Day 403…
I don’t necessarily have any answers, but I do have some questions.
I almost never venture beyond Facebook or Instagram online so unless something on another platform gets reposted on one of those two sites and shows up in my feed, I am probably not going to see it. That those are the two sites I frequent probably says everything that there is to be said about my age and the space that I occupy in society. I have a twitter account, but I am just not interested enough to ever use it.
Social media, at least what I am seeing of it these days, is roiling in a sea of unrest and discontent at a level that seems even higher than it has usually been. Given what we’ve all been through this year, that seems hard to believe. Because I am in New York and in the entertainment industry, possibly people outside both of those spheres aren’t experiencing quite the wave of fury that I am seeing in my feed in recent weeks. There has always been a certain level of intensity in the exchanges between the people I am acquainted with, but that level has risen to a fever pitch in recent weeks.
During the election and the protests and all throughout the shutdown, there was, of course, plenty of social media energy but, for the most part among the people in my orbit it was all headed in the same direction and pointed at the same targets. Now, like a bullet in a steel chamber, it feels like it is ricocheting all over the place at seemingly indiscriminate targets.
The topic being debated so hotly by my colleagues in the theatre industry - in particular Broadway performers - is what is the future? How do we respond to allegations of abuse and racism? How do we face it? Discussions range from thoughtful to “Burn it down, burn it all down.”
A prominent theatre actress has announced that she (they) won’t be returning to their show because it has been revealed that a prominent producer of shows other than theirs has been abusing his employees. They believe that pulling out of their own show will start a discussion that they feel has not appeared on social media from other notable people in the industry. Everyone, it seems, in response, is weighing in with their own opinions.
Other industry people, because of their level of dissatisfaction with the Actors’ union in terms of its response to both racial issues and to the pandemic, have called for members to withhold their dues. There have been suggestions that maybe the time for the union has passed and that it should be dismantled.
Everyone is angry and clearly in pain - both the people posting as well as the people responding. The only consensus seems to be a general sense that only some are being served and that that has got to change. With every passing day, the words that someone like me is allowed to use around any of these issues, changes. This isn’t my fight, but it is my fight. I should participate. I shouldn’t participate. Speak up. Shut up. I don’t need to have any of that defined for me, but it is happening to me and I can’t not react to it.
Who is someone like me? When I first started working in the theatre in New York in the early 1980’s, everything that I am, was an advantage. I am white. I am tall. I am male. I have an Ivy league education. I am gay. In New York theatre, being gay was, and still is, somewhat of a plus. It puts you in with a very starry group of writers, directors, choreographers, actors and producers. At the time I was starting, I never thought about how I might be advantaged. I am aware now that all of those things gave me an incredible head start and kept me going. I can see that I did not move to New York with nothing. I may not have had a lot of money, but I had absolutely everything else that I could have possibly needed to achieve success.
Whatever success I have achieved in the theatre, however, has to be measured against my peers who may not have had many or even any of those things. That some of my peers succeeded with the deck stacked solidly against them, leaves my own success behind in the dust.
So, how to respond?
The American Revolution was organized by a small group of very smart white men who resented not being able to control their own financial destinies. They wanted to be free to earn and keep their money without having to pay taxes to a King across the ocean. That was it. That was the whole basis of their discontent.
When we all celebrate our national day of freedom on July 4th, what exactly are we celebrating? The American Revolution benefited white male landowners. Our founding fathers weren’t fighting for equality and freedom for all. Women were still going to be second class citizens. They wouldn’t be allowed to vote for another hundred years. “All men are created equal.” Men, not women.
They weren’t fighting for equality and freedom for the enslaved people of the colonies either. They did not consider the Africans that they had brought over to be people, so they were never intended to be included in the phrase, “We, the people”. Our Founding Fathers all either owned slaves or participated in the commerce of enslaved people.
Our Founding Fathers were extremely smart and extremely focused. They knew exactly what they wanted and that’s what they fought for. They managed to convince everybody else that it would be good for them too, but it never was. It was never intended to be. All they wanted to do was to create a free capitalistic market whereby they could all prosper and that is exactly what they did. They wrote brilliant documents that tried to account for any eventuality for future generations. More than two centuries later, those documents are still what we use to define who we are.
Far less than 50% of the people in the colonies derived any true benefit from splitting from England. Life for women and for enslaved people was much the same under either regime but we seem to have forgotten that.
Since we began, everybody who wasn’t a straight, white, wealthy, male, land-owning citizen has had to fight to be given a seat at the table. Even when those seats were won, sometimes after bloody and lengthy battles, they were often placed at separate tables or at tables that were inferior or unwanted by the straight, white, wealthy, male, land-owning citizens.
Actors’ Equity Association was founded over a hundred years ago to stand up for the rights of theatre workers and to protect them. It currently represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers.
Before AEA came into being, we, in the industry, were at the mercy of our employers. Actors could be fired and replaced at whim. If a show was on tour and closed, it became the company members’ problem to get themselves back home. Unscrupulous presenters could take advantage of actors and stage managers in every way imaginable and they did.
Now, before an AEA show goes into rehearsal, the Producers are required to post a bond. They have to set aside enough money in an account that they cannot touch to deal with a show suddenly closing.
Because of that, if you happen to be out on the road touring with a show and there happens to be, say, a global pandemic and everything shuts down, there is money to not only get you home but also to pay whatever salary you are still owed. Without that bond, you would probably be out the last week or two of salary, maybe more, and you would have to figure out how to get back, yourself, without any money to your name.
