I auditioned for a dance reality show once – had to get in line extremely early in Winter, around 3am. I had just moved to the Big Apple and was ready to make it big. I’m a good dancer, not a prodigy anything, but I did work professionally in the biz for several years. I auditioned that afternoon and made it past the first round, and they told me to back the following day around 8am.
When I got there, I found out I wasn’t on until midnight. We filled out paperwork and had to hang around, but they gave us a lunch break where we could leave the building. Meanwhile, I saw the catered lunch come in for the staff, but it wasn’t for the lowly dancers. Time crawled by and I finally got my moment onstage in front of the famous judges. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t my best moment. I was sleep deprived, hungry, and ready to go home at that point. I didn’t make a scene (the kind that gets put on TV) for the interview after, I was just too tired.
Essentially, it was an entire unpaid weekend, made more expensive by the fact that we had to buy our own meals. Artists need to be treated better – we’re human too and deserving of basic rights. We’re not just airheads to keep the rest of the population entertained.