Videos with English subtitles

[FanBilly]

Brilliant! I hope you know how appreciative we are! So good of you to do this

[ERinVA]

I agree! I have enjoyed the ones I've watched so far.

[jtsw1]

Thanks for the subtitles, looking forward to episode 4. It's a nice documentary. But one thing bothers me: I don't get why they exclude one boy because his voice is about to break, and then cast a 15-year-old with a broken voice. Is there something lost in translation?

[ERinVA]

The reason is timing, and monetary investment. The boys who opened the show as Billy have been training for a year. No doubt in that time, they have grown. In the case of Jillis, the 15 year-old, I expect they took him on a year ago, when he was younger and had an unbroken voice, because they thought his skills meant he would be a successful Billy, and he has certainly become that. They were willing to bet/hope that he wouldn't outgrow the role before he made it into the show. Because of laws about child performers in the Netherlands, each Dutch Billy can only perform 24 times before being replaced, so they took a calculated risk that he would not completely outgrow the role in 24 performances. On the other hand, if a boy is already showing signs of a breaking voice, or is too tall early in the audition process, then they can expect he will outgrow the role before he's ready to go on stage, and they aren't going to invest in training him, sad as that might seem.

[jtsw1]

Thank you! I didn't know of that limitation. Since there aren't any auditions for new Billys right now (see http://www.billyelliot.nl/billy-scool/jongens-audities/), one should go to visit the show before they reach the limit (in september, I guess).

[ERinVA]

I believe there are currently new Billys already in training.

[onceagain]

The current Billy's will most likely reach their limit of 40 performances a year somewhere between May and June. From then on, 6 other boys who are currently in training will take over the part. As for Jillis, they probably decided to cast him because, despite his voice being slightly broken, he passed for a 12/13 year old boy quite easily at that point (they made final casting decisions last June). I think the company decided to take the 'risk' of casting him, which I think was a very good call! In my opinion he hasn't outgrown the part yet; he's a very small lad, his voice is still quite high, and it doesn't break while he's singing at all. He still passes for a 12/13 year old, much like some of the other boys who were cast as Billy when they were 'older' (George, Colin, Leon etc).

[ERinVA]

It isn't all about age, that's for sure.

It's interesting to hear that the limit for the number of performances each boy can do is higher than I thought. I could have sworn that in earlier discussions the number talked about was either 24 or 28. It always seemed a shame that the boys would work so hard and only be allowed to perform so few times.

[onceagain]

It isn't all about age, that's for sure.

It's interesting to hear that the limit for the number of performances each boy can do is higher than I thought. I could have sworn that in earlier discussions the number talked about was either 24 or 28. It always seemed a shame that the boys would work so hard and only be allowed to perform so few times.

This is normally true, but Stage Entertainment made a special request for the Billy's and the Michael's, claiming that there weren't enough boys to fill the part in case they were only allowed to play it 24 times. Thankfully, this request was granted. There was some discussion about this measure a while back in another topic. It is for sure good news, it does seem such a waste to only let such dedicated, hardworking boys perform 24 times a year.

[thm]

If the show runs long enough, they might "reuse" the tiny ones - another year another 24/40.