King & I tour children

Last week, we saw the enchanting King and I tour. As we were walking to our car, we passed a bunch of asian kids and families coming out of the stage door.


I started wondering - Is it likely that most of the children are locals, hired for the engagement and don't tour? It certainly would make a lot of sense (and the blocking would be easy to teach them)

Are there only 8 Asian children in the cast? Seems pretty light to me.

MarkBearSF said: "Last week, we saw the enchanting King and I tour. As we were walking to our car, we passed a bunch of asian kids and families coming out of the stage door.

I started wondering - Is it likely that most of the children are locals, hired for the engagement and don't tour? It certainly would make a lot of sense (and the blocking would be easy to teach them)"



It's a LOT of trouble to cast children locally for a touring show. Les Miz didn't even do it when they'd sit in a city for months, much less a stop as short as The King & I in SF. You'd have a lot of luck finding Asian kids in SF, LA, Seattle, but not a lot of other cities would have many to offer. They re-cast the Tams in Miss Saigon every few months but even then, they would tour.

LizzieCurry said: "MarkBearSF said: "Last week, we saw the enchanting King and I tour. As we were walking to our car, we passed a bunch of asian kids and families coming out of the stage door.

I started wondering - Is it likely that most of the children are locals, hired for the engagement and don't tour? It certainly would make a lot of sense (and the blocking would be easy to teach them)"



It's a LOT of trouble to cast children locally for a touring show. Les Miz didn't even do it when they'd sit in a city for months, much less a stop as short as The King & I in SF. You'd have a lot of luck finding Asian kids in SF, LA, Seattle, but not a lot of other cities would have many to offer. They re-cast the Tams in Miss Saigon every few months but even then, they would tour.



"

One of the Les Miz tours in San Francisco had a local Gavroche. I don't remember which tour, it wasn't the first sit-down that played the Curran for months and months. I do recall a lot of media coverage about him, a kid from Hayward or Castro Valley. Of course he might have been cast in the tour and just happened to be playing here instead of being hired just for this one stop. I think every family member, classmates from school, people from his church et al were there the night I saw it, based on the thunderous applause he received.

The first time Les Miz was in SF was in 1989 and two years sounds right. Was it Rider Strong? I think that's the same production that cast Larisa Oleynik as Young Cosette, who's from Santa Clara.

PThespian said: "I believe that the children's choir was cast locally when Joseph toured. "



Yes, at least for the tour back in the 90s they used local choirs, though they looked for established groups and did not just assemble a random collection of children. For instance, when the show played Cleveland they hired a group called the Singing Angels. Music was sent ahead of time so their choir director could prepare them and staging was fairly minimal (as I recall, from over 20 years ago now, they spent the large majority of the show sitting on the sides of the set basically swaying in time with the music).