"How Can I Tell This Story?" w/ Alaine Alldaffer

Artios Award-winning casting director and actor advocate Alaine Alldaffer (Stereophonic, A Strange Loop, Clybourne Park, Downstate, Circle Mirror Transformation) on being attuned to how creative skills translate to real life problem solving. For Alaine, you are always equipped to deal with what life has in store for you. This episode is a stray from the traditional conversation opposite a casting director, while being enriched with detail on Alaine's current compass on authenticity, the human athleticism of empathy, and what it means to know how to tell someone else's story with the truth intact. Alaine and Kate walk through the stories that have swallowed Alaine's (almost by kismet) slow casting summer: reigniting her early career skills as a paralegal before she ever cast a play, by doing discovery work to help her life-long friend's family assemble the evidence for a case Alaine keeps calling a giant puzzle. And the use of her primary career skills as a casting director to troubleshoot a situation she found herself in with a potential buyer of her property in Costa Rica. All to say, when life seemingly implodes, the saving focus is looking at the skills you have already and utilizing them to the best of your ability to navigate reassembling the pieces.  Kate's hunch in their creative conversation matches a similar theme of instinct Alaine spends her career coaching into actors: that they are the expert of the room, not a puppet waiting to be told what to bring. Kate's belief that authenticity begets authenticity, is the same principle Alaine believes keeps a person's "miracle magnet" clean. And when what life hands you isn't as clean as the authenticity you lead with, then meet fear as evidence you're alive, treat empathy as a muscle rather than a liability, and trust that "evil always overplays its hand." This episode is a listening opportunity to reflect on what you do with the stories only you are positioned to tell, and how to maintain the integrity of your authenticity while you're telling the truth of them. It is an example of where authenticity lives in casting, the special friendships born within a cast, and refusing to let someone else write the ending. Show Notes:Alaine Alldaffer Instagram @alainealldafferAlaine Alldaffer Website alainealldaffer.comKate McLeod WebsiteAuthenticated All Access