Auditioning at the zoo, a very particular brand of weirdos

I’m inside a 1,000-square-foot room in a building called Zoovision, behind Lemur Mountain, when I am briefly surrounded by pirates. It’s a sweltering Saturday, and it’s hard to imagine the brisk chill of autumn, but at the Louisville Zoo, hopeful actors are auditioning to be a part of what the zoo calls “The World’s Largest Halloween party.”

“Yarg! Glad to meet you,” says one polite privateer, with her hand over her eye and her finger kinked into a hook. Her greeting is returned by the buccaneer closest to her.

On one end of the room, a rangy improv coach named Shavoun McGill is made taller by the chair he’s standing on, as he surveys the action. He takes a deep breath, preparing to call out the next transformation. On the other side of the room is Jodi Adams, artistic director of Theatre in Motion. She watches all the shenanigans with a calm eye, taking notes on who’s rapid to the transformations, who’s fast to make friends and who’s quick with a quip.

“Now, I want you to turn to the person closest to you, and greet them as your favorite princess,” yells McGill. It’s particularly fun to watch the response of the former Marine across the room. I’m watching, ready with my camera to see how he’ll play this moment. Before I see him spring into action, a princess steps directly in front of me. Good god, I’ve gotten too close to the action, and now I’m getting sucked in. She graciously dips her head in greeting, and I give my best courtly bow.

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Adams has been handling the talent side of the event for 10 years. At first, she was just working the zoo and a couple of other event-based performance jobs, but, as she developed a taste and talent for the work, she started Theatre in Motion, and it has grown into her full-time gig.

The zoo’s Halloween party closely resembles theme-park work. The talent aren’t doing plays, or stage-based work — they are having a stream of one-on-one interactions with the public, and they are doing it in character. As Adams puts it: “Each night is a 1,000 performances.”

It’s tough work. Take it from this former Buzz the Robot. What kind of person dons the personas of the fairy tale figures and pop-culture heroes who populate the park’s Halloween festivities?

I went to sit in on Adams’ third round of auditions last weekend to find out. The zoo employs between 45 and 50 actors each year, and there are three open, cattle-call auditions. Each had between 20 and 30 people show up.

I was escorted past the lemurs and down to the audition site by Stephanie Maloney, the zoo’s special events coordinator since 2005. In all, she’s been with the zoo for 17 years, and been on the Halloween spooktacular the whole time.

She says that back in the day the event only used passionate volunteers.

“While that’s wonderful, and we appreciate the volunteers for sure, sometimes it’s hard to manage them or have consistent schedules,” Maloney said. Volunteer-wrangling is a big job for a big event, and it’s hard to demand hard work from someone who is working for free. “We want guests to have the same experience their friend had  — trying to make it consistent.”  They started using paid actors, though there are still some volunteers. The zoo was handling all the details at first, but it became too time-consuming. “We’re also managing the lights, the audio, the candy, general staffing, the animals. So we brought Jodi in to handle the two legged animals,” Maloney said.

She escorted me down to a small building called Zoo Vision. It’s an empty, pagoda-shaped structure, with a modest-size central room, a tiny kitchen and two small bathrooms. In addition to housing the auditions, all the talent for the October’s event will be run out this space. The lions and tigers and cowboys will put on their makeup and costumes here, but first they have to nab the gig.

When we get to Zoovision, there’s a small group huddled around a table, getting ready for the talent to come in. There’s Adams, her assistant Lauren Vaughan, and Shauvon McGill.

McGill is local actor and improv coach. He’s been on the team for five years now, and he’ll be running the actual auditions once the talent gets let in. The auditions are all improv games.

Adams will sit back and watch. She used to run the audition and make the decisions, but it was tough to do both. She calls the casting process a jigsaw puzzle, but it isn’t all problem solving. “I do the auditions, and I see how the interact, but I go with my gut. Every year there’s somebody that … I go out on a limb, like, you know what, I’m gonna give this girl a chance, she didn’t even necessarily do that great. She was a little shy or a little whatever, and inevitably it’s that person that it ends up being a life-changing thing for them.”

That’s the really weird thing about Adams’  job: She’s part hard-nosed pit boss, giving stern orders and keeping things going, but she’s equal parts something more along the lines of, well … camp counselor meets guidance counselor.

“A lot of [the talent] are in high school, and this is their first real job, and I’ve got to train them. and they take it with them and it’s a life long lesson,” said Adams. One of those lessons? Sometimes you show up and do the job, even when you feel like crap. Adams shared an anecdote about one of her former employees. “It was a girl in high school, and she and her boyfriend where having trouble…. and she started crying and stuff, and I looked at her and asked her, can you do this tonight? Because if you can’t I need to know.”

But many of those kids come back, year after year. Adams said the repeat performers are key to having a smooth operation; “Good reliable people who come back teach the new people. Which is the best thing.”

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After a brief chat with the team it’s time to let the talent in. I say this with the deepest amount of respect: They are a very particular brand of weirdos. I’m used to comic-book nerds, and fantasy nerds, and people who work in haunted houses. I’ve hung out with ghost hunters, and burlesque dancers, but a group of people that get super excited to be a cartoon princess? That’s a new one. Thank god for the shared loved of “Harry Potter” — it put me back on somewhat familiar ground.

Because of course the first thing McGill does, after everyone’s paperwork gets squared away, is start playing get-to-know-you games.

I narrowly avoid getting roped into a thrilling round of Jump In, Jump Out, a game with — you guessed it — jumping in and out of a circle as the circle chants a chorus that you fill in with personal details. “Jump in, jump out, introduce yourself,” the circled up talent yells, under Adams’ and McGill’s watchful eyes.

One peppy teen jumps in and out shouting, “My name is Megan, (“Yeah!” shouts the crowd), and I like hamsters (“Yeah!”), and I’m a Hufflepuff (“Yeah!”).” The group then replies, “All right, all right, all right.”

I learn who likes Oreos, who likes Disney, who likes Star Wars and who watches Netflix. I learn a lot of peoples’ “Harry Potter” houses. It’s a fascinating moment to watch.They have to share on command, all the while trying to convince the panoptic auditioner that they are somehow more worthy than the 20 or so people around them.

Next they play several rounds of the transformation game, and I mingle and take pictures, occasionally getting sucked in. They transform into cowardly lions, princesses and a whole list of creatures and charters. At one point, McGill tells them to transform into their favorite character. Here we see the love for Disney again, as people unabashedly act out their life long love of Belle, Cinderella or Snow White. The former Marine is giving us his best Gaston.

It’s worth noting that in the audition the actors can imagine they are being trademarked characters, but during the event the Zoo is careful with how they address and promote these performances, in order to steer clear of copyright infringement.

That game and others go on for almost two hours. They were chosen because they help Adams and company evaluate the skills of the kids, but they also do the regular work of a get-to-know-you-games. By the end, I knew the people in the room pretty well.

It’s weird to think that about a third of them won’t make the cut. Maybe I’m just old and soft, but I want every single one of those kids to get a shot. I want them to get the chance to be their favorite prince or fairy or tin man.

Adams said it’s tough cutting people. But maybe as de facto guidance counselor, she’s  teaching some of the kids about rejection, and how it’s just another part of show business.

You can see who made the cut Thursday-Sundays in October.

This article appears in August 10, 2016.