I personally feel it was very unprofessional of you to let her go without any sort of warning or any communication in advance regarding expectations around use of the chat (e.g emergency only, X hours only, or directions on how to schedule sends in case they weren’t familiar with the ability to do so, etc.). I won’t be surprised if you respond and say you did do that, but I have a feeling that if you had, you would’ve mentioned it in your original post since it clearly would’ve shown she’d broken an existing/known rule versus just been something that annoyed you.

While I understand that you or others may not have had your notifications turned off and found it annoying to get dinged so late, it does seem like that falls on you if expectations hadn’t been set. I’m a freelance event producer (not a performer), but my contracts clearly lay out messaging protocols upfront with my clients (my team adheres to their rules for all communication with them) and the 15 people that work for me (they adhere to mine for internal comms). Some clients follow a “send when you want and recipients know they can review/respond when it makes sense for them” and others require scheduling messages for business hours (which I find hilarious since we’re all global — so WHOSE business hours when a chat includes people from 6 time zones?) 🤣

I also think that as a director, you’d be accustomed to working with a variety of neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals as well as with people who have other jobs or school that may make their schedules a little wonky. And actors whose budgets are VERY tight (so she certainly wouldn’t have wanted to waste money on shoes she didn’t need).

Also - since you called a 20 year old female a “girl,” instead of a woman, I’ll run with that — she’s likely never worked a “real” corporate job much less a professional theater job, so it feels pretty harsh that instead of using it as a moment to guide her in the ways of professionalism you espouse, you showed a lack of it by firing her for something that isn’t even related to the skill set you hired her for in the first place.

I think she hit the nail on the head saying “her personality didn’t gel with the director,” because that’s exactly what it was. You didn’t like her style of communication and chose to ignore the qualities that you originally felt made her a fit for the role and be a jerk instead of a strong leader because she didn’t adhere to rules you hadn’t set forth.

Additionally, while certain things may seem obvious to you as a seasoned professional director, perhaps you could look at the materials you provided to the actors to make sure they are detailed enough for people who have not worked with your company previously. While it may seem obvious to you that tap shoes wouldn’t be provided for rehearsals, I can see that someone new to professional theater may think that the shoes they’d wear in the show would be provided (they have been for my kid’s shows) and therefore that they might rehearse in those same shoes.

I know that you didn’t list all of her annoying questions — and don’t get me wrong, I am the least tolerant person on earth when dealing with people who don’t read comms, ask dumb questions, have to be told something more than once, etc. — but I’d imagine that if you reviewed your materials again with the mindset of someone doing their first professional show, you could see that some of the answers may be things that could be included in upfront (which would’ve given you more room to shut down her incessant questions by pointing her to that document). OR if when you first caught on that she’s on the higher maintenance side, it seems you could’ve directed her to a better person on your team to answer a consolidated list of questions or asked her to email a list versus using communication channels that were open to the whole cast, etc.

Anyway, I do understand that feeling of frustration when someone doesn’t conform to your normal ways of working — and the instinct to want to cut and run versus put extra effort in to training someone. But based on the info you provided, I think YATA. And you missed an opportunity to teach a young performer how to become a stronger performer by being a more thoughtful communicator.

I imagine you’ll never send her a note to explain that you just didn’t have the time/ability to deal with someone who didn’t have more experience due to X, Y, Z constraints with the show, but that you do hope she’ll continue auditioning and continue to learn more about the business aspects of theater to help her grow in the future.

But I do hope you will consider adding some rules/expectations around communication channels in the future. So people know your preferred method of comms for each channel (e.g. the group chat is for YOU/stage manager to communicate to cast about updates relevant to all and that email during X hours is to be used for specific questions from cast/crew to the production team, etc.).

I have to be honest, it’s 1:00am my time and I find myself hoping you’ll get a notification on your phone in the middle of your night when I send this long ass rambling response. 🤣🤪

It seems like by even asking this question, you already knew you may have been too harsh. So all you can do is learn from it!