"How Can I Tell This Story?" w/ Alaine Alldaffer

Artios Award-winning casting director and actor advocate Alaine Alldaffer (Stereophonic, A Strange Loop, Clybourne Park, Downstate, Circle Mirror Transformation) on being attuned to how creative skills translate to real life problem solving. For Alaine, you are always equipped to deal with what life has in store for you. This episode is a stray from the traditional conversation opposite a casting director, while being enriched with detail on Alaine's current compass on authenticity, the human athleticism of empathy, and what it means to know how to tell someone else's story with the truth intact. Kate asks Alaine what authenticity actually feels like day to day. The answer Alaine offered is, "it comes down to keeping your miracle magnet clean." An authentic take on doing the right thing not because it's transactional, but because it expands you. Their very real conversation touches so many points, including what Alaine calls being an "empathy athlete" as the real job behind casting and being an authentic human and the Darwin research on the "sympathy principle" that reframes empathy as an evolutionary advantage instead of a weakness. They trace through the details of a summer full of turns and chaos that only kismet could have given Alaine the ability and time to handle, including a friend's wrongful arrest while grieving the sister she'd spent a lifetime protecting, how magically we are usually equipped with the skills to manage the trials life hands us, and what it looks like to build a legal case the same way you build a story with its truth at the core. The theme through it all, is Alaine's career-long mantra she gives every actor who walks into her room: you are not a puppet, you are the expert of your own perspective and your first impression is right 99.9% of the time. This episode is an opportunity to reflect on what it costs to stay soft in a hardening world, and what you owe the people whose stories you've been trusted to tell. It is an example of authenticity in casting backed by real life experience in and out of the office, in how the day to day shapes the type of creative you want to be, in a friendship built on being cast as sisters thirty years ago, and in choosing empathy when cynicism would be so much easier. Show Notes: Alaine Alldaffer Instagram: @alainealldaffer Alaine Alldaffer Website: alainealldaffer.com