For anyone who attended the Providence auditions for "ACT" or "A.C.T.", you may have figured out by now that the experience wasn't quite what you were led to believe it would be. When my daughter came to me with the telephone # she got from Nickelodian, I called and was given an appointment at 4:00 P.M. On 1/3 for a "private" audition. The gentlemen gave me two names, "Hugh Ridell" & "Heather Finn", and said someone would call me on Friday to confirm the appointment. Always the skeptic, I did google the names given to me and could not find anything at all for Mr. Ridell, which I though was strange for a Hollywood Director not to have any google hits at all. Anyway, I did discover that Heather Finn does in fact work for a very reputable New York Booking agency called FBI (Frontier Booking International) founded by the late Ian Copeland (drummer Stuart Copeland's older brother). So I thought maybe? This is for real? When someone called me back to confirm the appointment I made sure to ask if this wasn't some sort of solicitation for $ or training of some sort. No, No, No, I was told. Next question I asked: Will there be alot of people there? Answer: No, No, No, It's a "private" audtion. O.K., good enough for me. I'll drive two hours to Providence with two glossy photos to entertain my daughter's excited curiosity (and mine). So we race to get there for our "private" 4:00 P.M. Audition and quickly discover a line so long that by the time we got to the front we were told to come back at 5:15. I realize pretty quickly I had already been lied to once, so my expectations at this point are very low. Some folks on the way out tell me of the $2,000 minimum workshop fees they will "require" for them to even look at my child. I decide to play along and have fun with it. I had also already prepared my daughter beforehand for the likelihood that nothing would come of this and that I would not be shelling out any $ for anything, and we were just there for fun, so there was no harm in going through the 5 second audition. We sit through the presentation by Lindy, who gives a pretty slick presentation (isn't hard to look at by the way (-:) but I already know it's all about the $ (code for "commitment"). The interesting part of it is that she said she would be seeing 600 families and only 5% would be "selected" for the "call back list". Now I can look around me and see there are more than 600 families at this thing. We then meet with Lindy for 1 minute, I tell her I will support my daughter with my credit card if she is selected in the top 5%, and we get our script. We then do the five second audition in front of Heather Finn and leave. We were given a phone number to call today and OMG!!! Guess what? My daughter made the top 5%!!! Well, I politely declined the opportunity to pay $2,000 - $7,500 for the "workshop". My guess is most of you were also in the top 5%??? Would love to hear if you were.
Parents who were there, do not despair! Your kids looked absolutely adorable! Even though this was not as reputable as it should have been, it was still fun, wasn't it? Think of this as a notch on your childs belt if he/she is really interested in pursuing a career in acting or modeling. If nothing else, these people in some way gave us an introduction into what it might be like to audition for a real director or booking agency. Try disney-channel-auditions.com which looks kind of like a craiglist for real auditions. It is my guess that Heather Finn was being paid by "ACT" or whoever they are (they do not seem to be registered with the BBB as their website claims) to do those thousands of 5 second auditions with no intentions of really signing anybody, but at least she is a real booking agent. Heather, you should separate yourself from these people! Looks like exhausting work anyway. And as for Lindy and ACT, a little honesty beforehand would have been nice, but thank you anyway for making this experience possible for my daughter! Lindy, you should give up this sleazy line of work. You're too pretty. Get back to doing some modeling (-:
Dad
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