With its sterile anonymity and forced intimacy, it’s hard not to think of the audition room as an amalgam of job interview, therapy session, and confessional. Culled from Barry J. Hershey’s casting tapes for an unrealized film, Casting About is a nicely contemplative documentary about actors and their ambivalent relationship with that intimidating space. Footage from 184 auditions is broken down into thematically linked sequences like “issues concerning nudity.” Little is revealed about Hershey’s aborted feature, but this only supports his depiction of the audition process as a bizarre mating ritual between actor and filmmaker, a testing ground for creative compatibility. Because he needed permission from his actresses to include their tapes, he avoids showing the sort of humiliatingly inept hopefuls who invariably provide comic fodder for reality programs. And although the film can be too precious in its insistence that every actress is special, it mostly strikes the right balance of respectful distance and bewildered curiosity about these largely unknown performers. Those who work in casting could argue that Casting About is just another day at the office, but by not shying away from the mundaneness of auditioning, Hershey’s documentary slowly evolves beyond highfalutin concepts like “the craft of acting” into universal questions about surface beauty, inner depth, and the double-edged sword of following a dream.