Marion,

Sounds like a scam--pure and simple--Reminds me of something I ran into years ago--I drove a friend, an aspiring dancer, to one of these auditions--there were beauty pagent runnerups and tap-dancing children, aspiring nightclub singers, and graduates of every sort of voice and dance and talent school--many with clip books, publicity photos, press kits, and, age appropriate stage-mothers--Everybody was glad to tell you how talented they(or their children) were, how they had cheated out of opportunities in rigged talent shows, in biased auditions, by a show business industry that was afraid of real talent---

The promoters were amazed by the talent--on occasion, they stopped the auditions to renew their pledge to force the entertainment industry to take notice of the wonderful and gifted performers who had turned out for the audtions--After hours of sitting, each performer (and, where appropriate, their family representative) was taken into the back, praised to the heavens, given the opportunity of a lifetime and warned that their were many jealous individuals who would fight to keep them from success--My friend, mercifully, was too broke to play the game, but most of the people who came in with us signed up-- and the audition fees were just the beginning!