Extortionate train fares are pricing us out of auditions, actors warn

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From The Stage

Actors and agents claim the “extortionate” cost of train travel is pricing performers out of auditions, with castings at short notice and multiple call-backs leaving many hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

Equity is now ramping up efforts to tackle the situation, which some actors claim has become “untenable”.

I have to wonder if the audition process itself is part of the problem.

Actor Chris Clarkson, who also lives in the North, added that he has to pay up to £90 per ticket, and the same again if he is recalled.

“Imagine a West End show with six rounds [of auditions]. That’s £540 just to get a job,” he said, adding: “I now don’t head to London for the cattle-market casting or those where the fee is stupidly low.”

Interestingly, this whole business of investing time and resource into a bidding process needs to be carefully thought through ... I'm noting GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s CCIF^▸ (Customer and Communities Improvement Fund) process where we might celebrate the funding for 39 projects this year. But I'l also aware that there are 111 unsuccessful bids, almost all of which will have been put together with considerable thought and involvement of multiple and perhaps external bodies who have budgeted to match funds and now find their budgets ... well, the bid has not succeeded and there will be lots of goal posts to reset in various ways.  Here too , surely, there must be a better way?

[eightonedee]

It begs the question - why are their agents or the theatre managers/companies not getting together to negotiate packages for struggling actors?