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The men stop conferring and are ready. "The boy in the green top," Hornaday calls out, and, hesitantly, the third youth in line eases to the front. "The pink tights." As the wearer of that garment comes forward, the woman next to her winces at having been passed by. After another huddle, Hornaday says, "That's all." Immediately, a silver-haired man with a clipboard steps in from the side of the stage and intones in a swift singsong, "Those in the front line, please wait on the right. For the rest, thank you very much and please leave, as quickly as possible, the way you came in." Silently, like defendants in traffic court, the losers gather their street clothes and slip out.
Many of the auditioners, especially those who survive to await the taking of group photographs, know one another and exchange greetings. The atmosphere is friendly rather than competitive. The sheer arithmetic of the situation means that no one person will be the reason that another fails to get hired. While he waits for the photo call, Danny Esteras, 25, jokes or commiserates with acquaintances and passes out cards for his wife's hair-styling business. Like most "successful" show dancers, he is in and out of work: he appeared in a 1981 international tour of West Side Story and with Sandy Duncan in last year's Five-Six-Seven-Eight . . . Dance! at Radio City Music Hall, but at the moment he is a waiter and disc jockey at catered parties. "I choreograph a video here, I dance in an industrial film there. But this is not steady employment."
Attenborough periodically calls a break in the auditions so that he can go outside to chat encouragingly with the people waiting in line. Says Esteras: "It is so rare in this situation, his just acting like a normal human being." Indeed, Attenborough and Hornaday occasionally grant call-backs, out of compassion, to auditioners whom they have no interest in hiring. Because an eventual no is immeasurably more common than an acceptance, the call-back is a crucial symbolic reassurance that the aspirant is not in the wrong business. When the stage manager attempts to reconsider some people who have already been granted call-backs, in the hope of further winnowing, Attenborough balks. He insists: "If we have any doubt, we say yes." As the day wears on, however, the producers' eyes look glazed, and they find it hard to be excited about anybody. The chatty humanity of the morning becomes almost ruthless efficiency. A group of 15 people who have been waiting several hours are hustled onto the stage, some with their coats still on. Within four minutes they are all being thanked for their time and urged out another door. As the production team members glance at one another in apparent discomfort, Cy Feuer reminds them of the lesson that the dreamers in the waiting line have already learned: "We are in the thank-you-very-much business." —By William A. Henry III