Post 254 - November 20, 2020

Day 254…

I am under a tree in Chelsea with an endless blue sky stretching overhead, looking as if it’s been color corrected.

Michael and I are meeting a baby this morning. Presumably it will arrive along with either one or both of its parents. It’s hard not to be optimistic in anticipation of a baby.

Michael is running late. He is sending off an audition that he taped at home yesterday after his day on the Law and Order set. I left the apartment early and walked down while he worked.

There is nothing on my schedule today. I am OK with that.

For the moment, at least, Michael has become the sole breadwinner in the family. For the first decade and a half of our relationship, I had the steady income and his was erratic and yet constant at the same time. Some years he was on Broadway and some years he was doing the occasional regional job and teaching.

Michael is almost the textbook definition of a successful New York actor. That’s what success in the theatre looks like.

He acts. He directs. He teaches. It took me a long time to convince him that he didn’t need to decide between them - that there was plenty of room to do them all. He’s pretty great at all of it. He has still managed to do a lot, on some level, during the shutdown of our industry.

Actors Equity Association, the union of theatrical actors and stage managers, has finally come to an agreement with SAG/AFTRA, the union of television and motion picture actors over the issue of who has jurisdiction over certain streaming events. The agreement is to be in place through December of next year with a review next October to reassess where we are in terms of the pandemic.

Basically, what the agreement means is that AEA can cover theatrical-type events that are streamed for a limited time. As opposed to something filmed, performances under the AEA contract can’t be edited. They can’t be shot out of order or have non-theatrical effects added to them. They can’t be streamed on network TV or on platforms like HBO that are typically under SAG/AFTRA jurisdiction. Tickets must be sold for people to watch and there are limits set on how many can be sold at any one time. Like a regional theatre production, the final product can only be shown for a limited time.

This is good news for almost everyone. It still, however, doesn’t really help stage managers.

There is talk of requiring a stage manager to be hired for each event, but up until now, that has been rare. The work that we would normally do in terms of scheduling and coordination is being done in recent days largely by others on the producing team. On an actual live production there would be multiple stage managers who would work every day that the actors do. Moving forward, it seems unlikely that more than one stage manager would be hired at a time for one of these readings or virtual plays, but we will see.

Honestly, I am not sure exactly what more than one stage manager would do. I hope that AEA will figure out how to get producers to keep paying stage managers throughout the virtual “run” of whatever is streamed. Once the piece has been created and filmed, there will be no more actual work for us.

I also hope that AEA will figure out some sort of royalty system to pay the actors as a piece continues to be streamed.

All of this comes down to work weeks. The reason that work weeks are so important is because you need a certain amount of them to qualify for health insurance.

The level you need to get to, to get insurance, has, not surprisingly, risen. With so little money coming in due to the reduced workload, the Fund needed to protect itself from becoming decimated.

Including stage managers in with the actors, union-wise, has never been a very good fit.

If stage managers really followed the rules outlined for us by the union line by line, it wouldn’t really be possible for us to accomplish the work needed. If you end up working with a director who includes you in the production process as I often do, the amount of overtime alone would be crippling.

I consider myself lucky enough to have worked with people who do allow me to participate in that process. That’s one of parts of the job I like the best. Long ago, I learned to negotiate a salary that I was comfortable enough with, no matter how many hours a week I worked. I don’t really like the idea of overtime. I want to work for x-dollars a week regardless of the hours. I never wanted to not go to a meeting or a work session because it was outside of my work time allotment.

There are plenty of stage managers, I am sure, who have worked within the allotted hours and not participated in that way, but working like that never interested me.

In my personal experience, almost every time there has been a conflict between actors and stage management, the union has sided with the actor. I suppose that is inevitable give that we are a decided minority.

I am grateful that the protections offered me by the union rules are there, don’t get me wrong. It gives me the power to choose to participate in extracurricular activities or not. I also know that my basic work conditions will not be compromised and that things like travel and housing will at least be of a certain caliber. I’ve just never felt like a full member of the union because I feel as if so many of its rules and basic focus simply don’t apply to me.

I think that there are a lot of people living in the United States who feel exactly the same way about living under our government.

Equal protection under the law is all well and good to speak of, but it doesn’t mean much if it isn’t put into actual practice.

All of this to say, that while this agreement between the two unions is likely to be a positive thing for Michael, it will probably not change much for me in terms of my current state of non-employment. Non-employment is actually a much better description of what we are experiencing these days than un-employment is.

There have been times in the past where Michael has been working a job that doesn’t pay anything near what mine did and he felt guilty about it.

We have our household set up in such a way that all of the money either of us earns goes into one pot and we then pay each other a basically equal monthly salary out of that and split the living expenses in half. These days, whatever money that is being added into the pot is coming in from Michael. Perhaps I will feel guilty about that in the future but for now, I am fine with it. I think, lol.

I am now sitting in the shadow of the Flatiron building.

We spent a wonderful time this morning with our friends and their new baby.

What a strange and interesting time to be born. This kid will never know what life was like before all of this happened. He will grow up as we evolve into whatever it is that we are going to evolve into. By the time he starts becoming aware of the society around him, this pandemic will likely have passed. Some of the adaptations we have made will have persisted and some of them will have fallen away.

I hope that when he comes of age that more people in this country feel equal to their fellow citizens than do now. It would be a shame if after all that we have experienced in these past months, that nothing changes for the better.

The film and television actors merged a few years ago, and it only seems to be a matter of time before the theatrical actors join them. Perhaps when that happens the stage managers could then align themselves with some other division of the business that feels more compatible. I don’t think that there are enough of us to strike out on our own.

In the meantime, the rest of the day lies before me. The baby’s gone down for his nap and Michael’s gone home to do some more work. We are getting close to the level he needs to achieve before getting his SAG/AFTRA insurance that covers me as well for another year. Another shoot or two and we’ll be there.

As long as one of us is working, we will be fine.

At the moment, it isn’t me. I am trying to be fine with the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to be me.

I’ll work on that a bit more as I continue my walk downtown.

It’s such a beautiful day.

Perfect for a good walk.