"How Do You Manage?"

by Angie Ahlgren 

[Angie Ahlgren’s article on stage managers appeared in the Fall 2024 issue (volume 41, number 1) of American Theatre; it was posted on the AT website on 2 December 2024.  AT has published previous articles on stage management and other backstage work: “Managing the Stage, and Managing Expectations” by Jerald Raymond Pierce (29 September 2020), “Take the Hell Out of Hell Week” by Pierce (23 October 2018), and “‘10 Out of 12’: How the Other Half Techs” by Diep Tran (15 June 2015).

[I like to post articles that define, describe, or explain the work of theater pros which isn’t generally known or understood by non-theater people (whom one of my teachers liked to call “civilians”).  On 14 January 2014, I posted “Stage Hands,” “Two (Back) Stage Pros” on 30 June 2014, and “Stage Managers” on 30 January 2017.

[I ran articles that profiled theater photographer Teresa Castracane, set designer Eugene Lee, and wig-designer Paul Huntley; on 28 November 2015, I posted “Broadway’s Anonymous Stars,” an article about actors who replace original stars on stage.  On 9 March 2016, I ran a collection of pieces about “swings” and on 22 August 2018, I posted an interview with Tony Carlin, a Broadway and Off-Broadway understudy or stand-by.

[I ran a whole series on lighting designers and their work called “‘Light the Lights” in October and November 2018, followed by a series on arts administrators in December 2020 and one on sound design in March and April 2021.  There’ve also been others over the years.

[I’d like to remind ROTters that in a recent post, I remarked: “Just about the only theater worker who can get a gig for the asking, I’d guess, is the stage manager.  The need’s so great for a good one who’s willing to work Off-Off-Broadway, that when a theater manager or director finds one, she’s snapped up faster than a New York minute.  The only problem is keeping her.”]

Who better to take the pulse of a changing industry than with the folks at the hub of the wheel: stage managers.

In November 2022, Lisa Smith [b. 1968] was weighing whether to continue stage managing or to scale up her part-time job at a gardening center into a full-time gig. She’d been stage managing in the Twin Cities for 20 years, 15 of those as a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA [the labor union representing theatrical actors and stage managers in the United States]), when the forced break of the pandemic [12 March 2020] reminded her what a full night’s sleep felt like. When theatres opened again [14 September 2021] and she returned to stage management, she grew wary of some companies’ plans for reopening and their failure to create contingency plans for any personnel but performers. Understudies are great—but what happens if the stage manager gets Covid and there is no backup?

“We literally can’t call in sick,” she said ruefully. “We’ve all done shows puking in the booth.”

As the theatre industry has begun to recover from the pandemic, workers on- and offstage have been questioning the punishing norms built into the profession. As Jesse Green asked in an August 2022 article in The New York Times headlined “Shutting the Door on the Hard-Knock Life,” “Can the theatre . . . find a way to uphold [its workers] more holistically as humans, even as they continue to gut themselves every night?” [This article is reposted on this blog as “‘The Reformation’ – Article 3,” 29 September 2022.] Bound up in this question are legacies of racism and sexism that have always been part of the industry but which got a fresh spotlight after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 [25 May; asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer] and the aftershocks of the #MeToo movement.

Stage managers often spend more time in rehearsal rooms and theatres than other workers, and it is their job to handle myriad interpersonal issues. Mythologized as unassailably capable people, stage managers have plenty to say about burnout, overwork, and the state of U.S. theatre in the post-Covid-lockdown era.

In conversations with 10 stage managers from around the country over the course of a year, they spoke about their career trajectories, working conditions, and the unique challenges of labor that’s not only invisible to the public but can also be opaque to those they work alongside. [“Invisible labor,” a term coined by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels (1930-2012) in 1986, is work, most often done by women and racial minorities, that, though essential, is unseen, unvalued, or undervalued.] For some, the pandemic halted just-blossoming stage management careers. For others it meant choosing to leave solid careers in New York for more affordable cities. For a few, like Smith, the pandemic lockdown gave them a tempting glimpse of less demanding career paths. All found themselves reflecting deeply on the demands of life as a stage manager and its sustainability as a long-term career.

Evolution of a Job

Stage management as we now know it began to take shape only about a century ago. According to Jennifer Leigh Sears Scheier’s 2021 history of the profession, up until the late 19th century, directors and prompters guided theatrical productions in the United States. As theatrical styles shifted toward realism, the director began to assume more aesthetic control over productions, and the stage manager emerged as a figure in charge of technical production elements. Prompters continued to supply lines in rehearsal and call cues for actors in production. Eventually the director and technical director became distinct positions, and the stage manager assumed some of the prompter’s duties, along with production management.

Tracking changes in the stage manager’s title and job duties from the 1870s through the 1980s, Scheier’s research shows that while the role evolved significantly over a century, the job has always been ill-defined and nebulous, with the stage manager taking on duties that don’t strictly fall to anyone else. She attributes this in part to a historical lack of formal professionalization for stage managers, who are organized with Equity (a vestige of the days, nearly a century ago, when they also frequently performed as actors in shows they were working on).

As productions became more technically complex over the 20th century, stage managers took on more responsibility for calling a larger number of cues and managing teams of workers. Stage managers once called shows from the wings, whereas many are now stationed in a tech booth, where they can see more of the stage picture.

The work didn’t only get more technical in this time, Scheier [assistant professor of stage and production management, Point Park University, Pittsburgh; freelance AEA and opera stage manager and stage management historian; b. 1986?] notes, writing, “The labor moved beyond technical know-how to a position where emotional intelligence became paramount to a job well done.”

Up until some time in the first half of the 20th century, stage managers were also predominantly men. It’s not clear who was the first recorded woman to serve in the role, but we do know that as late as the 1950s, female stage managers on Broadway were still rare enough to be newsworthy. Ruth Mitchell’s work on West Side Story [1957-59] was widely publicized in the New York press, though she already had more than a decade of work under her belt at that point [Broadway managerial début: assistant to the director, Annie Get Your Gun, 1946]. Coverage was also unsurprisingly sexist, with papers reporting information about her marital status, beauty, coloring, and weight.

Along with Mitchell [1919-2000], other notable women, such as Elaine Steinbeck [1914-2003], made careers as Broadway stage managers. Mitchell went on to become a prominent producer, working alongside Harold Prince [director and producer; 1928-2019] on his projects until her death in 2000. By the early years of the 21st century, the vast majority of stage managers were women—a heartening development, though it brings with it new issues. Is it any surprise, after all, that a role often defined by its invisibility, and by catch-all job duties designed to help other people shine, has increasingly fallen to women?

Emotional Labor

“I am not your mother” was a resounding theme in the interviews I conducted. Even male-identified stage managers I talked to acknowledged that the job comes with the expectation of caretaking labor often associated with women.

Today stage management is one sector of the performing arts dominated by women, who made up between 66 and 71 percent of respondents to David McGraw’s Stage Manager Survey between 2006 and 2023, with those identifying as nonbinary hovering around 10 percent once the survey moved away from collecting gender data on a binary basis. In terms of backstage labor, the percentage of woman-identified workers is rivaled only by costume designers and technicians.

This trend only solidifies tropes about the job and perceptions of feminized labor. Stage managers are expected to withstand social slights and have the flexibility to maintain composure in unexpected situations. As “professional problem solvers” and “the hub of the wheel” of the production process, stage managers encounter a huge range of human behaviors from people in different parts of the theatrical hierarchy.

