Embracing the Spark: Orpheus
Group Casting Founders Receive Pioneer of the Arts Award
By Jane Rubinsky
Ellyn
Long Marshall and Maria E. Nelson, the founding partners of Orpheus Group
Casting, receive the Riant Theatre’s Pioneer of the Arts Award in recognition
of their 27 years of uncompromising dedication to the arts of film, theater,
and television. Among the critically
acclaimed films enriched by their expertise are Girlfight (2000), Real Women
Have Curves (2002), Maria Full of
Grace (2004), and Amreeka
(2009). The pair have also worked with
respected theater companies such as INTAR, on Broadway, and at Lincoln Center.
A
native New Yorker born into a theatrical family (her father was the actor Avon
Long), Marshall studied acting before landing a job in casting at the Public
Theater back in the late 70s. “A regular
paycheck, health insurance, doing something I loved; I was in heaven,” she
recalls. She was casting for the Los
Angeles tour of Joseph Papp’s Pirates of
Penzance when she met Nelson, an agent for a musical theater company on
42nd Street, over the phone. “I just
found a really pleasant person on the other side of the phone,” says
Nelson. “And that’s basically how we
began this friendship.”
Nelson,
who was born in Costa Rica to a family of entrepreneurs, had become New York
State’s youngest licensed agent at age 23, after already having worked in the
fashion industry. She moved up the
ladder quickly, but her goal was to launch a production company – “completely
out of my forecast for my life,” laughs Marshall. But their tastes and values were in
sync. And as Marshall began seeing more
shows that were “terrible” – “not a lot of them, but just the concept,” she
recalls – the two decided it was time to open their own company in an office at
Kaufman Astoria Studios in 1987.
Initially
they focused on theater production. But
directors were also looking for help with casting, and the pair had a wide
knowledge of actors from their previous lives.
As the casting work “mushroomed,” says Marshall, the two eventually
moved into film with Above the Rim
(1994). Since then, they have been
playing an integral part in shaping independent features with multicultural
themes.
“People
often ask us, how do you decide what to work on?” says Nelson. “We’re totally script-driven; that’s the
deciding factor.”
“We
choose projects that are important to us, that introduce new ideas,” concurs Marshall. “And things that have an impact on society,
that the audience will come away from with something positive, regardless of
how dark the subject matter might be or how it’s presented.”
That
often means working on a project from the ground up, with lots of challenges –
from helping to find financing to steering someone to the right cinematographer
or director. Nelson recalls the Canadian
producer who confessed, once a project was under way, that she “needed a little
help” because she had never produced a film before. “I told her, ‘Well, you’re going to produce this one!’” says Nelson. “And of course we helped her, and talked her
through the process. Then there was the
film they had to cast in five different countries from New York City – with the
audition tapes in Arabic. “We were
arguing with the producers about using this actor or that actor, and I don’t
know if they even internalized the fact that we didn’t speak Arabic!” laughs
Nelson. “But we were lucky enough to be
right, and the particular actor got all the accolades in the trade.”
Singling
out a favorite project is hard, but Nelson says they are especially proud of Girlfight. “We worked hand-in-hand with the writer and
director, Karyn
Kusama, from the very beginning,” she
says. The casting was pivotal. “We’d been talking about this role with Karyn
for nearly a year,” recalls Marshall.
“She was very specific about what she wanted this person to be. We saw hundreds and hundreds of young
ladies. When we saw Michelle Rodriguez,
I just knew immediately that was the girl.
She had no credits, and came in off the street to an open call, and she
was fabulous.”
Current
projects include fully producing two films and working on an innovative
Broadway musical, as well as building a media arts center in Middletown, N.Y.
(where the Hoboken Film Festival was transplanted this year after the damage of
Hurricane Sandy).
Despite
rapid and sometimes unsettling changes in the industry, they remain
optimistic. Technology, maintains
Marshall, changes “not only the process, but also the creative part of the
brain. I think it has atrophied.” They also refuse to cave in to the pressure
to cast big names that have nothing to do with a script. “But recently, we’re getting these little
inklings from people who have this spark,” says Marshall. “I’m seeing that there are young people coming
up with good scripts, with good ideas, who need guidance. To be able to nurture that, and help them
find the money, that’s the challenge, and that’s specifically where our heads
are at right now.”
“We
who have the experience should be there to embrace this, to help it along,”
adds Nelson. “Because that’s our
responsibility. And I feel very
seriously about that. Personally, that’s
why I’m in this end of the industry – because I want to leave a legacy.”
Tickets are available for the PIONEER OF THE ARTS AWARDS, which will be presented at the Launch Party for the Strawberry One-Act Festival.
The event will be on Monday, July 29, 2013 at 7pm at the Tribeca Grand
Hotel - Cinema, located at 2 Avenue of the Americas, NYC. There will be a special
screening of the Video Diaries Project: A Series of Short Films About the Artists in the Strawberry One-Act Festival. For tickets go to http://www.therianttheatre.com/item.php?id=185
