Elie Landau made his Broadway debut in 1980 when a magician brought him onstage. He also turned up as a staged heckler in the short-lived 1994 show “Comedy Tonight.” And on a recent evening, Landau, who now works as a general manager for Broadway companies, found himself in front of a nearly thousand-person audience at the Hudson Theater, playing a university lecturer opposite Daniel Radcliffe.
“It was exhilarating,” Landau said, speaking by phone a few weeks later. “I mean, how often do you get to do that?”
Pretty often. Radcliffe is starring in “Every Brilliant Thing,” a play written by Duncan Macmillan, with Jonny Donahoe, in which a child compiles a list of delights that he thinks will give his suicidal mother reasons to live. The play follows that child as he becomes an adult contending with his own depression. Over the course of each performance, dozens of audience members are drafted to read out brilliant things (Ice cream! Water fights! People falling over!) and a handful more are chosen to appear onstage, playing different figures from the protagonist’s life. Which means that if you have longed to co-star with Radcliffe, the lead of the “Harry Potter” movies and a nimble, Tony-winning stage actor, you might get your chance.
Not that that’s the point of this participation. “It’s not a fulfillment of a showbiz dream,” Jeremy Herrin, who directs the play with Macmillan, said during a video call. “It’s about how are we going to tell the story.”
Since its debut, the play has been translated into 66 languages and had hundreds of productions in the United States alone, which means that the creative team has developed practices and theories around audience participation. The process begins about a half-hour before the show, when the lead actor and a couple of associate directors scramble to interact with nearly every audience member as they take their seats in the theater.
That sprint serves several purposes. One is to distribute dozens of cards, each with a “brilliant” thing to be read aloud in the show. (Even this is complicated; the cards are assigned across six zones in the theater, each fitted with directional microphones.) Another is for Radcliffe, and the two associate directors, David Hull and Laura Dupper, to figure out which ticket holders should play the various onstage parts: a father, a love interest, a school counselor. The running also helps to demystify Radcliffe to viewers who may only know him from his movies.
“Sometimes people come into the theater and they see me and there’s an initial moment of, ‘Oh, my God,’” Radcliffe said, speaking by phone. “By the time they have seen me running around like a mad person, sweating and looking probably quite stressed at times, that does a lot to make people forget.”
When it comes to casting audience members, a few of the roles have certain requirements. The father is always a man of approximate dad age, the school counselor is typically a middle-aged or older woman. The love interest, who can be of any gender, is usually a 20-something or a 30-something. Beyond that, Radcliffe, Hull and Dupper are seeking a particular energetic vibration, which can be hard to describe. They want someone extroverted, but not too extroverted; willing, but not too eager.
“I’m very protective of Dan, so I’m sussing out vibes and looking for people that are not going to derail his night,” Hull, a longtime friend of Radcliffe’s, said. “I’m looking for energies that feel kind and open and a little playful, but not steamrollery.”
“It’s someone who can be present with him onstage without it feeling completely overwhelmed,” Dupper continued. “Because it’s so exciting to be near him. If that is too exciting, that’s maybe not the right thing.”
If volunteers seem too polished, audience members might assume they are plants, so an effort is made to avoid choosing actors. “It’s more special if it’s someone who’s genuinely a little nervous to be up there,” Dupper said. And if a person is wearing “Harry Potter” merch, it’s probably a no. (Much to the creators’ chagrin, multiple Reddit threads give advice on how to be chosen.)
Once Dupper and Hull meet a likely candidate, they try to have Radcliffe also speak to the person, and vice versa. No one is ever brought up without consent. Because this process leaves Radcliffe exposed, at least three security guards are watching over him at any given time.
For those selected, there’s plenty of cuing and hand-holding. Radcliffe is trained to soothe and reorient anyone who freezes up or goes off script. He emphasized that the volunteers don’t have to be especially funny or clever or quick, they just have to be present and available. “The engine that powers this show is kindness,” he said. “If you get up and you’re kind, everything else is a bonus.”
One of those volunteers was Cori Robinson. An actress (whoops) who also works in the legal field, she was chosen as the school counselor. She had never appeared on Broadway before. “It was amazing, but scary,” she said. After the performance, Radcliffe thanked her personally and had her exit through the stage door. “I was like, Wow, this is what real Broadway performers go through,” she said. “It was really such a high.”
Andrew Gilliland, who works in financial services, was also scared when he was cast as the love interest. “The idea of being this romantic opposite to somebody who you idolize is a little bit intimidating,” he said.
But Radcliffe quickly put him at ease. And while Gilliland had worried that participating in the play would limit his enjoyment, he found that being onstage enriched his experience of the play’s emotions and themes.
Fundamentally, the audience participation in “Every Brilliant Thing” gives life to the play’s themes, which Macmillan described as “connecting with real people, feeling like you’re not alone, feeling like part of a community, reaching out to people when you need help, giving help to people when you’re asked for it.” At each performance, unrehearsed audience members turn these ideas into stage action, demonstrating bravery and compassion.
“That’s why the show’s so special,” Radcliffe said. “You get to be surprised by how brilliant people are on a nightly basis.”
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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