on this campus. It is easy for teams to fall into the trap of knowing someone so well that it becomes hard to see them perform in any role that doesn’t align with their character, which leads to the tricky territory of typecasting and preventing actors from challenging themselves. Besides, it’s always hard to say “no” to a friend, especially in an environment like Yale, where we are imbued with self-determination and enabled to assert ourselves in the things we are passionate about.
On casting day I’ve been on both ends of the landline. I’ve made the calls from the sterile rooms in the Watson Center, waiting anxiously for a friend to pick up the phone and accept their role. I’ve also been the one in the silent dorm room when the call didn’t come. It can be a slap in the face, but it’s a gamble worth taking. To separate the aspect of friendship from the theater world would make it incredibly dull: the point of making art collaboratively is that performing on a stage tears through the fabric of the performance we put on in our everyday life and lets us feel. And those who are there to witness it, to help us birth those feelings, become our friends in their having observed an incredibly intimate and normally hidden part of our souls.
