Behind the Scenes of 8 Tens @ 8... Ready, Set, Audition!

Auditions for the 2025 8 Tens @ 8 Festival are coming up on September 29 & 30.

The production of the annual short play festival at Actors' Theatre relies on many local theater artists. Some of the most imporant players, of course, are the actors who will bring these 16 winning short plays to life on stage.

Each year, Actors' Theatre holds open auditions for the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival. Casting the plays with a spot-on mix of seasoned performers and fresh new talent is the goal, and we welcome actors of all levels and ages to come audition for our 16 directors.

We hold the general audtions on two separate evenings, followed by "callbacks" for the particular plays. The open audition nights are where each actor presents a short prepared monolgue that is seen by all the directors. Directors then may ask the actor to repeat the piece incorporating specific direction or to improvise something to better help them see the person as the different characters they are casting. Directors then call back the actors they wish to have read for the specific roles in the play they are staging. At callbacks, the director most often has actors read from the script in different combinations. With the right actors and the right chemistry, the play really starts to come to life. In fact, some directors even say that casting is 90% of their job!

Callbacks this year will be held the rest of that week on October 1, 2, 3 and 4, with four plays per night. We do our best to structure it by age ranges, so that actors who might be called back for more than one play can come on the same night, but inevitably some actors need to come on different nights to read for different plays.

At the casting meeting following the last callback, all 16 directors gather to fight... um, make that negotiate... for the actors they wish to cast. An actor can be cast in up to two plays in the festival (on rare occasions we've allowed three to avoid all-out director warfare!) and the final casting influences which plays will be in Part 1 or Part 2 of the festival: two different shows with 8 plays each. It's always exciting to see the final cast list come together and to welcome performers both new and familiar to this year's 8 Tens @ 8!

Here's what some of our past actors wanted to share about the experience of being in 8 Tens:

The auditions are very well run, and getting the results right away of when and what we were called back for was a true gift.  Being in a cast of seven for one 10-minute play was a challenging and wonderful ensemble experience. --Meg Herz Harlor (Stop Saying That, 2024)

Last year was my first time auditioning for 8 Tens, though I've been a regular audience member for many years. It was fun, but weird, to audition before an audience of about 20 people... to get a list of callbacks before the next actor even went in for their audition... to see so many of the actors I've seen in previous shows waiting in the lobby for their auditions... to do all the rehearsals in my living room (only getting on stage during tech week... And it was just plain fun to perform a dozen times with such a great group of fellow actors, directors and crew. --Kevin Karplus (The Artist, 2024)

It’s great to show up at the auditions and see familiar faces and get and give those wonderful hugs! There's also the joy of being back stage. Though you are in tight quarters with the other actors, putting on your costumes and makeup, running lines, and talking to each other about life is all part of the wonderful choreography of loving being in the theater. --Avondina Wills (many roles over the years)

Open-call auditions for the 8 Tens @ 8 Short Play Festival for 2025 will be on September 29 and 30, from 6:30 to 9 pm at the Actors' Theatre, 1001 Center Street in downtown Santa Cruz. For more information and a downloadable audition form that lists the plays and the directors, visit our Auditions page.