Click here for 'Idle Gossip' from this week's comp.

Click here for details on how to enter and where to buy tickets!

Open Mic Idle is back in Sydney for 2006!

‘Open Mic Idle’ is a competition designed to showcase up and coming talent in the musical theatre industry. It’s often extremely hard as an artist to find the right place and opportunity to network with other people who are in the same position as each other, once they have left the safety of their educational institution. It’s also so easy to get out of the loop if life’s journey takes them away from their creative self for a while. ‘Open Mic Idle’ is designed to provide all of this support along with enabling contestants to get honest feedback from industry professionals and at the same time work on perfecting their audition techniques.

Each week eight of the successful applicants are asked to prepare two songs (they only get to sing 1, always good to have a spare). As each artist performs, Open Mic Idle's industry judges and audience members listen. After each song the three judges each give us their thoughts and ideas about the performance. After we have heard all eight contestants we then ask the audience to vote for who they thought was the best performer of the night. While the votes are being counted guest stars entertain the crowds and nervous contestants. After the star guests have showed us all how it’s done we bring all eight performers back to the Open Mic Idle stage for the results. From our audience vote we get the favourite three contestants of the evening. It’s from these three contestants that we ask the judges to choose which performer deserves a place in the Grand Final.

There are eight heats in total with one winner each week going through to the Grand Final. Only one person can win the coveted title of big M’s ‘Open Mic Idle’ and over $2000 worth of prize money and gifts.

Wild Card! But wait even if people didn’t get chance to enter or were not successful in their application they can still enter the competition as a Wild Card. Each week we have one place for a Wild Card. Anyone who turns up with their sheet music and registers at the door after buying a ticket has the chance of competing with the other performers. If more than one person turns up then the names go into a draw and the one pulled out wins the last place that week. The Wild Card performer will get the critique off the judges but the audience members do not vote for them. At the end of the 8 week season the judges put forward the best Wild Card Performer and they automatically get a place in the Grand Final. The Grand Final therefore has 9 performers all competing for first place.

Don’t forget along with all the other benefits of partaking in a competition like this comes all media coverage of the event. As ‘Open Mic Idle’ grows here in Sydney and hopefully across Australia more and more publications are interested in our show. So keep in touch with us and don’t miss out on what could be the opportunity of a lifetime.