CAST with Kate Lumpkin: Finding your point of view, casting against type, and building better stories onscreen, on stage, and in life
Julie and Casey sit down with theatrical casting director (and Tiktok rock star) Kate Lumpkin, to talk about the stories we tell and why we tell them, changing the jargon that creates unhealthy power structures, how authenticity happens in front of an audience, and burning our old ideas of “type” to the ground . . . both inside and outside of the theater world. Prepare for the dropping of many, many mics.
TOP TAKEAWAYS:
Kate's background in anthropology and folklore provides one of the major lenses for her work: how stories shape and change the world. “We hear this mythos that there are only seven stories and we keep repeating them and refreshing them and re-illuminating them […] but what I find fascinating is how we’ve taken those core hero stories and TRANSFORMED them over time, and the potential we have to continue to transform them if we change the gatekeepers of who allows us to tell what stories.”
The power of words and the problem with jargon: A phrase consistently used in the theater world is to refer to the casting director and creative team as “the other side of the table” . . . which, inherently creates a divide (and a power imbalance) in what ideally should be a space of play and collaboration.
On being "Publicly Personal”—when people walk into the audition space that Kate creates, they know who she is, they know what she stands for, they know that she’s there to listen and be their champion without judgement.
On the surface, a casting director’s job is to “acquire talent for a production” . . . but in addition to her job getting to know the immense talent pool of actors out there, Kate also finds herself being part therapist, politician, director, HR person, and explorer.
Type came out of the studio system in Hollywood, and was a way to essentially commodify an actor’s personal brand into something audiences would come back again and again to see . . . but where type has landed is “what do (mostly) white men find attractive/witty/sexy/charismatic” and what they can imagine someone with your body doing onstage. Rather than an actor trying to identify their “type” (fitting into someone else’s narrow box), she’d love them to think about their through line as a person: how does that expression of self affect what stories you want to tell and what point of view that their life’s journey allows them to bring to a role/story (of which your body is certainly a part . . . but not the whole).
What is your Point of View? The moments in your life that have made you YOU + the code that you live by (what you stand for, what you would fight for, what you believe in) + how you filter those things out of your body and into the world (how you express yourself).
Authenticity and performativity are NOT antithetical . . . because everything we do is in concert with other humans. We are always performing. So, how do we curate an authentic self that shows up? First of all: YOU are the arbiter of your own authenticity. Secondly: it requires self-reflection (those moments than shift your POV happen all the time). We have to check in with that, and we have to not judge the previous versions of our authentic selves. And . . . do the work. Stay curious. Learn about yourself. Go to therapy. Do the work. Things look performative when we try desperately to adhere to an external standard (what is popular, what is “successful”) rather than doing the inner work.
On that “thing” that certain people walk into a room with (charisma, confidence, whatever you want to call it) — it comes from having done that inner work on knowing who you are . . . and bringing it into the room with no apology or need for permission or validation. When you have that, you don’t have to even talk about it or “show it off” . . . you just ARE.
Kate considers her Meisner training “a two year professional certificate in listening.” Because this type of training is about listening and repeating, listening and repeating, listening and repeating, you not only learn to hear what’s being said, you learn to observe what’s underneath. In addition, Meisner requires that you get comfortable with discomfort, including the messier parts of ourselves. If we learn to sit with our own “messy uglies” and have compassion for those parts in other people, we could really change everything.
DO NOT MISS Kate’s Big 5 question answers.
LESSON: Getting out of the “prove yourself” mindset and walking into the room with power.
Kate Lumpkin (she/her) is the Founder of and Lead Casting Director at Kate Lumpkin Casting, CSA. Collectively, as a casting professional, she has worked on over 40 TV/Film productions and 80 theatrical productions in New York City and across the USA including shows at The Kennedy Center, The Actors Theatre of Louisville, The A.R.T, NYTW, and many others. Kate teaches workshops in New York and at numerous Colleges and Universities. She is a private coach to clients all around the world. Kate is also the host of Broadway WELLness for Playbill.
Selected casting credits include: New York Theatre: OSCAR @ The Crown, We Are Here (dir. Steven Hoggett), Medusa, We Are The Tigers, Safeword, Afterglow, Cleopatra, The Bad Years, Eco Village, A Complicated Woman, Boarders, Between The Bars, Unraveled, Letters to the President, Reunion '69, Single Rider, Diaspora, The Other Side of Paradise, Counting Sheep, Sitting Bull's Last Waltz, The Excavation of Mary Anning, Agent 355, Emma: A New Musical, Love In Hate Nation, Five Points, Hart Island, Eastbound, Interstate, Honey Dipped Apocalypse Girls, Fefu and Her Friends. National Tour: Bandstand (1st National Tour). Regional Theatre: Endlings at American Repertory Theater, West Side Story at The Kennedy Center, On The Town at The Kennedy Center, Beau at The Adirondack Theatre Festival, Evocation to Visible Appearance at Actors Theatre of Louisville, We Are Here at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Opium at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas , A Christmas Carol 18', 19' at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Reunion '69 & Reunion '85 at the Newman Center. For more information, please visit kate-lumpkin.com. @katelumpkin
Interview intro and outro music: "Elevator Heart," music by Julia Meinwald, lyrics by Sara Cooper, from the musical Elevator Heart, music by Amy Burgess and Julia Meinwald, book and lyrics by Sara Cooper