A white-faced, bloody doctor shoved a soccer player down onto the wooden table that served as his operating table. The soccer player’s face contorted in pain as the doctor twisted his injured knee back and forth. Senior Felipe Casanova, in his soccer uniform, laid back on the table as the doctor, played by Josh Ortega, called for toxic gas.
When the lights went down, the audience seated around Grady’s Black Box theater applauded. This was one of seven short plays written, directed and performed by Grady students over the span of three days. The writers began the process Wednesday, Feb. 20 after they received pictures of actors in a costume with a prop. During the next day and a half, the directors chose a play to direct, and the actors saw their scripts for the first time. After rehearsing Thursday and Friday afternoons, actors performed the play Friday night, Feb. 22, hence the name Three-Day Plays.
“I really like the concept of it. I’ve never seen something like that before, so when I heard about it I was like ‘Yeah, I should do that,’” Casanova said.
Casanova was born in Switzerland, but moved to Brazil as a baby. At 9 years old, he moved back to Switzerland, and attended a French school. For the first semester of this school year, Casanova lived with a family in Iowa, but he said it was too boring there so he moved in with the Galonsky family in Atlanta. Casanova’s host brother, Phillip Galonsky, goes to Paideia. Casanova said he didn’t know why he was staying with a Paideia family and not a Grady family, but the host family chose him, not the other way around.
English is Casanova’s third language–after Portuguese and French–but he said language was not too much of a barrier for him, though it did pose minor obstacles.
“There is sometimes something that I don’t know what it means, or some words that I have problem saying it,” Casanova said. “Like, the word unsuccessful, I had a problem with it during the rehearsals at first, but then I got it.”
Although this was his Grady debut, Casanova has been acting since junior high school in school plays as well as after-school drama classes. As a foreign exchange student in Atlanta, Casanova actively searched for bigger acting challenges.
He uses a website called love2act.com where he posted his own profile for potential directors to see. Directors and writers also post on the website to announce auditions for plays, musicals, short films and even some commercials, though Casanova said he mostly looks at short films. Some of the posts even offer payment.
“Maybe [the offer of payment] makes me more excited, but it doesn’t affect my decisions,” Casanova said. “I do acting because I love it.”
Casanova reads through the descriptions of characters, and finds ones that match his description: 17-year-old caucasian boy. When he finds one that interests him, he emails the directors. He said he always tells the directors he is a foreign-exchange student. It only posed a problem once.
“I saw one that was a main character that would fit me, but he has a young brother, so I couldn’t play him because my young brother wouldn’t have the same accent that I have,” Casanova said.
Instead, he auditioned for the lead’s best friend character and was chosen for that part in the short film.
Although Casanova is attending Grady this year, he said his Swiss school doesn’t acknowledge this year of school. When he returns to Switzerland, he will still have to go to school for two more years in order to finish high school. After that, he wants to return to the United States to attend college in Southern California. His dream is to one day be a movie director.
“Movies are my passion and I really like being part of it,” he said.