In the 1980s, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild [b. 1940] coined the term “emotional labor” in her book The Managed Heart [The University of California Press, 1983] to describe the work of flight attendants, identifying it as work that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.” Emotional labor, in other words, is the work of producing (usually positive) emotional performances, which may be at odds with true internal emotions, for the sake of those being served. Not coincidentally, flight attendants at the time were almost exclusively women serving largely male clientele.

Some stage managers I spoke with specifically invoked the term “emotional labor,” while others discussed the way gender dynamics influence their work. As one gay man of color from Minneapolis told me, stage managers are sometimes relied on implicitly as quasi-therapists or mental health experts, roles for which they are not trained.

“Everybody likes a lady who has a lot of good ideas but doesn’t need to be in charge,” is how Victoria Rayburn (not her real name), a Washington, D.C., stage manager, put it. She even noted how her socialization as a woman has contributed to her success as a stage manager. “As a woman, personality management is built in—‘Like, oh my gosh, a man with an ego?!,’” she joked. “That’s absolutely part of everyday life, in all aspects of my life. It’s not just that I learned that at work; I learned that in my house with my brother!”

Lisa Smith also described her style as motherly, explaining that rather than using conflict or confrontation as strategies for getting people to do what she wants, she leverages “guilt and disappointment.” She never yells at people if they’re late; instead, she expresses concern and asks what she can do to help next time.

While this may be a successful approach to working with actors, Smith said she has encountered blatant hostility from backstage workers simply for being a woman in charge. On one show, she recalled, an all-female stage management team encountered a troubling degree of resistance from the all-male union backstage crew. Of one man in particular, she said, “I would speak to him and he would talk to someone else to tell me something—truly, a grown-ass man in his 60s who wouldn’t regard me as a human being.”

She laughed as she related this story, but noted more somberly that she regrets not reporting the behavior. (Both of her fellow stage managers did.)

Stage Management as an Art

But stage managers are not simply glorified babysitters or under-compensated human resources professionals. Most enter and remain in the field because of their affinity for the work onstage. As Smith put it, stage managers now “are not just a stopwatch.” As technology and culture have shifted over the past 30 years, “what a stage manager has to do has become more graceful. It is an art to do it well.” Said Rebecca Skupin, a stage manager in Houston, “I definitely consider myself an artist.”

Certainly stage managers need to understand basic dramaturgy, lighting, and theatrical timing to rehearse and call shows, but seldom are their artistic abilities recognized publicly. This may be changing: In 2021, Minneapolis-based Elizabeth MacNally [b. 1979] won a prestigious McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship for her work as a stage manager—the first time the organization has recognized stage management as an artistic practice in its own right. [The McKnight Foundation is a family foundation based in Minnesota that supports programs in the arts, sciences, and the environment.]

MacNally worked frequently with the late director Marion McClinton [1954-2019] at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis. By her account, McClinton’s approach to directing was to get out of the way of the story, and MacNally said she similarly sees herself “as a stage manager of the story. Are we getting in the way of the story? And if we are, how do we get ourselves out of that and get back to the story? The last thing we want to have happen is the audience gets smarter than us.”

Rosey Lowe [b. ca. 1995], who had been working in Minneapolis and Chicago when we spoke, came to stage management from an acting background. They joked that rather than run a tight ship as a stage manager, they prefer to run rehearsals like a “very functional loose canoe.” The artistic process needs flexibility, she explained, because “you sometimes can’t plan for when a breakthrough is going to happen.”

Out of the Shadows

Still, aesthetic or otherwise, much stage management labor goes unrecognized.

“I am perfectly happy working in the shadows,” said Lyndsey Goode [b. 1979] of Arlington, Texas, “except to the extent that networking is how you get your next gig.” Rayburn concurred on the double-edged sword of invisibility, saying, “If you are in theatre and you don’t know what a stage manager does, or at least what your stage manager does, you’re not appreciating the people you work with.”

Invisibility can also translate to monetary devaluation. As Goode pointed out, “A stage manager is never going to sell a ticket,” and on Broadway name recognition comes with more power to negotiate a contract. Ultimately, she said, any producer can decide “if you’re not going to take it for minimum, they can find somebody else who will.”

This may be why, partly enabled by Zoom communication, some stage managers have spent the past four years building collective knowledge and power. New York-based stage manager Amanda Spooner [b. ca. 1985] started the Year of the Stage Manager project in 2020, and the connections continue via a Facebook group.

Meanwhile there has been material progress: Houston’s Skupin, elected as one of Equity’s Western Region Stage Manager Councilors in 2022, sounded hopeful when we spoke in 2023, noting that contract negotiations included a number of gains for stage managers, including more ASM [assistant stage manager] contracts, reduced workweeks and increased rest hours, and better overtime policies. Additionally, according to a request for proposal from 2023, the union is also taking steps toward a name change “inclusive of all its members.”

From their unique position as conduits, funnels, or hubs, stage managers naturally accrue responsibilities and knowledge. They are therefore ideally positioned to advocate for the culture of rehearsals to change.

In the meantime, they must also advocate for themselves. Goode left for the Dallas-Fort Worth area when gigs in New York dried up during the pandemic, eventually landing a job as a company manager for a ballet company in Dallas [Texas Ballet Theater], a position in which she utilizes stage management skills and continues to work in the arts. MacNally left Pillsbury House Theatre for a position as the associate director of event production at the Walker Art Center, also in Minneapolis.

For her part, Smith is still on the fence about how much of her professional life she wants to devote to the theatre. She has stage-managed one show a year since we spoke in 2022, and is trying to strike a balance between work that simply pays the bills and work fueled by passion and creativity. She said she is working with a career counselor to help her sort through these decisions and launch her into her next chapter.

Whichever path she chooses, it will be her own.

“I can’t fix this industry,” she said. “There’s not time in my lifetime to make this better.”

[Angie Ahlgren (she/her) is a writer based in Duluth, Minnesota, and owner of Ahlgren Consulting, LLC, a consulting and coaching business for academics in the arts.  She started out as a stage manager at Minneapolis’s Theater Mu in the late ’90s, and her academic research has focused on stage management, gender, and invisible labor.

[Ahlgren’s writing has appeared in Theatre History Studies, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Women and Music, and she’s the author of Drumming Asian America: Taiko, Performance, and Cultural Politics (Oxford University Press, 2018). 

[Research for this article was supported by a faculty fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and a short-term fellowship from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.]

Actors' Equity's Open Access

 

[For decades, the only ways to gain membership in the professional stage actors’ and stage managers’ union in the United States has been to obtain work under an Actors’ Equity Association contract; work under a contract of one of Equity’s sister unions, such as SAG-AFTRA (or, before the merger, the Screen Actors Guild or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), the American Guild of Musical Artists [AGMA], or the American Guild of Variety Artists [AGVA]), and then “buy in” to Equity; or through the Equity Membership Candidate (EMC) Program in which actors may work in union productions for credits towards eventual membership, for which a candidate becomes eligible after 50 weeks of work at theaters that are a part of the EMC program. 

[Now the union has announced a major change in these membership requirements.  On Tuesday, 20 July, Actors’ Equity made the new eligibility requirements public, creating a flurry of reports in the theater press.  I’ve collected some of the coverage of the announcement and the union’s own publications on the change. 

