In New York: Casting About for a Chorus

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

"I really need this job. I've got to get this show."

--From A Chorus Line

By 9 a.m., when the auditions start, there are hundreds of people standing in the drizzle outside Broadway's Royale Theater. By midday, as the skies clear, the line has grown to perhaps 1,000. They wait for hours for the chance to spend, in most cases, scant minutes standing onstage before being rejected and hastened out the door. A few are on a lark, and some may be on a mystical private trip: one young woman wears a lifelike head-to-toe bear costume, which she refuses to take off even to dance. But most are serious of purpose, and many are attractive and talented. In all, some 2,000 would-be performers are shuffled through, and 300 are called back for further auditions; eventually, perhaps one or two will be cast. Yet even the losers, as they come blinking into the sunlight, say it has been worthwhile, and they use almost identical words. "You never get anything," explains a dancer-typist, "unless you try."

It may be the most passionate American dream, more nearly universal than finding the streets paved with gold or hearing the crowd cheering the winning touchdown or even taking the oath of office, hand on the Bible: the vision of being discovered and thrust into instant movie stardom. In much publicized myth, it can happen at a soda counter. But it happens most often to people who work at it, begging for appointments to plead for the privilege of being allowed to audition so that they can then risk being "typed out"--excluded because they have "the wrong look"--after a glance from a casting director. In life, humiliation and disappointment wear actors out; in show-business legend, the defeated heroes are inspired to fight anew.

Most people who struggle for stardom live in New York or California. Even the giddiest know they have little chance of being discovered in a drugstore in Manhattan, Kans., or a restaurant in Los Angeles, Texas. They scour the trade newspapers for notices of auditions. The more fortunate have union memberships that get them past guarded doors. The rest try to fib their way in or, if less bold, wait for "open calls." Known as "cattle calls," they may be publicity stunts. But for an unknown, they may be the only hope.

On this day in New York City, the call is for a movie that many of the auditioners in line view as an anthem to their lives: A Chorus Line, a film version of the Pulitzer-prizewinning musical play that last year became the longest-running show in Broadway history. A sort of downbeat reworking of Busby Berkeley's 1933 movie 42nd Street, in which a member of the ensemble suddenly becomes a star, Chorus Line depicts the ruthless process of casting a Broadway musical; it evolved from the actual experiences of its first performers. Although even weeknight tickets to the show cost as much as $45, many of the people auditioning for the film version have seen it onstage as often as other people go to ball games: Suzette Breitbart, a Queens, N.Y., high school student who has studied dance for ten years, says she has been to Chorus Line 14 times. Yet some of these devotees seem not to have grasped its essentials. Among those waiting to audition are people who look much too old or too young to play dancers in their 20s and early 30s. Some look badly out of shape. Although the characters are specifically defined, even idiosyncratic, few of the aspirants seem to have a particular role in mind. When Lori Agid, 26, is asked what part she feels suited to, she answers simply, "Whatever."

Inside the theater, 15 performers stand onstage. These candidates have leaped the first hurdle: they have been permitted to learn a five-step dance routine, or "combination," and execute it for the four men huddled in orchestra seats a few yards away. Those sitting in judgment are the movie's producers, Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, Broadway veterans whose movie version of Cabaret won eight Oscars; Director Sir Richard Attenborough, whose last film, Gandhi, also won eight Oscars; and Choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday, 27, a former dancer who staged the movement in Flashdance. Michael Bennett, who conceived Chorus Line and who was to transform it for the screen, now has no part in making the film.

The four men mutter pointedly about the performers' talent, poise and looks. "The guy in the tie-dyed shirt is technically fine," Hornaday says, "but his eyes are dead." Even the judgments that benefit auditioners could prove painful if spoken within their earshot. Says Feuer: "We need someone who looks foolish to play Greg." His colleagues nod, and one young man is in. But the triumph is temporary and perhaps hollow. At this stage, the auditioners are moving on to "call-backs," the first step in a process that will, the producers admit, stretch up to the start of production in September. Open calls are being held in Los Angeles. Individual auditions will be granted to Broadway and Hollywood actors, including, Martin says, "every person who has ever appeared in any of the stage companies of Chorus Line. We think they are entitled."

The men stop conferring and are ready. "The boy in the green top," Hornaday calls out, and, hesitantly, the third youth in line eases to the front. "The pink tights." As the wearer of that garment comes forward, the woman next to her winces at having been passed by. After another huddle, Hornaday says, "That's all." Immediately, a silver-haired man with a clipboard steps in from the side of the stage and intones in a swift singsong, "Those in the front line, please wait on the right. For the rest, thank you very much and please leave, as quickly as possible, the way you came in." Silently, like defendants in traffic court, the losers gather their street clothes and slip out.

Many of the auditioners, especially those who survive to await the taking of group photographs, know one another and exchange greetings. The atmosphere is friendly rather than competitive. The sheer arithmetic of the situation means that no one person will be the reason that another fails to get hired. While he waits for the photo call, Danny Esteras, 25, jokes or commiserates with acquaintances and passes out cards for his wife's hair-styling business. Like most "successful" show dancers, he is in and out of work: he appeared in a 1981 international tour of West Side Story and with Sandy Duncan in last year's Five-Six-Seven-Eight . . . Dance! at Radio City Music Hall, but at the moment he is a waiter and disc jockey at catered parties. "I choreograph a video here, I dance in an industrial film there. But this is not steady employment."

Attenborough periodically calls a break in the auditions so that he can go outside to chat encouragingly with the people waiting in line. Says Esteras: "It is so rare in this situation, his just acting like a normal human being." Indeed, Attenborough and Hornaday occasionally grant call-backs, out of compassion, to auditioners whom they have no interest in hiring. Because an eventual no is immeasurably more common than an acceptance, the call-back is a crucial symbolic reassurance that the aspirant is not in the wrong business. When the stage manager attempts to reconsider some people who have already been granted call-backs, in the hope of further winnowing, Attenborough balks. He insists: "If we have any doubt, we say yes." As the day wears on, however, the producers' eyes look glazed, and they find it hard to be excited about anybody. The chatty humanity of the morning becomes almost ruthless efficiency. A group of 15 people who have been waiting several hours are hustled onto the stage, some with their coats still on. Within four minutes they are all being thanked for their time and urged out another door. As the production team members glance at one another in apparent discomfort, Cy Feuer reminds them of the lesson that the dreamers in the waiting line have already learned: "We are in the thank-you-very-much business." --By William A. Henry III