I woke up this morning and for some reason I was thinking about Waleed Zuaiter. He played the part of Ashraf in Sixteen Wounded The part could be described as a one scene/leading role . The play pivots on his entrance and exit. He got the roll by pure persistence and brass. He had wanted to audition for the part of Mahmoud, the lead, but no auditions were ever held for the role because the part had simply been offered to Omar Metwally. Waleed didn’t care, he wanted to be seen anyway. He wanted us to know what we’d missed. He made a few phone calls to Binder Casting… nothing. So he picked up a bouquet of flowers and brought them to the receptionist. She was stunned.

As luck would have it, just as he was delivering the flowers who happed by but Jay Binder of Binder Casting. He explained to Jay his purpose. Jay happened to need a reader for the next day’s auditions.

The next day… we were looking at Women , casting the part of Nora. It was a long day of not finding what we were looking for, however Waleed was great, and he got to read for the part not one time but ten and he got better and better throughout the day, and at six o clock, it was unanimous, the only way to get any value out of the day was to cast Waleed as Omar’s understudy.

Waleed was thrilled, however that’s just were this story begins…

Tomorrow…. The rest.