Theater auditions lure 850 seeking 90 seconds to fame

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Theater companies began auditions Friday at the Unified Professional Theatre Auditions at Playhouse on the Square. Trevor Leaderbrand, 23, of Chicago (left) gets a hug after his performance Friday morning from Stephen Anthony, 21, of Miami.

Dramatic developments were taking place at Playhouse on the Square with hundreds of actors demanding to be heard.

And they were -- loud and clear at the kickoff Friday of the four-day Unified Professional Theatre Auditions, a national job fair bringing together professional actors and companies that want to hire them.

It's the 18th year for the UPTAs, and Michael Detroit has been running the show as audition coordinator since the start.

Professional actors need work and theatrical companies need talent, so the UPTAs give performers a chance to get on the stage at Playhouse and do 90 seconds of their best work -- monologs, singing or both. Company representatives sit in the auditorium and take notes, seeing who might be best suited for them.

"It's bigger, faster and stronger this year," Detroit said Friday, noting that some 80 companies will see and hear about 850 actors and talk to another 75 production people. With multiple people typically coming from the theatrical companies, that comes to about 1,100 people, overwhelmingly from outside Memphis.

Detroit said the UPTA event has about a $1 million economic impact in the city over the four-day run and is one of the top 25 conventions in the city. In the first year, 1995, there were about 25 theatrical companies seeing 200 actors and using 50 hotel rooms over two days.

The Memphis Marriott Downtown set aside about 250 rooms, and the visiting companies use hotel facilities to see actors for a second round of auditions -- the coveted callbacks. After the daily rounds of auditions at Playhouse, the companies post which actors they want to see again. Time slots are filled in, and performers and company representatives meet for what amounts to a one-on-one job interview where the applicant may literally sing and dance for a potential employer.

For Nick Mason, an associate company member of Playhouse, it was his ticket to do paying performance work when he got out of Shorter College in Georgia. He attended UPTA in 2010 and again last year, when he was offered a job to work this season with Playhouse.

Mason is a character actor, currently performing in "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play" at Circuit, one of about seven productions he'll have been in this season. He'll be doing his audition on today, hoping to find a compatible organization when his contract at Playhouse runs out in June.

While there are other conferences that allow actors and companies to meet up, UPTA is more selective -- only professional actors who will be available for employment in the coming year (meaning nobody who will be in school), and it's all about getting work. "No workshops, no keynote speeches," Mason said.

His approach is to use his 90 seconds to show range and character shifts, but mostly to convey his personality. "The point of the 90-second audition is to get the callbacks. So I want to showcase what kind of person I am -- who it is they'll be hiring."

For more information, go to upta.org.

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