"It's like the hunger games": How to try for West End stardom

Between dreams and nightmares

At long last, Ellen Burgin, a marketing coordinator for production company Kenwright, is about to deliver some news to a crowd of hopeful actors waiting outside the Other Palace Theatre in Victoria. “Everyone will sparkle when they get to sparkle,” she says, a little nervously, “but thank you; everyone’s been so nice.” All around her, people forlornly steel themselves to their fate without abandoning, in some buried mental compartment, a glimmer of that terrible burden we call hope. 

Over the course of the day, Burgin has been frantically managing a casting call for The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, a show that will tour the UK in August. Roughly 400 people were already queuing by the time the doors opened at 10am. It’s now 5pm and getting chilly. For the actors here, the West End occupies a mountaintop that, going by raw statistical rationality, none of them will ever reach. Everyone has a ceiling. Burgin probably doesn’t like this part of the job, but it has to be done. “We think we could see maybe 60 to 70 [more]” she says. “So after this point,” she gestures to a lamppost on the street, “we can't guarantee we can see you. You’re welcome to wait, but we cannot guarantee it.” 

At that, there’s a long collective sigh, a begrudging, frustrated letting go. These unlucky people, now on the wrong side of the lamppost, have been waiting for nine hours, anxious about a potential rejection which now feels like a luxury. Many were so stressed that they barely slept before waking in the early hours to commute to London. One young woman, now halfway down the street, defeated, travelled all the way from Texas. Members of the crowd protest about line cutters, a lack of organisation by the production company and the fact that they’ve missed work — but, ultimately, there’s nothing they can do. All of them will go home, having sacrificed their day for nothing. This is what the industry demands of them and, incredibly, for almost everyone here, it’s worth it. 

When Beth Bullas, 22, was at drama school, a tutor gave her a hard truth. “There’s only 8,000 jobs in the performing industry, but there's over 80,000 people trying to get [them]”. She thinks that disparity has grown by now. At least she knew what she was signing up for. Bullas commuted from St Albans, where she lives with her grandmother specifically so she can easily get to the capital for auditions. She works what the industry calls a “survival job” at a restaurant, though she’s already had some success and recently landed a contract with Lapland UK, a Christmas-themed immersive theatre experience in Ascot aimed at three to ten-year-olds.  

Bullas is measured and cheerful, but she’s clearly frustrated. She complains about the spiralling costs of her career path. She had to pay a subscription fee to the talent platform Spotlight just to audition for the Lapland job. Some drama schools charge students to perform in the end-of-year show. Having graduated, Bullas now has to pay for travel to and from auditions, singing and dance lessons, and she has to take days off work. Today’s audition requires 16 bars (30 seconds) of a song. Bullas spent £7.99 on her sheet music, and she’s not even going to be seen. She does this roughly 15 times per year. “It's all just a money game at the end of the day,” she says, “but when you get that contract, finally, that's the thing that just makes everything worth it.” 

Bullas has made friends in the queue. But the harsh competition of the industry also breeds a cutthroat mentality. “Even in drama school,” says Tala Carrera, 21, who has also been turned away without a look-in, “people give you the evil eye and villainise you. Our teachers always said this industry is so competitive. They always said that no one's going to be happy for you, it’s every man for themselves… It's like The Hunger Games.” 

Envy is the only sin without pleasure, and aspiring performers like Carrera have to push themselves to be happy for their peers. “Seeing that joy on your friend's face,” she says, “they’re doing what they want to be doing—” Carrera is interrupted when one of her fellow actors, Cedar Thomas-Davies, 19, who’s managed to land a job at Legoland, turns around and greets an onlooker jokingly. “Oh, hey, babes! We’re doing a recording for a newspaper actually, and you’re not invited!”