Casting directors Margaret Dunn and Stephanie Yankwitt have long résumés that span platforms—from theater of all sizes and Oscar-winning films to commercials. In early 2018, they joined forces to launch TBD Casting, an extension of the New York–based TBD Productions, the company that had a hand in “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Once on This Island,” “Anastasia,” and more of Broadway’s best. As the resident CDs, Dunn and Yankwitt, who are also producers, help consult and cast the projects TBD develops while also taking on outside work. After about a year of gathering and preparing projects, the new branch has officially launched, and they’re seeking out projects and prepping beginners for their careers.
What are your goals for TBD Casting?
Stephanie Yankwitt: We’d like to do commercials, a web series, and more theater.
Margaret Dunn: And to cast the way we want to be able to cast. We want to take on projects that will allow us to serve our principles. We want to use the position we have to get new voices heard, new actors seen, people who haven’t had access before.
SY: Casting is shifting. I believe people are demanding that what we see reflect more closely who we are. Margaret and I want to lean into that. We want to work with people who are interested in different perspectives and expanding on their own perspective. That is partly why we’re doing this. We have an open-door policy and an email address where anyone can send a reel to us, and it will get watched by Margaret or me. We’re hopefully starting a biweekly session with talent. We want actors to strengthen their understanding of what an audition is, but also have a chance to meet us—and give us a chance to meet them. There’s this weird paradox that actors think we’re doing them a favor by hiring them, and it takes a few years, I think, to realize that it’s a mutual experience. We both get something out of it; their needs and our needs have to come together. We assume your talent when you walk into the room. The question actually is: How do you service what we’re doing and how can we service you? That is something that you just can’t teach a young actor in college or a training program; you have to learn it from experience. We’re hoping to provide some of that.
What is your relationship with the actors when you’re also producing a project?
MD: Our default is always that we’re here to serve, rather than to be the person who has the power. That’s never our attitude, no matter what the project and our involvement is. For us, it’s not that different whether we’re producer or not, because that’s always the attitude with which we walk through the process.
How does it change your role when you’re also a producer on the project?
SY: From an actor’s perspective, showing up at a rehearsal for a show I’m casting and producing, they wonder, What’s the casting director doing here? I’ve got the job, right? I had to work to diffuse that for them and to make it all OK. The relationship is unique and important. I’m sure there are casting directors who are much more protective than I am about the boundaries. So, from the actor’s perspective, it’s tricky. From my perspective, it’s no different. CDs are producers, even if we’re not named producers, on everything.
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Now that you’re officially launched, what types of projects are you looking to cast?
MD: Theater is certainly where we meet in the middle. We’re both very interested in plays. I have more of the experience and interest in TV, and she has more of the experience and interest in film, mostly independent film. We have projects in all of those areas right now.
SY: And I love commercials. They’re some of my favorite days. It’s very irreverent in a way that feels so comfortable, but it’s also paying the bills.
MD: And then web series are something we’d like to do, both from a casting and producing standpoint. There’s so much good work. The barrier to entry is so much lower, and there are so many different, diverse voices that get their start there and get to be heard there that it’s of interest to us. I think that would be No. 1 on our to-do list.
How do you find grassroots projects like web series to produce and cast?
MD: It’s hard, but we talk to actors so much, and a lot of them are involved at that level. But again, if we’re talking to an actor who is doing one, it’s already been cast. So it’s knowing a lot of young playwrights who can’t get things produced and are producing web series because it’s a lot easier. It’s mostly knowing it more from the writer’s perspective, and there is some crossover between theatrical agents. Web series live in the amorphous world. The theater agents that we have a close relationship with have been able and will be able to give us web series stuff, too. They don’t just come from TV agents.
SY: We have an open-door policy with some literary agencies, and we’d like to have agents who regularly send us projects and grow from that.
What does it mean to be a casting consultant?
MD: I think it depends. There are a couple of new play development centers that we are working with. They don’t think of themselves as needing casting because they don’t produce, but they tend to use the same actors over and over again for their readings, which doesn’t always serve the play. As consultants, we can introduce them to new actors. We can identify people that we know to make the pool deeper for them for when they want to cast on their own. And then also being on retainer if they need us to step in. But, really, it’s about introducing all the people that we know to people who need actors. If you see a person in a show, you know whether you like that person’s acting or not. But if you’re not in the trenches the way we are, you don’t know if they can do a cold read, or if it’s someone who reads off the page really well. What are they like in the room? Those are the things that you will never learn just from seeing someone. It’s the people like us who are in this day to day who can find that out about an actor. On stage, the final product is so different from how they get there.
SY: So much of casting has shifted. People think they can cast on Facebook. And, to a degree, they can. They’ll post an opportunity and 500 people tag 500 other people, but then the work that happens after that (meeting the candidate, seeing their work, speaking to the agent, doing the deal)—sometimes it can be simple and straightforward, sometimes not. The market is so saturated in terms of people who consider themselves actors, people who are trying, versus people who have actually trained. We’re finding more and more theaters really want to have someone’s set of eyes filter that for a creative team and help them understand better, and also help make those introductions without actually being on retainer to cast the show. It’s less about the negotiation factor and more about how to broaden this database of actors.
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