Without the union, there would be no such thing as a pension. Or disability protection. If you got injured, or simply grew old, that was it. No money would come in. Unless you were famous and successful, you probably wouldn’t have anything saved up. You’d have been paid rock bottom wages throughout your working life. If you didn’t have a family to take care of you, you could easily end up in the street.
The union, today, ensures that you get paid every week at a certain time. It ensures that you only work a certain number of hours every week and that if there are times when you go over that you get paid more. Our union fought for and established minimums that employers had to pay us. We threatened to walk out if they didn’t. There are many rules about what a Producer is allowed and not allowed to do in regard to your employment. All of them were fiercely negotiated.
Is Actors’ Equity Association perfect? Heavens no. There are plenty of extremely valid criticisms that can be levied against some of what it does. One thing to remember about the union, though, is that it isn’t a “them”. It’s an “us”. We actors and stage managers are the union. We elect people from our own ranks to represent us and fight for the rules. Often, we end up working backstage alongside the very people we’ve elected to represent our interests. Any of us can run for a seat on council. Any of us.
The American Revolution created a free and prosperous national marketplace and one of the businesses that participates in it is show business. Broadway is designed to make money. That art gets created sometimes is, from the business point of view, immaterial. If that art makes a profit, great, if it doesn’t then we will try something less arty.
From a business point of view, all of the rules that the union insists upon are a nuisance. They cost money. Nothing would make producers happier than to have the union go away. It is beyond foolish to think that there would ever be such a thing as a ‘benevolent producer’. Generosity is not a component of Capitalism. I’m not for a minute saying that all commercial producers are greedy and duplicitous, but they are in the business that they are in to make money. The very model of producing a show requires that they spend the least amount possible on the elements of a show and derive the greatest profit from it for them and, more importantly, for their investors. The union, in this environment, ensures that that least amount at least includes all of the basic things that every one of us in the union need to survive. It seems clear that more things need to be added to that list.
None of us now living has ever lived and worked in a commercial Broadway theatre without a union. I, for one, do not relish the idea. Before erasing it from existence, perhaps fighting to make some changes within it would be a better place to start.
The United States of America is not a strictly capitalistic country. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and a million other programs are actually socialist by definition. The word, socialism, may have been demonized, but none of us who benefit from any of those countless programs would dream of giving them up - Republican citizens and Democratic citizens alike. Republican lawmakers, however, for the most part, would like to end most of the socialist programs in this country and return us to our capitalistic roots. Why? Because Republican lawmakers are overwhelmingly straight, white, wealthy, male, land-owning citizens. This country was created by them for themselves and they want it back. And they want as many of the profits back as they can get. Those programs cost.
The frustration that everyone is feeling these days is very real. The anger is real. The sense of betrayal is real. The fear is real. The solution is unlikely to be found on social media.
What those changes should be, I honestly don’t fully know. The union was created with someone like me as the template for whom it should serve. I already have a good seat at the table. What a good seat looks like to somebody else without my historical advantages is another story. It’s not for me to say. They may not want what I want. I can listen and then try and help them build and place their seat the way and where they want it, if they want my help, but I don’t need to be consulted on the design. If I am to help, however, I am going to need to have an idea of what it is that is truly needed. Not a general idea, but something concrete. Hopefully it will not be something that destroys the table as a whole but something specific that adds to it and makes it stronger and better and allows more people to sit down at it. Only then will the sense of where the “head” of the table is move away from where it is now towards a better more central position.
As I said, I don’t have any answers as to what specifically should change. I do, however, recognize that some of how we operate should change - that it must change. It would be foolish to think, though, that Broadway is not going to continue to operate under capitalistic terms because, really, that is all that it is, a business. It was born of that template. It will always be the survival of the fittest out on the street. Some shows and performers and stage managers will fail, and some will succeed. Some will even succeed monumentally. A better version of what we have now, though, would be one in which everyone started off with at least comparable advantages and had the particular unfair obstacles that our society has placed there removed.
In this moment, everybody appears to want something different and everyone wants whatever that is right now. We can’t even really start working in a theatre yet, so putting any new ideas into actual practice seems to be, for the time being anyway, a bit moot.
Burning everything down will not accomplish what people think it will. Somebody will just rebuild the table with even fewer chairs for people to be seated at it. Instead, maybe we should keep expanding it and keep on adding in more chairs. We’ve started, let’s keep going. Those at the head do not want extra dinner guests, so we need to join together and convince them. Take that word as you will. They won’t like it, but it doesn’t matter. There are more of us than there are of them.
I will try to get on the bandwagon in terms of fighting for whatever improvements are decided to be made, to how we work. I may not understand some of them, or even agree with them, but when the calls for change begin to come more into focus, I’ll be right there and do everything that I can to help implement them.
But I can’t promise that I won’t have some questions.
Very thoughtful and yep challenging for a 70 yr old white woman board chair elect for a mid size historically white-centric theatre in the middle of a search for a new AD (me). I am having so many dimensions of the this conversation in our smaller world of live performance in Chicago. I have taken an FB break so I can be still, breathe and focus on reflective responding rather than reacting. I am staying with Instagram. It has smaller visual sound bites and tends toward the happier moments in life. I need those. Thanks as always for your reflections and questions. How about a “round table”?
💞You are right here, every day implementing change in the light
thank you
inspiring incredibly inspiring