CANCELLED: The Audition That Wasn't. The Story Behind Michigan's Cancelled Auditions
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 24 minutes ago
By John Sloan III, Editor/Publisher, Encore Michigan
How does an actor get a job? We all know the answer: they audition. They audition, and audition, and audition. In fact, they often spend more time auditioning than actually acting. During a heavy audition season, it's not uncommon for an actor to have 2–3 auditions per week — auditioning for each show or company one at a time, waiting for callbacks, learning sides and dance calls in crowded hallways while the opening lyrics to A Chorus Line hum through the atmosphere.
That works in some markets – where public transportation is abundant and there is a strong density of theatres. That works in some markets — where artistic directors consistently program seasons with opportunities for actors of every identity.
But that doesn't work in Michigan.
As a remedy, many regional markets often organize combined or unified auditions. To clarify, a General Audition is what one theatre holds for its own upcoming season — one company, one room of decision-makers, multiple productions with multiple roles. A Unified Audition, or Combined General, is more ambitious. Multiple theatres pool their slots, and one appointment puts you in front of many eyes at once. SETC runs them. Theatre Bay Area runs them. The Twin Cities run them. Michigan used to run them too, before the pandemic scattered the infrastructure we never quite rebuilt.
We were supposed to have them again. This weekend, six Michigan theatre companies were supposed to come together to host another unified audition: The Inspired Acting Company, The Ringwald, Penny Seats, Open Book, The Dio, and Renaissance City Rep.
The Inspired Acting Company (IAC) Producing Artistic Director Jeff Thomakos took the lead. "The intention behind the combined general auditions was to streamline the process for actors while also giving theatres an efficient way to see a broad range of talent. Models like this exist in many markets, and our hope was to build something that would ultimately serve both artists and organizations in our community," he commented.
But intentions, as well-meaning as they might be, often still belie blind spots. And those blind spots seemed evident almost immediately, as theatre professionals across Michigan took to social media with their questions and concerns.
What seasons? What roles? What were the pay structures? What, exactly, were actors preparing for?
Actor Kamryn Marck, who was among those who spoke up publicly, described the core frustration simply: actors were being asked to give their time, preparation, and professional energy without being given the basic information needed to decide whether the audition was even right for them.
“None of the theatres had shared any shows, roles, pay, time commitments or any basic information. I later found out that one theatre in attendance already had their season completely cast. It’s confusing for an actor to show up, not knowing what they are submitting for, or if they are even being considered for the current season.” said Marck.
This is not an unreasonable ask. According to the Actors' Equity Association — the professional union for theatre actors and stage managers — a casting notice must be posted no less than two weeks in advance of the audition and must include: the full season list, named directors and casting personnel, a list of roles not yet cast with character descriptions, first rehearsal dates if known, and the applicable pay scale. (Rule 4(C)(3)(g) of the 2023–27 LORT-AEA Collective Bargaining Agreement) That is the benchmark the American theatre industry has set for how actors should be treated before they even walk in the door.
A majority of Michigan's theatre companies are non-union, and most of Michigan's working actors are non-equity. But none of that changes what they deserve. The absence of a union card is not a license to withhold information. It is not a reason to lower the standard. If anything — in a market where actors have no grievance mechanism, no minimum pay protections, and no recourse when things go wrong — the obligation to be transparent falls more heavily on the companies offering employment.
By that standard, the April 2026 unified audition announcement fell far short before the conversation even started.
What followed online was not a contained exchange. Comments, public posts, and private threads spread the story across the community, catching on like wildfire. Cancellations multiplied. Threads expanded. Actors who had no direct involvement found themselves weighing in. Encore Michigan reached out to additional individuals who were active in those conversations; they either declined to comment or did not respond.
The most pointed exchange, however, seemed to be between Marck and Thomakos. “...I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about what general auditions are.” Thomakos responded to Marck in a public comment. The argument escalated, and Marck's comments were later deleted from Facebook, while she herself was blocked by IAC.
Michigan Actor, Kamryn Marck
According to Marck, several Facebook posts were later deleted by IAC
Thomakos later wrote: "I understand that my response did not land well for everyone. While I meant to provide context, I see how it came across as dismissive. I regret that."
