Dear Theatres, Actors Auditioning Are Not Season Subscription Leads
by Chris Peterson
I saw a post making the rounds on Threads and TikTok recently that made me want to scream a little.
Actor Alexander Pineiro said he had gone to an open theatre call for Pasadena Playhouse a couple of weeks earlier and never heard anything back. Then one day, their phone lit up with caller ID: “Pasadena Playhouse.”
His heart started racing. This was it.
He answered, thanked the theatre for calling, and asked what he could do for them. According to the post, the call was not about casting. It was someone asking whether he would be interested in purchasing a seasonal membership for the upcoming slate of shows.
“Anyways,” he wrote, “never give up on your dreams because mine lasted a solid 10 seconds today.”
It’s a great line. Also every actor knows exactly what that ten seconds feels like.
A call from a theatre after an audition is not the same as a random number popping up on your phone. For actors, especially actors who just attended an open call, that number carries a very specific kind of hope. Maybe it’s a callback. Maybe it’s a question about availability. Maybe it’s an offer.
So when that call turns into a sales pitch, it feels gross.
And yes, I know theatres need to sell memberships. But there has to be a line between someone who signed up to hear about ticket deals and someone who gave you their phone number because they were auditioning.
Audition contact information should be treated as casting information unless the actor clearly opts into something else. Actors already give a lot to auditions. So if a theatre finally uses that contact information, the reason should match the context in which it was given.
There is also a power dynamic here that theatres should be more sensitive to. Actors want to work at these places. They want to stay in good standing. They do not want to be rude to someone calling from a theatre where they just auditioned. That makes a sales call feel less like a simple marketing attempt and more like an institution taking advantage of a hopeful moment.
Maybe this was a one-off mistake. But theatres should not be aiming for “technically permissible” when it comes to how they treat artists.
The cleaner standard is simple: if someone gives you their phone number for an audition, use it for the audition. If you want them on a marketing list, ask them separately and clearly. Give them the choice without tying it to their desire to be considered for a role.
Because this brings up a bigger question: how many theatres are doing this?
Are audition forms being used to build sales lists? Are actors being treated as prospective customers after they come in, hoping to be hired? In the comment section of the thread and TikTok, people stated they had the same thing happen to them with other theatres.
My advice to these theatres? STOP DOING THIS.
Theatres depend on artists trusting them. Trusting them with the emotional weirdness that comes with auditioning in the first place.
The least a theatre can do is not turn that hope into a membership pitch.