Where Eagles Dare can be a great place to have an audition. It's convenient, competitively priced, clean, and bright. But all facilities have their own quirks, and Where Eagles Dare is no different. There are some things that you need to bear in mind when scheduling an audition at Where Eagles Dare. Many of the points made here are common sense, but some apply especially to Where Eagles Dare, and it would be helpful for all new customers to cast an eye over them.
The essence of managing a successful audition (apart from casting people you want) is to have enough time, space, and personnel to do the job comfortably. There is nothing worse for the actor, producer, or director than having a long line of actors sprawling out into the street, or milling about in hallways, without knowing when (or whether) they will be seen. We keep our prices down by making maximum use of all available space, so the waiting rooms cannot accommodate a cast of thousands, and the common areas are just that -- common for everyone. The bottom line is, you're renting a studio or studios, perhaps with a waiting room, and you shouldn't assume the hallways are an additional storage area. At any rate, these are the basic principles behind a successful audition at Where Eagles Dare:
Producers have to watch their pennies. But cutting corners in auditions leads to bad feelings all around. Actors spend a lot of time waiting, sometimes in uncomfortable places, and your director feels rushed to get through the backlog. And your host at Where Eagles Dare spends far too much time snarling at actors in hallways or feckless producers who should have known better. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and it is important that your actors feel confident in you the producer. You are auditioning for them as much as they for you, and if they think you’re an amateur they’ll make you pay for that impression later.
You must schedule appointments with everyone you’re seeing. This principle means you may not schedule an open call. You have no idea how many people will show up – there could be hundreds!
The principle of scheduling appointments means that you should do so intelligently. Scheduling everyone between 6 and 8 means they’ll all show up at 5:30, and it will take you 2 hours to work through the backlog. During this time nerves will fray and some actors will leave in disgust, figuring you for an amateur. And you may have to pay for extra space to accommodate the overflow.
You should schedule your first appointment for no less than 30 minutes after you booked the room; i.e., if you booked the room for 6 p.m., you should schedule the first appointment for no earlier than 6:30. Why? Because actors show up early for auditions. Not that they’re particularly disciplined or organized (anyone who has tried to get actors to be punctual for rehearsals knows that!), but because they want a competitive edge, and they think getting there early might help them. (You can spend that first half hour setting up the waiting area and audition room, since you have no idea how it will be left for you. In fact, if you allow 60 minutes before the first appointment, you will have fewer actors watching you set up chairs, which will make you look more professional to them.)
You should space the appointments. Depending on the kind of audition you plan to have – whether you just want to see a monolog, which you might cut short after 15 seconds, or perhaps engage the actor in various exercises to see if he or she can take direction – you need to schedule an appropriate amount of time to see the actor, make notes, and discuss him or her with the other auditors. Typically you can’t expect to see more than 12 actors an hour, possibly a lot fewer. The number of appointments you make affects your space requirements, as you need sufficient waiting space to hold an hour’s worth of auditionees.
(There is one exception to the rule of not having open calls. You can see everyone who comes in, provided you are there an hour earlier than the scheduled time and you don’t actually audition anyone. Just give out appointments for another time, and have the people come back. They should drop off a headshot and resume while they are there. You can then have actors wait in the same room as your staff while you process their paperwork and give out appointments.)
You need either to book a studio with a waiting room (Auk, Blackbird, or Chickadee), or else 2 studios, using one as a waiting room for the other. How will you know which choice to make (assuming both choices are available)? Since actors arrive early, you should have enough waiting room to hold one hour’s worth of actors. This goes directly back to the principle of scheduling appointments. Since Auk's waiting room holds no more than 7 actors, and Blackbird/Chickadee's no more than 10, if you want to see more in each hour, you must rent another studio as a holding area. You may only use the hallways as holding areas if you receive permission from the attendant, depending on the number of other clients waiting for other studios.
If your actors are spread out between 2 rooms, you need to have enough people to manage them. A monitor in the waiting area is good, with sufficient signage in the hallway (remember to take it down later!) to direct people to that room. You should also have an assistant in the audition room who can communicate with the monitor that it is time to send in another actor. One of these staff needs to collect people’s headshots and resumes and get them to the auditors, who might want an additional assistant keeping track of paperwork. If you are just using one studio and its waiting room, 1 assistant might be enough. In any case, the auditors themselves shouldn’t be running back and forth keeping things straight, and someone should be making sure that the actors are in the right place and being seen in the right order.
The plan should reference all the above components – people, space, and time. If you don’t have a plan, the chances are your audition will be no fun for anyone, and will just increase stress for the participants. That makes for bad auditions, which don’t help you at all. A well-planned audition, on the other hand, encourages actors to present their best work in circumstances that are as relaxed as possible, and means that you will be receptive to what they have to offer. It also means that they will see you as a professional, and want to work with you.
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