The View from Backstage: You're Doing Theater Wrong

I just received an audition notice for a theater that plans to charge each actor $75 for the privilege of being in the show and helping the theater to make money. This isn't for camp, mind you: It's for a show.

This marvelous play has no licensing fees associated with it.

No. Just, no. There are other ways to stay in the black. There are grants, there are raffles and 50/50s, there are ads and sponsors, there are concessions, there are season ticket holders, and there are patrons who gladly will donate money if asked, to keep alive the community theater that they enjoy. Use those instead.

If that's not enough, cut your expenses. There is no need to do the biggest shows from Broadway history. There are thousands of quality dramatic works that have no licensing fees attached because they are in the public domain. Do a smaller work, and your theater will stand out from the herd. Everyone else is doing shows by Aaron Sorkin, Neil Simon and Stephen Sondheim. Be the brave theater to stage Eugene O'Neill, Christopher Marlowe, August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Susan Glaspell or Oscar Wilde. Give your show a contemporary setting, and you won't even need to buy costumes.

Actors already easily are volunteering around 50 to 60 hours of their time from their evenings and weekends, per show. This is time they could spend at home with their families, at jobs making money, being with friends, or doing other things they love. And that's in addition to the time they spend memorizing and running lines.

I'm on the board of a community theater myself. I know how difficult it is to stay in the black, and what an earthquake it can be to have a bad season. Unless you're planning to divide the profits with them, you don't squeeze your actors for their money. That's like talking smack to them during the run. It's unprofessional and it's just bad karma.

I'm not going to audition for anything this theater does, and we're not going to promote any more of their shows via this blog either. There are some things you just can't support.

Casting Call: 'W.A.S.P' (staged reading)

Villagers Theatre is seeking a cast for a staged reading of the next play in its ongoing New Playwrights Series.

The show, "W.A.S.P.," is scheduled for a reading at 8 p.m. May 16 at the theater. Written by Zanne Hall and directed by Joey Palazzo, the show dramatizes the experiences of women who trained with the Women Airforce Service Pilots in Sweetwater, Texas, in 1944. Pilots with the W.A.S.P. program were faced with personal and professional conflict, and had to confront military and societal prejudice that believed the U.S. Air Force was a man's world where women did not belong.

Pilots from the program received the Congressional Gold Medal from Congress in 2010 in recognition of their WWII flying service. Interested actors should send head shots and resumes to NewPlaywrightseries@gmail.com

CAST OF CHARACTERS

JACKIE WIGHTMAN – 20s.	As a Floridian foster child (slight Southern accent) she had a difficult life in her early poor beginnings but found that a passion for flying made her life purposeful. She is an ace pilot and loves military life. She is a cocky wiseacre but can be an empathetic person because of her own hard-knock life. A deceased mother, a father who vanished soon after her brother was born, she hopes to reunite with her sibling.
DESIREE PATRICIA POST – 20s.	A member of the wealthy Post Cereals family, she and her husband owned a flight school before the war. She is a troublemaking snitch who has connections with the military brass because of her elite background. She is indifferent to anything but herself and thinks she is an ace pilot.
TSUN-YAN (SUNNY) CHUN - 20s.	(Chinese) Very upbeat, funny, always with a wisecrack that hits the point. Very self-assured and comfortable with herself in any situation. A hot pilot who was the first woman to fly solo across the U.S. north to south.
TERRY MITCHELL – 20s.	The naïve greenhorn of the group. Sweet and shy at first but a plucky, determined individual with a youthful passion for flying. She comes from a protective family who sent her away to Ohio State University to study pharmacy. She discreetly spent the surplus money they sent her for charm school on flying lessons. During W.A.S.P. training she becomes secretly married to a flight surgeon – military suicide if discovered.
INEZ (WHISKY) SANCHEZ - 20s.	(Argentinean) Her farming family moved to Wisconsin when she was a child just after the Peron power takeover. A soft-spoken, sensitive, commonsense woman with an understanding ear. JACKIE‘s confidant. She hopes to combine her love of flying with missionary work after WWII.
ALICE (ZIGGY) NEGLEY - 20s.	A smart-cracking tall beautiful New York Ziegfeld Follies gal who felt the call to help her country in a unique way. A producer‘s son who owned his own plane took her on flying trips where she fell head-over-heels in love with piloting (but not him). With a tough-as-nails exterior but a soft exterior, she thinks she can take care of herself until she gets into problems over her head, like an unwanted pregnancy.
BEATRICE (FRANKIE) WILKENS – 20s.	A devotee of Frank Sinatra. She is a daredevil trickster who has a sporting way about her. She is a good pilot but takes too many chances that eventually place her as a pawn in the military‘s game of elimination.

Military Nurse (doubled)
Military Orderly (doubled)


The goal of the Villagers New Playwrights Series is to provide playwrights with an opportunity to glimpse the performance potential of their works in progress. Additional goals are to provide alternative performance opportunities for our local actors and directors and to expose our local audiences to new works. All submissions will be considered for their potential to fulfill these goals.

Due to the fact that Villagers programs are supported, in part, by funds from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts/ Department of State (a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and administered by the Somerset County Cultural & Heritage Commission through the State/County Partnership Local Arts Program), preference will be given to New Jersey resident playwrights. - See more at: http://www.villagerstheatre.com/viewproductions/new-playwrights-series/#sthash.pGLBrNpz.dpuf