[Below is one full article, from Playbill, and three pieces from Equity, including the press release.  Following those, I have excepted some of the individual commentary by the press outlets with a few opinions and interpretations some of the publications made.]

ACTORS’ EQUITY ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION OPENS UP ELIGIBILITY FOR WORKERS IN NON-EQUITY PRODUCTIONS
by Dan Meyer

[The following article was published on 21 July 2021 in Playbill, the national theater magazine.  It covers the announcement by Actors’ Equity Association of a significant change in the theatrical actors’ and stage managers’ union’s requirements for membership.]

The Open Access membership policy will also make it easier for former members of Equity to rejoin the union.

Actors’ Equity Association, the union for theatrical performers and stage managers, has opened up its eligibility with a new membership policy titled Open Access. Moving forward, theatre workers who can demonstrate they have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager within Equity’s geographical jurisdiction can join the union, effective immediately.

Open Access also opens the door for former members of Equity to rejoin the union without having to secure a new Equity contract, as required under previous policy. Former members and former applicants for membership who choose to join Equity under this policy may also apply previously paid initiation fees toward their current application. Eligibility will extend for two years, with application and down payment of applicable fees required by May 1, 2023.

“The old system had a significant flaw: It made employers the gatekeepers of Equity membership, with almost no other pathways to joining,” said Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity Association. “The entertainment industry is disproportionately white, including and especially theatrical leadership. The union has inadvertently contributed to the systemic exclusion of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] artists and others with marginalized identities by maintaining a system in which being hired to work those contracts was a prerequisite of membership. We hope that artists from all backgrounds will join us in building a union that uplifts the entire theatre community, especially those who have not felt included or welcome in the past.”

Open Access is part of AEA’s Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit, the union’s efforts to re-examine its own systems, structure, and processes through an anti-racist lens.

*  *  *  *

[AEA’s own press release on the subject of the new membership qualifications, as published on its website, https://www.actorsequity.org/news/PR/OpenAccess/, on 21 July.]

ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES ‘OPEN ACCESS,’ EXPANDING ELIGIBILITY FOR UNION MEMBERSHIP

New York – As the live arts industry begins to restart, and work increases as the pandemic diminishes, Actors’ Equity Association, the national union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theatre, has announced a new Open Access membership policy, allowing any theatre worker who can demonstrate they have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager within Equity’s geographical jurisdiction to join the union.

Previously, eligibility for union membership had been limited to those working for an Equity employer – whether by direct contract offer or through the Equity Membership Candidate program – or to members of a sibling union. Now, Equity is broadening access to union jobs that offer living wages, benefits and important workplace safety provisions.

“The old system had a significant flaw: It made employers the gatekeepers of Equity membership, with almost no other pathways to joining,” said Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity Association. “The entertainment industry is disproportionately white, including and especially theatrical leadership. The union has inadvertently contributed to the systemic exclusion of BIPOC artists and others with marginalized identities by maintaining a system in which being hired to work those contracts was a prerequisite of membership. We hope that artists from all backgrounds will join us in building a union that uplifts the entire theatre community, especially those who have not felt included or welcome in the past.”

Additionally, the Open Access policy invites former members of Equity to rejoin the union without having to secure a new Equity contract, as required under previous policy. Former members and former applicants for membership who choose to join Equity under this policy may also apply previously paid initiation fees toward their current application. 

Open Access is effective immediately for actors and stage managers who wish to join or rejoin Equity, regardless of country of origin or residence. Eligibility will extend for two years, with application and down payment of applicable fees required by May 1, 2023. Further details about the policy are available on Equity’s website.

Background: Open Access is one of the pillars of the union’s Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit, Equity’s strategic framework for re-examining its own systems, structures and processes from the ground up to move Equity toward becoming an antiracist organization.

*  *  *  *

[Further details and the answers to some questions were provided in another AEA post, undated but available at https://www.actorsequity.org/join/openaccess/.]

OPEN ACCESS

IT’S EASIER THAN EVER TO JOIN EQUITY!

And it’s more important than ever for actors and stage managers to stand together in solidarity to make theatre a safer, more equitable industry. Are you ready to become a union member? Begin your application here.

WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS?

Put simply, Equity membership is now open to any stage manager or actor who has worked professionally on a theatre production in the United States. We’ve also made it easier for former Equity members to rejoin the union. 

WHY IS EQUITY OPENING ACCESS?

For many years, eligibility to join Actors’ Equity Association has been limited to those who are working for an Equity employer – either by direct contract offer or through the Equity Membership Candidate program – or to members of a sibling union. 

But Equity theatres, like all entertainment industry employers, are disproportionately run by white people, and their programming and hiring decisions show that they often hold biases in favor of people from similar demographics. In fact, recent hiring studies demonstrate that Equity contracts are disproportionately offered to white people, and the majority of new members join via a contract.  Because our membership rules until now have left access to membership in employers’ hands, they have implicitly created a disproportionately high barrier to access for actors and stage managers of marginalized identities. We have inadvertently contributed to the systemic exclusion of people of color and people of other marginalized identities from the benefits of union membership.

We are taking steps to change that. Open Access is one major step.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

If you are an EMC [Equity Membership Candidate] or a former member, or if you have previously worked in an Equity theater, we may already have the information needed to confirm your eligibility to join Equity. Otherwise, if you have worked professionally as a stage manager or actor in the United States, you will need to provide proof of that work and proof of payment for that work (e.g. pay stub, W2, 1099, etc.). Your application and a $600 down payment toward the initiation fee are required by May 1, 2023. Learn more about Dues & Fees.

Former members and former applicants to Equity membership can have previous initiation fee payments credited towards the amount owed for joining or rejoining. All members now have three years to pay off their initiation fee.

Open Access is currently in effect until May 1, 2023. In the meantime, Equity will be developing a permanent gateway to membership that addresses racial inequities in accessing membership in the union. 

FAQ

Why should I become a member of Equity?

Actors and stage managers are workers, and unions like Equity provide important workplace protections for workers. As a union member, you will have the strength of more than 51,000 fellow members standing beside you, as well as a professional staff enforcing your contracts. This means fair pay, safer workplaces and the opportunity to make a real living in the theatre. Equity also provides a wide range of benefits that enhance both the professional and personal lives of members, from negotiated minimum salaries to a pension plan and supplemental workers’ compensation. Learn more.

How much does it cost to join the union?

Initiation fees are currently $1700, which can be paid over the three years following application. Once you become a member, you will pay annual dues in May and November, as well as working dues (a percentage of your paycheck) that help Equity function and serve its members. Learn more about Dues & Fees.

I’m an EMC. Do I need to finish my candidacy to join the union?

EMCs are welcome to continue along their path to Equity membership. However, they can also become members immediately, and any fees they have paid to the union will go towards the initiation fee.

I'd love to join, but I have a non-union job booked. Can I still join?

You must complete any non-union theatrical acting or stage managing jobs before joining the union, but once your gig is over, you can join!

I used to be a member, and my membership lapsed. Can I rejoin under this program?

Any former member can rejoin through Open Access, with the exception of those who left Equity to work on a non-union production. Former members and former applicants to Equity membership can have previous initiation fee payments credited towards the amount owed for joining or rejoining.

What if I am not a citizen, or currently living abroad?

