A two part question:

1) As a director, should the choice of who you cast be in any way affected by members of the board of directors of the theater or influenced by others having some influence in the theater.

2) As a director,are there any circumstances where you would base casting decisions on factors which have nothing to do with a persons ability and talent that was demonstrated at the audition? And what might these be?

Indeed could be a trick, but discussion is good.

Look.... I appreciate the candor in the responses so far and , to me , there is no "right" or "wrong" answer. But even in three responses there are differences in interpretation and philosophy of this question and I understand that differences in philosophy exist.

   My only qualm, as an actor, has to do with the appropriate and constructive use of my personal time to attend an audition which can sometimes take 2 or 3 hours.

If , for instance , I could only attend one of three auditions given by the above different directors then obviously it would be, if I knew something about their "philosophy" before hand , to my advantage to attend the audition of edh915. And if I could attend more than one then it might or might not be my choice to attend the other two.

   I guess over the years it has just become more and more irksome to attend some auditions that , essentially, were a waste of time to attend. Time is a very precious commodity.

 I wouldn't want you to think that I hold auditions and have already pre-cast part. If I am holding auditions for particular parts, you can bet  it is not pre-cast. I am not fond of auditions and if I could pre-cast everybody I would, and then just skip auditioning.

Obviously, there's some actual situation here.  I'll just try to address this generally:
1. You actually have two questions here.  The first one is, should it be affected by members of the board.  And here, I'll say... maybe, see my answer to number 2.  Your second question is, should it be affected by who has influence, and I'll say no.

2. Yes.  As a director, I want the best people for the part.  And, as such, I will be led by what I learn from the auditions plus any other information germane to the decision.

Let me give a couple examples that are relevant, and not all too uncommon:

* A while back, I was directing a one-act as part of a night of such, and we did a combined audition, because some actors would end up cast in multiple roles across shows.  The general course was simply to do cold readings, and there was one fellow who gave a pretty bad cold read.  Despite this, he ended up cast in 3 of the 4 shows.  Why?  Because we knew he could act -- he'd been in a previous production, at which he'd given a similarly bad read, but got cast anyway just due to lack of alternatives, and gave a good performance ... and we all knew this tale.

* In my last directing gig, at the end of auditions, I sat down with my AD and SM (who sat in on the audition).  We had 3 medium-to-large parts and 3 women of a similar age with sufficient talent to fill the roles.  In discussing the choice with them, we placed one of the three, and were left with two for two spots.  I favored one girl for the larger role based on the read she gave for it, but she'd given an inferior read for another part, and based on that the AD and SM were of the opposite opinion, and I thought they made good points.

Here's where #1 comes in.  I called in the producer, who'd worked with both of them before and asked for her opinion -- she'd been working the door, and hadn't seen the audition, but I needed MORE information.  And she gave some valuable insight on both of them that helped make the decision, and given the outcome, helped make the RIGHT decision.

So... yes.  You have the last word on this, and in no way should you give this up (this is part of the reason I won't co-direct again ... the casting session drove me up a wall ... casting's a painful enough experience when you only have to fight your own mind).  However, you shouldn't be afraid to take other information into account if you think it will help you make your decision, and sometimes, board members and the like can be a valuable aid in that.