How to Audition for the Musical Theater II: Finding the Song

"This get-to-the-point guide is an attempt to distill all the printed audition detritus and focus on the central objective, how do you get me to hire you? The source for this epigrammatic book was a seminar I taught at the University of Houston, entitled `Auditioning for the Theater' wherein the students, actors, singers, and dancers were challenged to meet the professional standards I made use of for forty years on Broadway. Although there are mighty tomes written about the agony of auditioning, nothing can compare with the real thing - facing a producer. The purpose of this book is to give the professional actor, singer, and dancer a practicing producer's point of view from the other side of the lights. Why did I choose to hire John Lithgow, rather than Brian Dennehy or Kevin Spacey to play Gallimard in M. Butterfly? The composer, lyricist, book writer, director, choreographer, and casting directors all have specialized priorities, and our struggle to reach a consensus on who gets the job is the heretofore undisclosed backstage stuff and substance of this esoteric confession." -Stuart Ostrow