As long as you have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager in a theatrical production the United States, you are eligible for membership, regardless of residence, country of origin or citizenship status.

How exactly does this address racial inequality?

Equity theatres, and indeed all entertainment industry employers, are disproportionately led by and populated by white people. Our membership rule has created a disproportionately high barrier to access for actors and stage managers of marginalized identities. Open Access is one of the pillars of our Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit, and there is still plenty of work to be done to transform Equity into an anti-racist organization. There is more to be done to ensure that all stage managers and actors – whether longstanding Equity members or newly eligible – can expect safe working environments free of bias and prejudice. But opening membership can't wait until we’ve finished the Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit. Every stage manager and actor deserves access to the protections of union membership immediately.

I understand this is about removing barriers to access for people with marginalized identities. If I don't believe that applies to me, can I still enroll under Open Access?

Yes! This is about increasing access to the all the union has to offer, and building solidarity with fellow theatre workers of all backgrounds. The union needs everyone who wants to be a part of building a better industry— the labor movement means we are all stronger together. The time has come for Equity, not employers, to invite workers into the union.

How will this affect auditions held exclusively for Equity members?

Auditions may get more crowded. During the transition from one model of union membership eligibility to the other, new and unpredictable concerns will arise. And still: stage managers and actors deserve access to the protections of union membership immediately. 

How did Open Access happen?

The union is the members, and the members made their voices heard!

Members began serious conversations about changing this policy prior to the pandemic. A working group was formed under our Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit, where the details were hammered out. While this work was ongoing, elected delegates crafted a resolution in support of broadening access to membership, which convention passed enthusiastically. Council overwhelming voted in favor of the new policy.

And now here we are, putting these members’ visions into action.

What else is Equity doing to address inequality in the union and the theatre industry?

Equity is currently undertaking the Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit, a process aimed at remaking our union from the ground up as an antiracist organization. Open Access is just one important piece of the Retrofit; you can learn more on the website, along with other diversity and inclusion initiatives.

What if I have other questions that aren’t listed here?

If you have any other questions, please contact membership@actorsequity.org. And you can join our webinar on August 31st (registration and more information coming soon).

*  *  *  *

OPEN ACCESS

On Tuesday, May 18th, 2021, council approved the Open Access resolution to enact a series of recommendations to eliminate barriers to Equity membership, making our union stronger and more inclusive. Central Principal Councilor and Open Access Action Team Leader Bear Bellinger, who helped develop those recommendations, shares his experience with the process of creating this ground-breaking change.

Joining Equity

The first thing I noticed when I decided to join Actors’ Equity Association was how difficult it was to join Actors’ Equity Association.

I had been steadily working in Chicago for years, mixing in union theatres with a few non-union houses – serving my time, as some folks like to put it.

I was committed; I was driven; I was focused; but I was not protected. I found myself in a cycle of non-union abuse: long days extended without notice, skin parts washed only once a week if we were lucky, artistic directors leading by demanding and demeaning rather than collaborating. This is just to name a few.

Non-union artists are barely protected in this profession, and I had done more than enough to “prove” my dedication to the craft and thereby “earn” protection. It was time to seek protections of my own.

I added up my EMC weeks and realized that there was no path to union membership that did not go directly through our employers. I could prove time and again, with dedication and artistry, that I was a professional actor, but until an employer decided to grant me a contract, I was basically left to fend for myself, even in union houses.

Why wasn’t I protected?

Isn’t the point of union membership to stand strong with other professionals to ensure fair pay and safe working conditions? Doesn’t a larger professional membership mean more leverage? Why should people who benefit from keeping me non-union be the judge of whether I deserve a minimum standard of working conditions?

I got my contract.

I joined the union.

I became a councilor.

That’s when I realized: We can change this.

So we did.

Last August, Bliss Griffin, Equity’s diversity and inclusion strategist, began the process of researching, developing and implementing a Diversity and Inclusion Retrofit for our union. With the blessing of our national council, she compiled feedback from hundreds of members to define the eight areas this organization must restructure to become a more diverse, inclusive and equitable Actors’ Equity Association.

One of the pillars of that retrofit is “Opening Access.”

Opening Access

How do we diversify our union if marginalized people do not have access to join? Looking at our employers’ hiring statistics, how do we create a more diverse union when our employers disproportionately offer contracts to white men? What are the barriers we are imposing upon ourselves? Over the course of nine meetings, a diverse working group of members combed through these questions. We began by asking: why should we offer more access?

·   Organizing: The more members we have, the better positioned we are as a union to advocate for stage managers and actors across the nation while reducing the ease with which producers can undercut our contracts by going non-union.

·   Financial: The more members in a union, the more dues coming in, and the better positioned we are to hire the staff necessary to protect and support our membership.

·   Education: We live in a nation that has purposefully weakened union influence and ingrained anti-union bias in much of our population to the detriment of workers everywhere. The larger our membership, the bigger the opportunity to ensure our colleagues have a strong respect for unions and a clear understanding of the importance of unions in our labor history.

·   Social Justice: With the nation in the throes of reckoning with its racist foundations and the effects of that past on our present, we recognized that we cannot continue to uphold barriers that have disproportionately negative effects on communities who have been systemically discriminated against.

·   Fairness: We, as a union, should not be in the business of preventing professionals from receiving protections.

With these ideas in mind, over more than 20 hours of meetings, we came to a series of recommendations which were then approved by our national council on May 18, including:

Open Access Immediately:

1. Council temporarily opens eligibility to join Actors’ Equity Association to any actor or stage manager who can demonstrate they have worked professionally (i.e., received compensation) for work as an actor or stage manager at a theatre within Equity’s geographical jurisdiction.

2. This eligibility will extend for two years, with application and down payment of initiation fee and any applicable reinstatement fee required by May 1, 2023.

Open Access Fairly:

1. Upon a Convention vote to revise Article 2 of the Equity Constitution restricting membership of international actors and stage managers, corresponding Bylaws (Art. 9 Sec. 9) and policies shall be immediately voided. Council refers to the International Actors Committee a charge to recommend changes in collective bargaining agreement language regarding international actors/stage managers.

2. Former members and former applicants to Equity membership (with “Out of Benefits,” “Terminated Applicant Member” or “Terminated Active Member” membership status) who apply to join Equity shall have previous initiation fee payments credited towards the amount owed for renewing membership.

3. Effective immediately, Equity will allow up to three years for full payment of initiation fees.

Our Working Group also proposed changes to Open Access Permanently, including establishment of a new gateway to Equity membership. Further details and implementation plans for those permanent changes will roll out in the months to come.

What does all this mean?

Actors’ Equity Association is committing to allow any professional stage manager or actor to join our union. We are removing the ability for employers to pick and choose who deserves fair protections under a union contract. Most importantly, we are doing so in a way that will allow us to move forward together with a more informed and activated membership.

Equity members have historically seen membership as a privilege to be earned. We see better salaries, health insurance, pension and expanded audition access as just a few of the rights that we have achieved over time: The result of hard work, determination and ability.

While these things may be true, we have all experienced how much luck and nepotism can play a large role in our ability to land jobs in our field. Knowing that there are plenty of hard-working, determined, professional stage managers and actors out there who have never hit that lucky combination, we are now deciding to stop hoarding workplace protections for ourselves. We are extending them to any who can claim a professional status.

