We’re in overtime for our casting of the upcoming audio drama Iron Horses Can’t Be Broken, a week beyond our original close-date, and we’re still lacking an actor in the lead titular role of Iron Horse.
It’s a tough role to fill, not for reasons of difficulty, but for reasons of specificity. Iron Horse is a Native American trans-man, and the actor has to have a vocal quality that leaves his gender somewhat ambiguous. Limiting our selection further is that we’re recording locally, so the actor needs to be in or near Chicago.
We would love to cast a Native American actor
Burning Brigid Media is a production company with a mission, and part of that mission is to create roles open to people of color. Iron Horse is a Native American, and we would love to cast a Native American actor in the role. There are, in fact, two other minor Native American roles, and our first choice would be to cast Native American actors in all of them.
However, we cannot. We have not gotten any auditions from Native American actors.
Fishing from a small pool
That’s simply the reality we have to deal with, here. Burning Brigid Media is a small production company with limited reach and few resources. Unlike the major studios, whose potential casting pool is “the world,” we can only choose from the actors who submit auditions to us.
We can reach out to specific casting networks (and our casting call was reposted to the Native American Casting group on Facebook three times) and talk to the contacts we have in the city, but in the end, we have the pool of applicants that we have, and we have to be satisfied with it.
If we cannot get a Native American transgender actor to play Iron Horse, then we will try to get a Native American or transgender actor to play Iron Horse. If we cannot get a Native American or transgender actor, then we will have to get a non-native cis-gender actor to play the role, and we will do so with the utmost of respect.
In the end, we, as a production company, can do our best to create opportunities for minority actors in roles they may not usually get. And we can still tell stories featuring marginalized characters. And that’s something we’ll have to be satisfied with.
The Power is Yours!
If you are yourself a Native American or transgender actor interested in the role of Iron Horse, or you think you know someone who might be interested in auditioning for the role, by all means visit our casting page and give it a go. We would love to hear from you.
Really.
We would.
