Michael Sutton has been casting “real people” in films, commercials, industrials, and infomercials for more than two decades, working with some of the best Real People directors in the business. He comes from a long line of storytellers and yarn weavers, and credit that heritage for my ability to talk to anyone about anything. He’s done everything from finding real people to sell Crest, Swiffer mops, and Tylenol to casting heart-wrenching documentary subjects (two women in their seventies getting married in Showtime’s Same Sex America, a man who can’t find love due to his addictions in OWN’s Love Etc.) to working with celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, James Earl Jones, and Heidi Klum.
His plays Blind Spot and The Katydid each won The Festival of Emerging America Theatre Award and had productions at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana. On the Ledge was produced at The Vantage Theater in La Jolla, California, and also at the West Bank Café in New York City. He also wrote one screenplay, The Scam, which was a semi-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship. His monologue Aunt Leota is published in Moving Parts: Monologues from Contemporary Plays. He is also a member of The American Renaissance Theater Company.
He spent many a night trodding the boards of New York’s comedy club circuit. My hit one-man show, The Virginia Ham, was the longest-running show at the Horn of Plenty (a well-renowned club in the 90s). He also worked professionally as a comic on the road, playing every Ramada, Best Western, and Chuckles off Interstates 95, 81, and the lesser-traveled Route 220.
He has written a book entitled Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up: The Uncensored Tales of a Real People Casting Director and is currently looking for a publisher.