Regret noted. But regret is not accountability. And trust, in a community this small, is not a soft value — it is necessary currency.
Participating theatre companies, with IAC leading the way, attempted to respond to the online critiques. But what began as a somewhat typical exchange grew into a chorus of confusion and disquiet.
On Friday, April 10th, at 10:40 am, IAC attempted to calm the waters. “We’ve been hearing the feedback,” an online statement read. “Our intention with these auditions has always been to create an opportunity for connection…”
But, less than an hour later, support for the auditions weakened as The Ringwald withdrew their participation.
"At this time, The Ringwald Theatre will not be participating in the General Auditions later this month. As you may know, we've shifted away from planning full seasons and now schedule productions on a rolling basis. Because of this, we don't yet have programming confirmed beyond the summer. Once we have a clearer sense of upcoming projects and casting needs, we'll be sure to share audition opportunities with the community. Thank you for your understanding, and we look forward to connecting soon."
By 5:40 pm that afternoon, the auditions had officially been cancelled.
But the cancellation of this year's general auditions does not fall exclusively at the feet of IAC, Thomakos, or the additional participating theatre companies.
The court of public opinion is brutal and rarely allows for context. Grievances, even legitimate ones, can escalate quickly. And, in the wreckage of this particular controversy, something else got lost: many of the actors who were upset were not upset because they wanted to tear the auditions down. They were upset because they wanted to be there. They needed to be there. They just wanted the “there” to be a space of inclusion and transparency. This, for many, wasn’t a victory — it was another door closing.
Lynch Travis — an actor and director who works actively across the state — put it plainly: “By the time I looked at the socials…things had evolved way past discussion to that type of back and forth thing in social media that creates rifts, not solutions.”
Travis continued, "General auditions have a place in our business. It’s an opportunity to be seen, especially if you have no relationship with the offering theatre company."
Penny Seats' AD, Julia Garlotte, also weighed in – noting that she found last year's joint generals "immensely fruitful".
It is important to note that due to the schedule and structure of the Penny Seats season, “2026 shows would have been fully cast by the time these auditions came around,” according to Garlotte. Her company held their own general auditions this past January.
"I’m not against unified auditions with certain caveats: no fees, no membership requirements, more accessibility."
"We understand the frustrations expressed ...and plan to take them into consideration when planning future auditions."
"We had no idea that any issues had even happened on social media until the email to cancel came out." Matthew Tomich, The Dio
Matt Tomich of The Dio said what suburban companies rarely say out loud: "It's always good to see actors that normally wouldn't drive out to us."
That phrase deserves more than a drive-by acknowledgement. And in the days since the cancellation, both The Dio and The Ringwald have posted individual audition notices — complete with character breakdowns. Whatever couldn't be organized collectively, both companies found a way to do on their own terms, providing the transparency that actors had been asking for all along.
(Correction added on 4/27: The Ringwald has not yet posted additional audition notices but plans to do so later this summer.)
The cancellation exposed fractures in the system. Ashley Lyle — who built her career in Michigan as an actor, director, and arts administrator before relocating to Chicago — named the damage: "With the community dividing themselves into 3 or 4 different viewpoints, I would say the response was definitely not unified. The outrage people felt is valid from all angles; however, we cannot lose that sense of empathy that allows us to understand one another."
She continued, "People who spoke out were harassed online, and well-known community figures allegedly threatened to blackball actors from getting work because they spoke out."
"This type of behavior is a part of white supremacy."
Lyle is identifying the mechanism: access and social capital used (individually and systemically) to silence those with less power. In a non-equity market with no union and no appeal, who gets protected and who gets silenced is not an abstraction; it’s a reality.
The Inconvenient Structural Truth We Don’t Want to Acknowledge
Michigan has 221 registered non-profit theatre organizations, according to the Cause IQ nonprofit directory. And it says something about our market that we still cannot hold a functional unified audition. But why not? What barriers exist that prevent Michigan’s theatre community from becoming truly sustainable for professional artists?
