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| Casting director for new musical 'Wonderland' searches Tampa Bay area for extraordinary talent By John Fleming, Times Performing Arts Critic In Print: Sunday, May 3, 2009 TAMPA Dave Clemmons likes to assume the persona of a good ol' boy, which he can get away with, since he's originally from Murfreesboro, Tenn. Bushy-haired and bearded, he invariably wears a ball cap and jeans, but the down-home style is deceiving. Few people know the American pop songbook as well as he does. Clemmons is a casting director for Broadway musicals, and a couple of weeks ago, he was at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center holding open auditions for Wonderland, a new show by Frank Wildhorn, composer of Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Civil War, among others. "Good choice, one of the greatest songs ever written,'' Clemmons said to a woman who had sung a bit of I Can't Make You Love Me, the Bonnie Raitt hit. At that point, Clemmons had heard about 60 actors perform excerpts of songs, and there were still about 70 to go, milling around the lobby of the Jaeb Theater, where the auditions were being held on the set of the cabaret show Waistwatchers. When auditions started in the morning, Clemmons had allowed each performer to sing up to 32 measures of a song of their choice, but now in the afternoon, with a plane to catch in a few hours, he had cut it down to 16 measures. |