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Q: Parental concern about touring theatre company

I am concerned when my daughter travels miles to audition for a touring theatre company that is not even auditioning in its home town. How can I find out more about it?

A: I should have thought the obvious answer is to write to or telephone the theatre company and voice your concern. It is not clear from your enquiry what precisely is your concern. Is it the travelling expenses or the time and effort involved - or both? In any event, if your daughter is successful at the audition, I should have thought it worthwhile. If not then that is tough but there is no compulsion to attend. There must be numerous opportunities for attending other auditions closer to home. I also note that the concern seems to be yours, rather than your daughter's. Is it, perhaps, that you are worried about her safety? If she is an adult, then surely such a journey is no different than one taken for any other purpose.

If she is a child then presumably she will be accompanied by you or another adult, in which case I can understand if you are concerned about the expenses of a possibly wasted journey. On the other hand, on one view it would not be entirely wasted because attendance at auditions, even if unsuccessful, is all part of the valuable experience of performing artists and the more one does it, even if unsuccessful, the less nervous one is likely to be next time.

If your concern is about the expense and the likelihood or otherwise of it being reimbursed by the theatre company, that is a vexed question which has aroused much controversy in the industry. Some companies make a practice of reimbursing expenses and others do not. There are cogent arguments on both sides. On the one hand, an impecunious applicant may find it hard to swallow the expense of a long, and possibly fruitless journey. On the other hand, it seems to me that much depends on whether the audition is open or by invitation only. If it is by invitation then it is not unreasonable for the performer to expect reimbursement, whether successful or not. If the audition is an open one, however, the theatre company may understandably take the view that it does not see why it should end up paying what, in the aggregate, may amount to a substantial sum of money to a large number of applicants, some of whom may be utterly hopeless, or be auditioning for experience only without any expectation of success, or possibly because they just fancy a day out at the company's expense.

I suppose what you or your daughter could do is write to the theatre company with a copy of her CV and ask whether it thinks from that if it may be worth your daughter's while to attend and, if so, whether it is prepared to pay her travelling expenses, even if the audition is unsuccessful. However, you should be prepared for a negative response because the likelihood is that the theatre company may have a standard policy on such matters and will not want to appear unfair by treating one applicant differently from another. Obviously if your daughter is successful at the audition, it should not be difficult for her or her agent to negotiate as part of her contract for the role in question to have her auditioning expenses reimbursed. In fact, if she has an agent, then the agent can make all necessary enquiries for her and advise her whether or not to attend.

I note your comment that the touring theatre company is not auditioning in its home town. However, there may be good reasons for this and again you can find out more about it by your daughter or her agent asking the company concerned.

First published September 2001