Is it normal to be charged a bond in amateur musicals?

I live in Western Australia and have NEVER heard such a load of TRIPE in all my years working in community theatre! We here in WA are quite regularly taking our community shows to venues such as the Playhouse, the Regal and the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre - all venues of professional standard that have played host to professional productions and performers like Les Miserables, Hair, Phantom of the Opera, concerts by Elaine Page, Rob Guest, Michael Ball - the list goes on! When we do our community shows in these venues we have ALL of the elements that you are saying justify a cost of $300 ($100 of which you WON'T get back) to an individual just to be in a show. For most companies here in WA the only required cost incurred is about $20 for a t-shirt and approx $50 if you don't hand back your libretto. How can you honestly say that anything justifies what this company is asking someone to outlay finanicially? Also, you state: "I know ticket sales for the show were very healthy but didn't go all the way by any means to covering the cost of the show." Then the performance is clearly not up to standard! Theatre Companies here in WA that don't at least work on a cost neutral basis cease to exist. That being the case, we work as hard as we can and produce shows of fantastic quality - not something hovering between amateur and pro - in order to generate an audience from a population that, sadly, is not actaully all that interested in theatre. Basically, what I'm saying here is that we work our collective butts off to do the very best we can so that the audience comes and we make enough money to do the next show! The only time I have ever encountered the concept of paying to be in a production is in the case of profit share - where you pay an amount to help fund putting the production on and if at the end when all is said and done there is a profit, you take a percentage share equal to the amount you put in (or any similar model). Risky (cause it's highly possible you will lose money) but fair. As far as I'm concerned, none of the reasoning you have given as to why this company is charging this money is anywhere near good enough and I would strongly advise anyone considering working with this company (and therefore making such a payment) to reconsider! Darren - Angry that companies are taking advantage of talented performers