Are professional child performers usually allowed in the West End Calling competition?

[SharonBotts]

Anyone here have experience of the West End Calling competition. My daughter and I went to support her friend who was in the semi-finals over the weekend (daughter wants to take part next year). Turns out that several of the competitors are currently performing on the West End in proper professional shows. Is this usual? I thought the competition was to give kids a chance to experience performing in the West End and get experience of auditioning and all that. The website says this quite clearly. But then there's all these professional singer/actors who are in the competition too? Are they put in there deliberately as ringers or something? What am I missing?

Seems like there's no point taking part if it's not actually a competition for amateurs.

Yes they are allowed to take part

Daughter and friend have seen their instagrams. One boy is currently starring in The Greatest Showman! I was just curious about how it worked as thought initially it was a competition for non-professionals. Less keen on daughter doing it if not.

The standard is on a par with the standard for being competitive for West End roles.

And yes, children who are offered WE roles are professional performers but there is almost no professional MT work between ages of 13 and 21, and once they are over 5ft, so things like West End Calling provide a focus and audition practice for the dead years.

That's interesting and would make total sense except for the fact that I'm talking about numerous young people who are literally in West End shows right now. In their case it just seems like they've won already so why enter a show like this? I mean they hardly need the experience if they're already on the West End stage.

But agree for those going through the wilderness years then it would be perhaps a worthwhile thing to do.

Because a lot of them are looking at professional adult careers and every credit and opportunity counts.

Just because you're in a West End show, you don't stop training and auditioning and competing for more jobs. These kind of opportunities are also different from being in a show - different songs, solos for those who are ensemble etc.

1000s audition for WEC… it’s a nice opportunity to have a realistic audition AND receive feedback (which you generally don’t get in a pro audition, even as a child) and then have the opportunity to perform live in a professional setting and all miked up etc. It’s about the experience and if your child would enjoy that then go for it! My child entered this year for the first time and really enjoyed it. We got to heats and I was amazed by the standard! It’s intense!

The difference for the children who are already performing professionally is they can choose their own material for WEC and make their own choices, musically and dramatically. That doesn’t really exist in kid roles in the West End. Yes each child has their own take on their role, but the room for personalisation is very small and essentially the role needs to be played consistently every night across a rotating team of child actors. Meanwhile at WEC they can pick songs from adult characters and choose their own interpretation.

The spot where it is a gamble for the professional kids is the vast majority of the show schedules are completely inflexible. You could get all the way to the final and if you are meant to be in your show that day, they aren’t going to let you have the day off. It just doesn’t happen. And if you called in sick, you’d be caught because everyone would find out where you were! You might even not be scheduled for that day and one of the other kids who plays the same role just has to get hurt or sick and you need to be at the theatre last minute.

But no, not there as ringers. They continue to train and will want to be on the radar of agents who represent adults, where many will be with children’s agencies currently. This is a good way to do that, and a good way to work toward a wider range as a performer and not be pigeonholed as a child actor. In previous years, the finalists were a mix of those with and without professional experience, so it’s not like it was impossible to beat them. The standard is high enough that some professional kids don’t make the heats too.