We, in solidarity,

We, as a work force,

We, as human beings, are collectively admitting that minimum workplace protections should be extended to all of our peers and that we will no longer be the barrier that prevents them from receiving them.

We all have friends and loved ones who haven’t yet been able to secure that final contract to join Equity; I don’t believe any of us feel comfortable leaving those people less protected even as we may work side-by-side. Now they won’t have to.

If you, a professional stage manager or actor, want to join the union, come on in.

We’re stronger when we stand together.

We’re proud to stand with you.

What’s Next?

This will require more organizing. This will require our producing counterparts to commit to placing people first. More than anything, it requires all of us to stop accepting the devaluation of our fellow stage managers and actors.

Our union has a lot of work to do moving forward to ensure we are creating safe workspaces, and a safe union, for each of our members. If we want to live up to the ideals of solidarity, if we want to walk together towards a safer, fairer and stronger theatrical landscape, this is a strong first step. There are many steps yet to come. For the moment, however, I am excited to extend the rights and privileges current members enjoy to all our fellow stage managers and actors as we work to better this industry together.

Yours in solidarity,

Bear Bellinger

Central Principal Councilor

*  *  *  *

EXCERPTS

“Equity Opens Membership to Any Actor or Stage Manager Who's Been Paid for Work in the USA” by David Gordon, 21 July 2021, TheaterMania:

Open Access will also remove any restrictions on membership for international stage managers and actors, and will also allow former members and former applications to join or rejoin, with their previous initiation fee credited toward the new fees. In addition, all members will have three years to pay off the initiation fee.

“Actors’ Equity Announces ‘Open Access’ to Membership” by American Theatre Editors, 21 July 2021, American Theatre:

Changes within the actor and stage manager union follow a year of unrest from its membership base, which rallied against inconsistent and at times frustrating COVID-19 restrictions limiting work (and resulting in difficulty for members reaching their required work weeks for health insurance) and pushed for greater racial equity within the industry. The latter point was part of an April march on Broadway, during which theatremakers protested the inaction against Broadway producer Scott Rudin as well as shortcomings by the union to protect its membership from the racism, sexism, and unsafe work environments many had experienced. As Backstage reported back in April, the fallout saw some actors withholding their dues from the union.

 

This result, as well as the general lack of work (and thus, dues payments) for Equity members over the last year, has led some on Twitter to speculating the access move may have a dual purpose: to expand access to the union and to open the door for an influx of money from a flood of new members. In an interview with Backstage, Shindle rebuffed that sentiment, saying, “I am telling you the God’s honest truth when I say that no part of this has felt like any kind of cash grab.”

 

The full fallout from this industry-shaking decision is yet to be seen, with major non-Equity markets like Chicago sure to be rocked by the decision and some actors concerned about more crowded union auditions. Importantly, many are seeing hope in exactly what Shindle pointed to in her statement: Opening access in this way has the potential to remove the hiring barrier between actors and stage managers and the protections of the union.

“Actors’ Equity Expands Eligibility for Membership In Diversity & Inclusion Effort” by Greg Evans, 21 July 2021, Deadline:

The new policy comes at a critical time for the theater industry, as theaters begin the process of reopening following both the Covid pandemic shutdown and the intense scrutiny of the industry’s barriers to inclusion and diversity that came in the wake of last summer’s Black Lives Matter nationwide protests.

“EXCLUSIVE: Joining Actors’ Equity Is About to Get Easier” by Diep Tran 21 July 2021, Backstage:

“We’ve spent a lot of time over the last several years doing diversity and inclusion studies and analyzing contract data, we know that the industry is overwhelmingly white, disappointingly so,” says [Equity president Kate] Shindle. “And we know that the hiring practices of our employers provide barriers to access for people with marginalized identities. So when we put that all together—through a process that was led by a working group, and our diversity and inclusion strategist—Open Access was born out of that: Ways for people to join the union without having to be hired to work on an Equity contract first.” Shindle sees Open Access as a way of streamlining membership, especially because many Equity employers tend to only hire Equity actors, so it posed an additional hurdle for nonunion actors.

“Actors Equity Expands Access And There Are Plenty Of Opinions,” n.d., The Broadway Blog:

[After reporting the basics of the Equity announcement, The Broadway Blog published several Tweets from “theater professionals.”]

You get a card and you get a card! #comedy #theatre #musictheatre #actor  —Katie Claire

 

Open Membership to #ActorsEquity is going to strengthen our union, solidify our health & pension and make us a more equitable workforce.

 

Solidarity is a beautiful thing.  —Nick Westrate

 

Just a friendly reminder, union status does not equal talent. #actorsequity #AEA  —T.J. Newton

 

When I was a theatre student, we were taught not to rush to get your equity card as it would limit your job prospects. That implied that until we’d spent 3+ years building our resume we were expected to work in houses with minimal regulation, poor pay, and no accountability.

 

The changes announced by #actorsequity mean that they can finally act like a TRUE UNION for theatre artists. Representation should not require years of work experience. Worker representation is a right.  —MissMicae

 

I just saw #ActorsEquity’s news about membership! I’m crying! (Happy tears!) Lost my Equity status years ago when I couldn’t afford the initiation fee & though I’ve worked so often since then, I’ve never had an Equity job so I could never get back in the union. Now I can!?!?  —Tzena

 

If #actorsequity has open access for the next two years, what’s the policy on current members rescinding their member status to do well-paying nonunion work and rejoining in 18 months?  —Ryan DeNardo 

[I interrupted the publication of my travel journal for my 1982 trip to Israel and Egypt to cover this timely and important announcement from Actors’ Equity.  “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 5,” was posted on 23 July, and I will post Part 6, the final installment for the Israeli portion of the trip, on Monday, 2 August.

[If you haven’t been keeping up with the chronicle of my journey, this would be a good time to go back and pick up the first five sections.  Parts 1-4 were posted on 11, 14, 17, and 20 July.

[Part 6 covers our visit to the Old City of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, sites in the Negev Desert, and my departure for Cairo, Egypt.  Barring another interruption of the series, I expect to publish the remainder of the journal installments on the three-day schedule with which I started.  (That means that Part 7, the start of my travel through Egypt, will appear on Thursday, 5 August.)]

"Equity On Tour"

 

[As readers of Rick On Theater know by now, I have an occasional series of articles on this blog describing jobs and professions in theater that few even avid theatergoers know much about.  I’ve covered stage managers, dance captains, swings, understudies, and wig-makers; now I’m posting an article from Equity News (vol. 104, no. 4 [Fall 2019], entitled “Equity on Tour”) which features interviews with union members who work on national tours of Broadway shows.  I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate article to post on ROT.] 

“ALL IN A YEAR: EQUITY MEMBERS BUSY WITH NATIONAL TOURS IN 2019”

Perhaps the only thing harder than making a living on stage or backstage is doing so while touring. And yet, there are now more members doing just that than at any point since the last recession. With interest in touring only continuing to grow, Equity News sat down with seven tour veterans – a mix that included stage managers, an understudy, principals and chorus – to find out what they have learned from life on the road. Special thanks to Kevin McMahon, chair of the SETA [Short Engagement Touring Agreement] Committee, for helping to lead the conversation. What follows is their conversation and their lessons, edited for space and clarity.

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL A NEW MEMBER BEFORE THEIR FIRST TOUR? 

Kevin McMahon: For me, it’s “bring less.” You don’t need it. If you do need something, you can buy it.

