Last summer because we were limited in time we did a director's choice rather than open auditions. This year we're opening auditions to the entire township - we've done open auditions in our own high school but either we knew the kids auditioning or else knew other faculty who knew the kids (their work ethic etc.) We're a little concerned about this year's open auditions - any suggestions about process or application forms?

Thanks for your response - this is very similar to what I've done in the past in terms of info. Do you ever ask for recommendations or letters of referral?

Originally posted by WCYP Do you ever ask for recommendations or letters of referral?

I've never done nor never heard of that being done.  What's a recommendation supposed to accomplish?  Just a judge of character?  Personally I'd rather get this out of my discussions with them during the audition itself.

Originally posted by dboris I think it's important to emphesize the question about conflicts. We provide the auditioners a list of all the rehersal and production dates and ask them to note any conflicts. Tell them that we may be able to work around rehersal conflicts if we know about them ahead of time, but it can be a problem if we find out after they have been cast.

Oh man, these are such a headache.  I dont' give them a schedule, I say... Here's our rehearsal period.. June 2 through the show on July 22-23-24 or whatever.  List any and all conflicts with that time.  You may have your set rehearsal schedule but what happens if you want to add an extra practice and haven't asked for conflicts yet?  I then take all the cast member's conflicts and add them into a book so I can look at June 18th and see all the people that won't be there - this lets us actually set our rehearsal schedule around the maximum cast availability.  Our performers are told that the earlier in the rehearsal period, the more forgiving we are of conflicts - and there are expected to be absolutely no absences during show week.

But... you still run into things that come up - a family vacation that they forgot about listing.  Or a college visit or something last minute.  My biggest problem this past summer was with two 17/18 year old girls.  One put down that she had a college summer class on Tuesday/Thursday nights, so we scheduled around her because we liked her work, but she failed to put on her form that she also worked as a life-guard on some M-W-F and didn't give us any heads up or forewarning.  My co-director had worked the same job several years back and said that they schedule around everyone really well, so clearly the girl didn't bother to hand off her rehearsal schedule to her employer.

The other girl had written down "Work at [Job name]" but nothing beyond that, so we had no idea that it would pull her away from most every rehearsal she was supposed to be at.  As far as we knew, it was working during the day and not evenings, or weekends or what not - but she gave us nothing.  For a relatively small part, I would have expected her get the small numbers of rehearsals she had to be at cleared from her work schedule - I guess her opinion was that for a small role, she didn't need to be there that much.  *shrug*

I've decided that for our next show, anyone who misses a rehearsal without telling us I'll call the next morning/afternoon.

We take the "roles" question a step further asking if there are any roles the auditioner will or will not accept. I person not wanting a small roll is not always an issue of ego, especially for experienced actors. They may be looking for the challenge of one or two specific major roles in a show and may just not feel challenged enough be a chorus part. I usually don't hold this against them.

That's a good point.  You do get both ends of things.  But people do have a tendency to be bitter a lot, too.  We had a girl who had offered time and again to be a stage manager or do anything backstage because she had experience there from college.  She came in to audition for our last show and was 'ok' - we added her to our list of call backs for a few parts but by the end of auditions we were looking at how many massive amounts of people were scheduled for callbacks and also our lack of a stage manager and said... 'okay, her performance wasn't the greatest.  not bad, but not stand out.  we can have her come in and read and add yet another person to an already 30+ member call back session, or just put her as stage manager and solve that problem.'  we called her and she said OK, but then called us back the next day (or sent the message with her sister, who happened to be girl #2 above...) and said that she'd found a new job and would instead be dedicating her time to that.  I bet she wouldn't have done the same if she'd gotten an on-stage role... and I know she talked bitterly to other people about how she figures she wasn't given a callback because we wanted a stage manager.  Whatever.  I try to go into every audition period with a blank slate, but you think that family is going to be high on my list for our next show?

To add another thing I thought about after I made my earlier post... a couple shows back we tried actually listing all the roles in the show and asking what they were interested in... we had a sheet that listed all 42 roles and a brief description and let people mark, but ultimately, we really didn't pay any attention to this at all because people can't get a good sense of a role based on a sentence description and a handful of excerpts.

Another thing that we ask on our form is if they're interested in assisting back stage - stage hands, hair/make-up, costumes, set construction, set painting.  And we ask if they're interested in helping regardless, only if they're cast, only if they're not cast.   Then when it comes time to find volunteers, we've got a good starting pool of contact info.

A lot of great stuff in this thread.  I've only directed Forever Plaid and I had the advantage of hand-picking the actors.  They all knew each other and had plenty of four part singing background.  They were great.  Next year it's different.

I'll be directing a musical with a cast of approximately 30.  And while I have people that I can "envision" in certain roles, no one is being cast between now and auditions.  I'm hoping someone comes in and blows us all away.

Two things that have been mentioned, but are high on my priority are getting all conflicts on paper.  And I agree ... list all conflicts between the first and last rehearsal.  The rehearsal schedule will depend on availability.

The other HAS to be ... will you accept a role other than a lead ... followed by ... will you accept a role if your BFF, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle are not cast. 

That's one of the things that bothers me the most about community theatre ... people dropping out because someone else didn't get the part they wanted.  But hey ... it's always going to happen.