The geographic and infrastructure problem is severe, and it is not invisible if you are willing to look at it. Metro Detroit holds roughly 80 of those 221 theatres — about 36 percent of the state total. Grand Rapids and Kent County account for roughly 24 more (about 11 percent). Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County add approximately 22 (roughly 10 percent). Together, those three clusters represent 57 percent of Michigan theatre activity – and they are separated from each other by 44 to 150 miles.
When Lyle describes the threats to blackball actors who spoke out as "a part of white supremacy," she inherently connects two threads: the exclusion built into geography and the exclusion enforced through social capital.
Remember what Matt Tomich, of The Dio, said: "It's always good to see actors that normally wouldn't drive out to us."
(We’ll provide a deeper dive into the ways public transportation and geographic sprawl create barriers for artists in our next featured article. Stay tuned!)
Was Cancellation the Right Thing to Do?
Let's be clear – the actors who spoke up were not asking for the auditions to be cancelled. They were asking for information. Criticism is not an attack. Accountability is not a mob. Kamryn Marck said it plainly: "Michigan has a TRULY PHENOMENAL artistic community that is only made possible by theatres, artists, designers, and technicians working together." That is not the language of someone trying to burn something down. That is someone who wanted to be in the room.
Some of the artistic directors involved understood that distinction. Krista Schafer of Open Book — a company that has participated in general auditions since its first season in 2014 — was candid about the bind they found themselves in. Open Book had disclosed on their audition webpage that their season wasn't set, and outlined their pay structure.
"We find that combined general auditions often introduce us to actors who we may not have seen otherwise." she stated. "We understand that cancellation of the general auditions was not the intent of those expressing concerns, but because we could not provide what they were requesting, the theatres involved felt it was the best way to address the concerns.”
Thomakos described the cancellation as a collective decision among the participating theatres. However, Matt Tomich noted that he learned of much of the controversy through the cancellation email itself.
Multiple things can be true at once. And it is possible that the decision was reached collectively, even though not all participants were fully on the same page about how the crisis unfolded or how it was being managed.
Thomakos, for his part, seems to have learned from the experience. "...This process has been a difficult one," he said. "...I care deeply about the work and about creating opportunities for artists. When something intended to be helpful instead creates frustration, that's not easy to sit with. At the same time, I believe these conversations, even when challenging, are part of how a community grows and improves."
Being an artistic leader inherently means being susceptible to criticism. That comes with the role. It is our responsibility not to avoid that critique, but to welcome it.
Cancellation may have felt like an answer to the immediate pressure. But it strikes me that open communication — even in the absence of perfect pre-planning — could have allowed multiple parties to be served. The auditions could still have happened with increased transparency, a clear statement of what information was available and what wasn't, a commitment to provide character breakdowns the moment rights were secured, and a genuine invitation for the actors' questions rather than a dismissal of them.
Travis noted, “There was a group in the past that held them on multiple days at multiple sites.” Perhaps this could have been part of a solution.
The arts are often categorized as a "nice to have" — the first budget line cut when looking for savings. But Michigan's arts and culture sector generates $18.4 billion in annual economic activity, representing nearly 3% of state GDP and supporting more than 120,000 jobs — larger than the state's utilities sector. (Arts Action Fund, Michigan 2024)
When we fail to invest in the infrastructure that allows artists to thrive in their work (transit, audition systems, coordinating bodies, transparent casting practices, professional development), we undermine a significant engine of the state's economy. One cancelled audition at a time.
What is Ashley Lyle's prescription for health: advertise well in advance; "GET ORGANIZED" — her caps, not ours; and "Break out of the comfort level of using the same actors each season and hire new people; recommend other actors to other theatres instead of gatekeeping."
Gatekeeping. That word explains why unified auditions matter. We have never lacked talent as a state. What we lack are consistent and equitable opportunities for talented individuals to hone their skill sets.
"This community can't grow if people are too scared or too let down to join it," Lyle states.
It's true. These recent auditions did not fail because someone asked a hard question. They failed because we still don't have a house sturdy enough to hold the answer.
Think we got it right? Think we got it wrong? Leave a comment and tell us what you think. Email press@encoremichigan.com to pitch an article or info@encoremichigan.com for general questions.