John Atherlay: It’s okay not to know the answers; ask questions. And don’t try and fake it.

Christine Toy Johnson: I’d pass along some great advice I got from my friend Jose Llana right before I left town. He had just come back from two years on the road with The King and I and suggested these top three things:

1. Ziploc bags will be your friends. (Now I have reusable ones, and they are my friends.)

2. You don’t need that much stuff. You may have a couple of parties where you really want to dress up, but he said he started the tour with five suits and by the end was down to one black blazer, which he used for all press and opening nights.

3. You don’t need to lug around gigantic, Costco-sized lotions and shampoos. Normal sizes are good!

Andrew Bacigalupo: Know we’re not brain surgeons. It’s serious, we’re all professionals, but everything doesn’t have to get elevated so quickly. There doesn’t have to be stress. This is something we want to do, so let’s enjoy doing this. There’s a lot of pressure to be perfect because everybody’s watching, but really, everybody’s in this together.

Marina Lazzaretto: It’s important to find the things that bring you joy and do them in every city. For me, I plan my workout in every city. I find the places that I want to go to, and that’s what brings me joy, and I plan my life around that.

David O’Brien: I go on websites like TripAdvisor to see the top ten things to do and try to do at least one of them in each city; something to get me out of the theater so I don’t lose my mind. I would definitely advise new people to take advantage of the cities they’re going to, because it’s such a great experience to travel the country.

Sid Solomon: I’m a big fan of meeting people. My first Equity job, I spent two years touring with The Acting Company, which is a very different kind of touring model where you’re very bus-and-truck, one night here, one night there, in very small towns.

I did everything that I could to try to meet people who lived in those places. Sit down at a restaurant that’s known as a place where people from that city go and start a conversation. The country is wide and vast and filled with lots of different kinds of people, and the people in the city are the ones we’re there to do the show for. So, every opportunity that I could take to just meet somebody and find out what their life is like felt to me like it enriched my ability to do the work that I was in that city to do.

McMahon: Most of my good memories of my years on the road revolve around the stuff that we did with my friends, like that the trip on the balloon in Albuquerque with “O’B” (David O’Brien), trips to the dog park with all my dog friends on the road . . . that’s a part of living. That’s your life.

O’Brien: We have 14 dogs on our tour now, Kevin!

HOW DO YOU STAY HEALTHY ON THE ROAD?

Johnson: Come From Away is like a 100-minute long sprint, and I find I have to prepare myself in a different way than I have for other shows. As much as I do love seeing as much as I can of the cities I’m in, I am also very conscious of not having a mindset that I’m on vacation. The only reason I’m away from my home and my husband and my dog for most of the year is to do the show.

So I’ll do whatever I need to do to be at my optimal energy for the show. It’s all about balance. I am a writer as well, and part of the leadership of Equity and the Dramatists’ Guild, and I chair a few committees. I get up at 6:30 or 7 in the morning just naturally. When it occurred to me that I needed to be at my optimal energy 12 hours after I got up, I realized that I had to really be mindful of structuring my day for both physical and mental wellbeing. It took me months to set up the parameters so that I could do this.

I don’t do meetings on Mondays anymore because even if it’s a travel day or golden day; it’s a day off. I don’t do meetings after a certain time in the afternoon because I have to reset my body clock and take a little nap or be quiet. Now I don’t really do a lot of things after the show, except for on Sundays, and it seems super boring sometimes, but for me it’s all about making sure that I am at my peak performance level at all times. I’m proud to say that (as we speak) I’ve done every single performance of our run so far.

Lazzaretto: I want to talk about food on the road, because I think it’s particularly difficult to feel your best and to perform your best when you’re consistently eating out at garbage restaurants. I make it a priority to find a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s in each city. I travel with a plate, a bowl and a kitchen knife so that I can have my normal diet, food that I would eat at home, in my hotel or in my Airbnb. And that helps me maintain my optimal body health for my show.

Johnson: Same. Exactly. It’s absolutely vital to do that.

Solomon: It has always been my experience that people who do what we do tend to be creatures of habit. We were touring with a lot of first-time-touring people, and it was really important for all of us to accept the limitations of touring as quickly as possible, to understand that for as much as you have a dedicated routine at home, there are realities to being on the road. The sooner you’re willing to figure out how to maintain as much of your routine, as many of the things that make you happy on a day-to-day basis, you should do that. For me, it’s light in hotels. I need there to be some light in my room, and I will go back to the front desk and ask for a room with better light.

My health suffered for the first six months of the tour because I’m an outdoor runner. We were in cold weather cities a lot, and I had a really hard time adjusting my exercise schedule.

Atherlay: I don’t do workout routines very often because my schedule changes at the drop of a dime, so I tend to walk around a lot. I listen to Sirius Radio, and I just see the different sites. I’ve been touring long enough that I’ve seen them all, so I know where to go that gives me peace.

I also tend to find the closest hotel to the theater so that I can go away between shows or after rehearsal and before the show, so my day is broken up. I’m not spending 12–13 hours in the theater, but maybe four or five, then going away for two hours and coming back. It refreshes my brain and relaxes me a lot.

YOU BRING UP A GOOD POINT. WHAT DOES EVERYONE DO FOR MENTAL HEALTH?

Bacigalupo: We’ve been talking about mental health on my tour recently. I think, as Christine said, we’re not here on vacation. We’re not there just to have fun in the city. We’re there to do the show. Some people go out after the shows, to this bar or that place with an “always on the move” mentality. I think it’s important to realize that I wouldn’t necessarily do that while I was at home, so working on the road I don’t need to feel the pressure to do that either. It’s okay to have time to yourself.

McMahon: I couldn’t agree with you more, Andrew. Sometimes you’re 50 years old and you feel like you’re back in high school with the parties and who didn’t get invited to this thing, and you have to step back and like realize, okay this is just for now. This is just this week, and next week we’ll be in a different city. It will all be different.

Lazzaretto: For my own mental health, it was important to realize early on in my experience that you don’t have to feel like you have to be everyone’s friend. If we worked in a normal office, you wouldn’t feel obligated to spend all your time with every person you worked with, so it’s okay to realize that not everyone on your tour is going to be your friend. You do your work together, and you can be pleasant and nice to each other, but you don’t have to feel bad if you’re not invited to something. You don’t have to be everyone’s friend. It’s okay.

O’Brien: I’m sober. I’ve been sober for 29 years, and it has its specific challenges on the road. And that is my staying healthy. A lot of it has to do with having my dog, finding people that aren’t in that party mindset. It can be done, but it’s much more challenging on the road.

STAGE MANAGERS: HOW IS YOUR ROLE DIFFERENT ON THE ROAD COMPARED TO DOING A SIT-DOWN PRODUCTION?

O’Brien: There’s so much more to it on the road, which is why I like being on the road. So much of my career was in New York, and I always found it to be a challenge, especially on shows that did run a long time. I was on Cats for five years. Five years in New York is to me tougher than five years on the road. The excitement of going from city to city and being in a new theater and a new environment gives everything a new energy.

Atherlay: I’m with O’B. I much prefer the road. We’re in Toronto at the Mirvish, and it’s our first theater without a crossover. So we had to go in and figure out what costume changes need to be moved where. And focusing the show where we are – our second stop didn’t have box booms, so we had to move everything to the front and deal with the challenge of making it look the same without the same positions, which is very, very difficult.

