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

To all those that know me, thank you for the defense, and for those that dont, perhaps you should do some research before spouting off your mouths. To correct the people above, BLOC has the Amateur Rights to perform up to 6 performances of Chess at the Theatre Royal from May 8 to 18 2008. There is no such thing as "Pro-Am" either everyone is paid and the company purchases the Professional Rights to the Show or you obtain the Amateur rights. (Thats' not my opinion but direct from the licencors). Having said that Chess has a budget for 4 leads to be paid Minimum Equity rates should they Audition and be succesful. For both Into the Woods and Chess it was announced that there would be a Mandatory $200 bond applied. The bond is forfeited if you fail to return your score or drop out during the rehearsal period without some reasonable excuse. The announcement of the bond is made during the orientation night which is compulsory for all auditionees. The difference between a Professional who is Contracted and an Amateur who is a volunteer is thus obvious. A professional can be legally prevented from performing with another company where they have a pre-existing contract with another company. Amateurs or volunteers have no such obligation. Some people audition for shows knowing that they will be auditioning for another show the following week or even will accept a role and then audition for other roles and drop out. Apart from the pure selfishness of such action it is extremely difficult for the production team to replace people dropping out. Wastes the entire casts time and valuable rehearsal time. Further we often need to re-advertise to find replacements for the production and this is at our cost. As such we ask certain categories of people not to audition. People who have previously dropped out of shows, people who are currently applying for NIDA/WAAPA or any other course which should they be accepted would prevent them from being in the show and people who intend on auditioning for another show even if they are successfull in this show. While we-re a non profit organisation that doesn't NOT mean that we are a charity to be used and abused by those who feel they need audition practice. To re-inforce these requests we inform auditionees that all people who successfully gain a role they need to pay a $200 bond which will be forfeited should one of the 3 above conditions become true. As seen from the above emails it makes people think twice about their level of commitment to the show. To date we have never actually charged anyone the $200 bond and we have no need to. We have already weeded out the non-committed and, in general, get talented committed cast who attend rehearsals religiously and hence we have some excellent performances. BLOC is set-up as a non-profit incorporated association in NSW and is entirely funded by yours truly, we've performed 3 productions at the Seymour centre, 2 in the Everest Theatre and Pirates in the Downstairs theatre. To date I'm out of pocket around $100K some of that is in capital expenditure like that radio microphones that we've bought but in general we are a newly established company so we dont have a large mailing list of regulars to attend our shows. For the guy who thinks you can budget on $20-$50K. You cant even hire our venue for that amount!!! and what kind of budget EXCLUDES royalties and theatre hire ???? 4 Professionals @ $5K each = $20K 25 piece Orchestra @ $50/call, 8 paid calls = $10K Rights/Royalties @ 16% of $150K budget = $25K Marketing = $25K Rehearsal Venue = $3K Set Design/Construction $5K Lighting Design $2k Lighting Hire (Theatre Royal doesn't provide) $10K Theater Hire $50k Costume Hire $5K Wages (Dir/MD/Chore/Pianist) $5K Total $160k and thats off the top of my head. There are also costs for ticketing/breakages/wages etc which probably add to a further $10K. As our ticketing is done by Ticketek all funds are held in trust by Ticketek until the performance of the show when the funds are released to the company as such the greater majority of costs have already been paid and with a $150K budget even if we were to collect $200 from the 20 cast, $4k is not going very far... Anyway I hope you all get a chance to see what I have no doubt will be an excellent production of a fabulous musical. Tickets on-sale Ticketek on Dec 18th 2007. We are still looking for some men for the chorus including some tenors for Embassy Lament and 4 dancers (singing optional) email me @ markh@dragon.net.au for information.