ASC and internal casting

18.07.2021

According to the tradition, in the first days of the project, the children will have an internal casting and Acting Skills Competition (ASC), which will help the creative team to choose the candidates for the roles in the play.

ASC is a test of transformation, liberation, reaction and improvisation. In the beginning, all children take part, but gradually the level of difficulty increases, so that many children are eliminated and the strongest ones remain.

ASC has four rounds. This year, during the first round, the participants had to act as the animals they were asked to portray by the judges represented by the director, choreographer, vocal and acting teachers. Moving in a circle, the children performed a platypus, a lizard, an elephant and even a hyena.

After a tough selection process, about half of the contestants made it to the second stage. Their next task was to perform as electrical devices used by people in everyday life using their body and voice. An important condition for being selected to the next round was the creativity of the image presented by the children, which is why, in order to complicate the test, the judges chose such items as a freezer, a toaster, a blender and a washing machine.

At the third stage, only the strongest ones remained. The children had to show a profession and a quality that was completely opposite. The audience helped them with this by suggesting unusual qualities or professions. For example, the contestants acted as an insecure chemist, color-blind florist, nervous personal growth coach, conniving teacher and so on. There were also such challenging tasks as “fireman on the Moon”, “ambitious miner” and “sarcastic fortune teller”. The tricky thing about this round was that the kids were allowed to say only words from the poem “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall”. Due to such an unusual trick, the participants managed to reach their full potential and convey the personality of their character. Ten people managed to get the highest score from the jury and made it to the final stage.

At the fourth stage the contestants required to transform into world pop stars and perform a song fragment with the most precise copying of their dance movements, facial expressions and behaviour. Judges chose Egor Creed, Billie Eilish, Michael Jackson, Klava Koka and Philipp Kirkorov.

“I was very happy and surprised to reach the finals this year, because I got kicked out at the first stage in 2019. Of course, this time I reviewed the mistakes of the last year, tried to get the attention of the judges, to be noticed and remembered by them, and I succeeded. The last stage seemed to me extremely simple, because I was playing Michael Jackson, who I know pretty well. For me he is an iconic music figure. I tried to just fully immerse into the images of artists, because the main thing for experts is not songs and dances, but facial expressions and emotions”, – said Stepan Bushmakin, finalist of the Acting Skills Competition at the NucKids 2021 Project.

All the children coped with this task perfectly, and the creative group faced a challenge to choose the winners. This year’s prizes went to Elina Kokoulina, Denis Didenko and Stepan Bushmakin; Audience Choice Award went to Matvey Eidelstein and Anna Zemskova by voting.

In the afternoon, the participants had an internal casting. The vocal teacher and the composer have not yet joined the project in person, so they attended the casting online on a large screen. The children demonstrated their talents to the judges from the stage. Many prepared prose and poems, some were asked to do improvisation dancing to music, some were asked to sing not only in English (which this year’s participants favourite), but also in Russian to see the quality of voice and vocal skills.

“As I was well-prepared, I wasn’t worried at first. But as the casting approached, I started to worry. I had practiced so much that I almost lost my voice. I didn’t show my emotions because it wouldn’t help me or others, but the counselors helped me cope with my anxiety. At the actual casting, I had already relaxed. All the children performed very decently, and it charged me up immensely. On stage, the excitement was completely gone. I just got uplifted. I let everything go and my mood was 100% up. I was really pleased to have the support of the other guys. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone for the support and the energy you share!” – said Polina Kozlova, a participant from Hungary.

After casting, the creative team announced the applicants for the roles, and the children went to read the script.

NOTE: the list of applicants for roles is not yet final; any project participant can approach the directors and ask for a second chance if he/she really wants to try for a role. It has happened so often in the project history that the main applicants for a role failed to cope with it, and the role was given to those participants who asked for a “second chance”.

If you want to hear about the process of staging a musical and how our teachers handle classes, stay with us.

Nuckids Project media office