But I’ve been around so much, a lot of cities become second homes to me. I know the challenges in Toronto, what we’ll have at the Golden Gate in San Francisco, what we’re going to have in Cleveland when we get there in a couple of weeks. But it’s the challenges I prefer.

Bacigalupo: When you’re always moving, there’s more of a “we’re all in this together vibe,” and it’s a whole different atmosphere to the show.

WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE TO GET YOURSELF ACCLIMATED TO A CITY?

McMahon: I always go on Trip Advisor, and there’s a new Facebook group I think a lot of us belong to called Tour Talk, where people share advice on cities and actually give tips on hotels, which was very helpful to me on my last tour.

Solomon: I have for a very long time kept a membership to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and they have an extensive reciprocal membership program for not all that much money that gets me free entry into art museums in basically every city. And so early in each week, I would go and find the major art museum in the city. It’s usually in the center of town, and it usually has some deep rich history about how it was founded and it tends to be such a part of the civic identity of a city, that it tended to tell me a lot really quickly.

Johnson: I eat a 90% Paleo menu, so I will Google “Paleo + [name of the city]” and find the restaurants that fit the bill. There’s a small group of us that likes to find a good restaurant to go to on the first night in a city, so I make the reservation and find something that’s a treat for all of us. I also start with locating the nearest Whole Foods, because you can do wonders with a rotisserie chicken and a box of salad.

O’Brien: On our tour now, we have a group of people that love to eat breakfast, so we find breakfast restaurants in our cities. It’s been great.

Bacigalupo: On every Tuesday or every load-in day, we do a management lunch where company management and stage management go out together. There’s a lot of excitement in the days before we to go a city about where we are going to lunch on Tuesday. And then just the stage managers, the three of us, always do brunch sometime in the week, and it’s important to us to have the time that’s just our department to check in.

Lazzaretto: To me, the people who know the city the best are the locals. I like to find a yoga place in every city, and I talk to the people in class there. They tell me where their favorite restaurant is or what their favorite art museum is, or what else I shouldn’t miss.

McMahon: I couldn’t agree more. I used to talk to the dressers, and I would research the dog parks and ask the people there what they like, and I’ve never been steered wrong.

DOES ANYONE HERE TRAVEL WITH THEIR FAMILY?

Johnson: My husband Bruce and my dog Joey travel with me often but not full time. In the first year of Come From Away, we had four children traveling with us, five dogs and at least two or three spouses full time. My company has been extraordinary about welcoming all extended family to everything we do, which has been, I think, really essential to the inclusive happy family feeling that we have in our show.

McMahon: For me, my husband Doug and I have a five-week rule. We had to see each other, physically, at least once every five weeks. That was the absolute rule.

Atherlay: I have three kids. My two boys grew up when I was doing Beauty and the Beast, so I was home for them. When I started touring again, we put a map on the kitchen refrigerator. My ex-wife would pinpoint where I was, and when I would call them, we’d talk about time differences and seasonal differences, and I got them to figure out what the country was. Before computers and texts, our communication was phone calls. My daughter, who is now 18, would visit me on the road because her mother’s grandmother lived outside of Chicago. Four or five times when I was playing Detroit, they would be driving home from Chicago and stop off to spend the weekend with me, to the point where when she was in first grade, my daughter told everybody at school that her daddy lived in Detroit.

It’s about communicating. It’s about talking and sending postcards and showing your kids where everything is. And now my daughter is studying theatre management in college.

Bacigalupo: I have a boyfriend that I started seeing last summer, before I started this tour. We didn’t get quite to seeing each other every five weeks, but we haven’t been apart for more than two months at a time. It’s important to have somebody that you can go to who’s not involved with the show. It helps to realize there’s a world outside the isolated bubble of the tour. I don’t think I could have made it through this tour without having someone I could go to as a sounding board who’s not really involved with the production.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CONTRACT THAT IS EXPIRING, HOW DO YOU DECIDE TO RENEW OR NOT TO RENEW?

Johnson: For all of us, I think you check the boxes: do you love the show? Are they treating you well, both salary-wise and globally? Are you artistically fulfilled? Kevin, you taught me this. If you have at least two of these three things, it’s easy to stay.

I think I can speak for everyone in the Come From Away company – we feel so invested in the message of the show. No one ever wants to be out. No one ever wants to not do the show. The people that left didn’t really want to leave; they had children going to school or other commitments that they needed to tend to.

For me, the positives outweigh the negatives (being away from home), so it was not a hard decision to stay for year two.

Solomon: Our situation was a little different in that we opened the first national tour the beginning of September and we closed in the middle of August. So the first national tour came to an end, but we knew the show was going to continue on for a second tour on a new contract.

Once we knew what the details of the contract were, there started to be conversations with the cast about continuing on with our show. If you haven’t seen The Play That Goes Wrong, it’s very intricate. It’s complicated. It’s very dangerous. And the more people you have who have done it before, the better off you are.

I loved my time on the road. I loved the tour. I loved the show. I love the people. Understudying the show is a particular challenge. I was not in the same kind of physical pain the rest of the cast is on a daily basis, but the mental anguish of not only keeping that show in my head but being prepared for it on a nightto-night basis was its own special kind of thing.

For me, it simply came down to having to be away from my wife and my dog and my family. My whole life is here in New York. Another minimum nine months on the road just wasn’t the right choice for me right now. And for me that’s actually kind of a big deal. All I ever wanted to do is work. No job is too small, no role is too small. I just want to be doing something all the time. So I’m kind of proud of myself. It was time to look for the next adventure.

Lazzaretto: I think that the number one thing for me as I’m evaluating whether or not I want to continue a contract is: am I still growing as an artist? Am I feeling stagnant? Is there more I can gain from this specific production?  What is the level of my happiness doing this job? Whether I’m going to be happy is the most important.

Atherlay: I look at how I’m being treated. I look at what they offer me to renew. I’ve been very fortunate so far in that I’ve been treated very well. I don’t believe in just leaving work. It’s not in my nature.

Bacigalupo: With stage managers, we don’t really have a contract renewal, we’re just here until we’re not here. I had an opportunity to leave the show for another show earlier in the year, and I felt such anguish about leaving this creative team. I have so much respect for them, and I care about them so much, and they have really helped my career move forward, so I felt a big responsibility to them.

I felt a lot of responsibility for the show. Everybody is replaceable, but I was in the room when the show was created. I know why we’re doing this move, not just that we’re crossing to this number at this moment. And I think a lot of that gets lost in translation as you pass the show on to another PSM.

O’Brien: The only thing I would say is the same as Marina. I left Wicked once because I felt I wasn’t as happy, and I wasn’t serving the show – I was not doing my best job at that time. I thought I needed to take a break from Wicked, and then once the position opened up again, I came back because I realized the show makes me happy. But I will leave a contract if I feel like I’m not doing it justice.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CHOICE FOR HOUSING & TRAVEL, WHAT FACTORS DO YOU CONSIDER IN MAKING THOSE DECISIONS?

McMahon: For me, I’ll tell you that Marriott Rewards Points were as important as my 401(k). (Laughs) If there was a Marriott, I knew there would be a consistent quality of housing, and they’re usually pet friendly.

