They stood outside on Thursday at the Motown Museum on West Grand Blvd. in Detroit. Once inside, they sang in Studio A for Berry Gordy, the king of Motown, hoping to get a part in the upcoming national touring production of "Motown the Musical."
Gordy's face lit up at times during auditions, WXYZ's Matthew Smith reports. "He was happy, he was excited."
The show's 16 Detroit performances start tonight and run through April 30. (Ticket details are here.)
Its national tour ends Aug. 27. The next tour, for which people were auditioning for on Thursday, begins Sept. 26 and goes through June 2018.
Producers are looking for African-American men and women, ages 20s-40s, with exceptional voices, and an African-American boy, age 8 to 13, to play young Michael Jackson/ Berry Gordy/ Stevie Wonder.
The upcoming group will travel by coach bus or economy class air, depending on the length of the travel, according to Wojcik/Seay Casting's website.
Salaries are negotiated for each performer, with the minimum being $500 a week. The current cast on tour is unionized. The upcoming tour will be non-union.
-- Allan Lengel
