by Ted Sherman

Created on: May 28, 2008

If you're lucky enough to have a trusted talent agency working for you, that should be your most reliable source for lining up current auditions for Broadway shows. Of course, if you're just starting out, Murphy's Law applies for getting a talent rep. Agencies won't want you unless you're already successful in getting jobs, so that they can be assured of taking their ten percent out of your earnings.

For acquiring up-to-date information where it won't cost you the ten percent if you get the job, you can research who's hiring now in New York on a reliable online resource. One is BackStage.com. It lists up-to-the-minute information about casting calls, auditions, listing for other show business jobs, advice from others in the business in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere in the country. There are many others, some legitimate and some rip-off. Your responsibility is to determine which can do you the most good. But it won't be easy.

Now long retired, I can remember my own job searches, and how traumatic they could be, especially when my money was running out and I didn't really know when or if the next offer would come in. Fortunately, when I did get a good job, I climbed up the corporate ladder to become manager of a creative division of a large insurance company.

In my hiring for new employees over 25 years, I interviewed writers, graphic artists, video writers and techs, and sales promotion and public relations pros. It wasn't Broadway show business, but there were many parallels in both my own job seeking experience and for interviewing those who came to me looking for jobs. The interviews and auditions were always traumatic, at least for the person on the wrong side of the desk.

The feelings and anxieties are sung in the audition song from Broadway's longest-running, and still very popular American musical, "A Chorus Line". In part of the song, the applicants stand with their resums and photos, and lament:

"Who am I anyway?
Am I my resum?
That is a picture of a person I don't know.
What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around, and here we go
I need this job, Oh God, I need this show."

In the old days (see Judy Garland's fantasy job-seeking number in "A Star is Born"), actors, dancers and singers had to go from door to door in the theater district every day, seeking jobs and information on current and planned shows. It was a humiliating and tiresome experience, and often made them vulnerable to the traditional "casting couch" interview. Over the past 15 years, the internet has made the footwork less necessary, but the humiliation remains when 500 struggling New York show business wannabes apply online for the same job, and only ten succeed in getting an audition. Then, of course, only one of the ten actually gets the job.

Today, finding listings of audtions for Broadway theater jobs is easy. What once took days of newspaper scanning, phone dialing and pavement pounding, now only requires a mornings scanning and cell phoning for interviews on all the appropriate show business websites. That's the easy part. The hard part is beating out the other 499 applicants for the same job.

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