God help me, I spent a weekend judging English talent, everything from three year olds dancing charming little dances and lip-syncing to recordings to young adults reenacting the worst bits from the most horrible plays ever. Every act was to be cut off after 10 minutes and the producer naively decided everyone was going to follow the 10 minute rule, that the next performance would immediately begin without delay, and...well, I leave it to you to judge for yourself what kind of drugs this woman was on because most people, actors in particular, don't give up the stage that easily. Some of the acts dragged on for 20 minutes or more and there were waits of up to 15 minutes between acts. Six acts an hour? Count on three. As a consequence I was there for over 12 hours viewing forty plus acts (I hesitate to call them "talent") and of these only a handful were interesting or even, well, good. (This would include the group I directed.)
One act featured an original play based on Cinderella which included changing the names of the leads to Jack and Rose (a la Titanic, no doubt so the lead actress could say she had played Rose on the stage) and it also featured a hip hop dance to "Nobody But You" which was very disturbing at it featured a group of five year olds, a Harry Potter backdrop, use of the Harry Potter theme music, and several characters dressed up as the monk and pig from Journey to the West. This was one of the more tasteful shows. I went to the competition in the next building to say hi to the judges, both old friends, and ended up getting home horribly late. I haven't had time to process quite how yucky it all was--how we weren't even given supper--how my group was given McDonald's hamburgers but the other judges the next building over were given only the French Fries--one hamburger and one bottle of water per judge for a 12-plus hour day... Gone are the days when just asking us to stop by for a photo shoot entailed a four hour banquet.
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