Theater casting bends realism more than movie casts. 

When deciding which actor will play a character on screen, a movie will choose a body type that looks similar to how that person would appear in real life. And yet, plays like Trophy Boys revolve around the concept of placing its characters in different bodies than they’d occupy off stage; the MCC production’s dramaturgy is steeped in this juxtaposition between character and body. 

But can you name any parallel example of such type-stretched casting in cinema? 

An armchair explanation for this lack: the camera can claim to be a documentary portrayal of life; even though we know we’re watching actors reenacting reality, the screen can still seem like a portal to an alternative, but still believable reality.

Yet the visual sight of the stage is a constant reminder that we’re inside a reenactment; we can’t forget that what we’re watching is artifice.

And that makes us more accepting of looser casting?

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A few more thoughts on Trophy Boys:

• Spraying an Axe can whose smell seeps into the audience creates sensory immersion through a nasal trademark of teenage boys.  
• The first Zohran Mamdani name-drop in a scripted play??
• Trophy Boys and Berlindia! (now at The Tank) feel like Clubbed Thumb plays, perhaps evidence of the theater’s developmental program extending its tentacles of stylistic influence beyond the confines of its home at the Wild Project.