Johnson: Because we’ve traveled with so many pets, our company manager has made sure that all of our housing has been pet-friendly. I generally stay with the company because I like to be around them, and I don’t like to travel home from the theater by myself. It’s most important for me to be really near the theater if possible, because I like to get there early and also go back to the hotel in between shows to rest. One other thing: the presence or absence of refrigerator and microwave. That’s really important too, because otherwise, you know, you can’t have your rotisserie chicken and a box of salad if you don’t have any place to put them to keep them cool.

O’Brien: I will also look at the company choices and look at ratings, just because where I’m living is so important to me. I will be miserable in a place if my housing is bad.

Bacigalupo: I have stayed at an Airbnb twice on this whole tour in the past year. I get super anxious about Airbnbs – there seems to be a lot of pressure in finding the best Airbnb, the closest Airbnb, the cheapest Airbnb. It’s like a full-time job. It’s too much stress to figure out, so I’ve stayed in the company option most of the time. Even if it was a more expensive option, I would still pick the company hotel, because I knew that if there were issues with the room, if the water doesn’t work, if there was mold, the company would take care of it.

And I do the same for travel. I know a lot of people do their own travel between cities, but I do Monday load-ins. The stress of a flight delay if I paid for the ticket is a lot higher than if the flight’s delayed and the company’s paid for it, because if I don’t make it to load-in, the company will help to figure it out. That takes all of that stress away from me.

Atherlay: Location is important to me, especially with my schedule. And sometimes the pricing is ludicrous, but it’s par for the course. Like Andrew, I’ve had too many actors spend too much time complaining about the Airbnb: that it’s not what they what they signed up for, it’s not what was advertised. I find the hotel is important because it’s my peace of mind. If it is a bad hotel, someone’s going to take care of it and fix it or move me or upgrade me or something.

Lazzaretto: I feel the same. Proximity to the venue is always top priority for me. I’m one of those people who’s splitting my time between the hotels and Airbnb dependent on the length of stay. If we’re somewhere for a week, I’m more likely to just choose the closest hotel option. If we’re somewhere a little longer, I like to have a kitchen.

HOW DOES BEING IN THE UNION AFFECT YOUR TIME ON THE ROAD? ARE THERE TIMES YOU’VE TURNED TO THE UNION FOR HELP?

McMahon: Speaking personally, I know I was on the phone a lot with my reps. Our tour had a lot of new members on the road, and they didn’t understand the rules and working conditions. I was deputy, and I became a teacher for a lot of people about Equity and the contract. The union was incredibly helpful to me in every capacity.

Solomon: Something both being a union member and now being a union officer had me very mindful of on the road was how I interacted with other workers on the road.

Especially when you are living in hotels, taking taxis, going to restaurants – you are constantly interacting with the hospitality industry. And so many of the workers that you are interacting with are unionized workers; sometimes they’re workers who are trying to unionize. I did everything I could to be as mindful as possible of being respectful to fellow workers. Whether that was being mindful of appropriately tipping at hotels, or in cities where there’s a difference between how people are paid to drive – a licensed taxi as opposed to just getting in somebody’s car for Uber – I tried to err on the side of that being mindful to how I was contributing to the way another person made their living.

Lazzaretto: I learned so much about our union and the contracts from Kevin when I was on the road with him. The one thing I like to tell new members in the shows I’m doing is not to be afraid to call the union. It’s there to help you and to be a resource. Call your rep, ask them questions. They’re all so lovely and helpful and willing to give you the information.

McMahon: Being a deputy also becomes a teaching experience for new members. I took that duty very seriously.

Johnson: One of the things I’m most mindful of is our 401(k). That’s an awesome thing that’s part of a negotiated contract. I’m especially grateful to be on a long-term job, having a long-term contribution from the employer in place along with my own.

Atherlay: I have a philosophy, and I teach my deputies all the time, that the words in your agreement are as important as the words in your script. I find that Equity has always been very responsive towards me when I do call with an issue.

O’Brien: With Wicked, we get a lot of new people, new people to Equity who have just signed their first contracts. One of the things that we started on this tour: when a new person joins, we do a meeting. The company buys them dinner, and the associate company manager and my first assistant stage manager go out and explain everything about the road. Then we have a separate meeting where we talk to them about how to use their deputies. And it’s been working really well.

Bacigalupo: In the past two years or so, when I moved to New York, I joined committees and I came to membership meetings. And I think that having the knowledge is such a huge help to understand the bigger picture of what’s going on, to understand what the rulebook rules are, what the agreement is. It’s so interesting to see the reasoning behind the things in these agreements. It’s so cool what you’re doing at Wicked to explain this to people, opening up the agreement and going through it together – I just wrote that down and might steal it for the future.

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[I’m a dog-lover, so I wanted to include this little sidebar to the Equity News cover article.  ~Rick] 

“HAVE DOG, WILL TRAVEL”

One of the things that makes life on the road a little easier is being able to travel with a pet.

“Right now, we’re so fortunate we can even take our dogs to the theater, like we have like six dogs at the theater every day,” said Marina Lazzaretto. “They hang out in the dressing rooms. Gandalf even has his own Cats costume. I wouldn’t tour without him. Like, I can’t imagine my life on the road without him. He brings me so much joy and like he brings so much joy to other people at the theater and at the hotel, too.”

Caring for an animal on the road can be a challenge. Once Lazzaretto found a good veterinarian in Oklahoma, so she makes a point to stop when she is in the area and take Gandalf to visit the veterinarian they’ve come to know.

Stage Manager David O’Brien drives himself from stop to stop so that he can travel with his dog, a 55-pound rescue mix. “I actually adopted him on the road,” said O’Brien. “My other dog, Charlie, was 15 and passed last year. I was without a dog on the road for about five months. Having one makes all the difference in the world to me.”

“A pet can really be the key to everything – making sure that we have the normal thread of joy in our lives,” said Christine Toy Johnson, who often travels with Joey, a six-year-old Westie. “How we navigate that, and when we find that is supported by the people we are working with – that is really just everything.”

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MEET THE INTERVIEWEES

JOHN ATHERLAY

John is Production Stage Manager with The Band’s Visit. Before that he spent two years on a cruise ship. Other touring experience includes Cabaret, Blithe Spirit, Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes, Fela! and Man of La Mancha.

ANDREW BACIGALUPO

Andrew was the Production Stage Manager on the recently concluded Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tour. Prior to that, he toured with Elf: The Musical, The Sound of Music and Million Dollar Quartet.

MARINA LAZZARETTO

Marina is an actor currently on the Cats tour. Before that, she toured with American in Paris, Wicked and Come Fly Away.

KEVIN MCMAHON

Kevin is chair of the Short Engagement Touring Agreement (SETA) Committee. In addition to serving as a Western Principal Councillor, he toured with Wicked for six years and with Bright Star for one year.

DAVID O’BRIEN

David has been the Production Stage Manager for Wicked on the road for seven years. Prior to that, he did 17 Broadway shows and tours of Chicago, Cats and White Christmas.

SID SOLOMON

Sid toured as an understudy on The Play that Goes Wrong. It was his first experience on a commercial tour as an Equity member. He also serves as Equity’s Eastern Regional Vice President.

CHRISTINE TOY JOHNSON

Christine is an actor on her second year of the first National/North American tour of Come From Away. Previously, she has toured with Cats, Flower Drum Song and Bombay Dreams. She is chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee and an Eastern Principal Councillor.