a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Labor Day celebrates the working people of this country, and the past success of labor unions. So in reading the NY Times article in last Sunday’s edition on working actors, the first question that came to my mind was, “If you could make $50,000/year acting, but you had to do it in Buffalo, would you?” That would make you pretty much a high-earning “working stiff” in these parts. I’m pretty willing to bet, though, that the answer for many artists would be “no.” David Greenspan was clear that he loves NY and would not want to move (he has the advantage of living with a partner who has a steady job, hence more available income and security than from what his own personal earnings would offer him). The perception is that there is not much work in Buffalo to get anyway, but even if there were, who’d want to live in Buffalo NY?

There seems to be a Catch-22 at work in the minds of most artists relative to this question. In the first instance, most actors will tell you that they want to make a living from their art. Now, if you were to offer them the opportunity to do so, but that opportunity was in Buffalo, it seems to me that most everyone would spurn that opportunity, simply because they would not like the geographic location. So the issue is not simply “I want to make a living from my art.” Into that statement we have to insert “I want to make a living in New York City from my art.” This, of course, is an entirely different matter. Do actors want to make a living from their art? Yes. Do actors want to live in Buffalo? On the whole probably not. Put the two together and you have that Catch-22: I want to make a living from my art, but only in one geographic location; but in that one geographic location, it’s hard to make a living from my art. That, is seems to me, is a tough nut for theatre to crack.

Of course, the question still remains hypothetical, as it’s pretty difficult to make a living purely as an actor in Buffalo anyway. An Equity actor here can do no better (or no worse, if you look at it as a minimum) than $384/week unless they get a gig at Studio Arena, where they would make LORT B minimum of $769/week. Of course, since Studio Arena does not hire local actors – and in fact does their best to screw them – it’s not likely. And things are not looking so good here at the moment. The Irish Classical Theatre Company had to lay off some workers, and I suspect, but can’t prove, that I may not have been hired for some work this season simply because as an Equity actor I would have cost more. But let’s do the math:

Assume you can do six shows per year averaging 7 weeks of work per show. That’s 42 weeks of work. Assume two of those shows are LORT B, and the others are AEA minimum in Buffalo. Total gross annual salary: $18,830. Even in Buffalo, where the cost of living is one of the lowest in the nation, that’s not enough. To make even $35,000/year gross, you’d need to make something like $673/week for 52 weeks. $500/week for 50 weeks (allowing for a two-week vacation) would be $25,000/year, about the salary of average starting cleaner at SUNY Fredonia. Since I’m assuming all this is union work, health benefits should be factored in as part of compensation.

So there you go – $50,000 in NYC is probably the $35,000 in Buffalo, and so nowhere in this great land of ours might it be possible to be a “working actor” in the sense that one can make a consistent living doing your craft over an extended period of time, at least as far as theatre is concerned. Not unless three things happen.

The first is that AEA needs to be a union that fights for more than minimum salaries for contracts. It needs to be a union that looks to reform the industry. The settlement reached in the Buffalo situation demonstrates clearly that, at its heart, AEA is a co-conspirator with the industry. The fact that they are taking so long to reform the showcase code in NYC (congratulations, Garret) is another example of this. Actors, like all working stiffs in this country, need a reliable standard of living, but that doesn’t come from merely negotiating one-time contracts. It comes from reforming the practices of the business which employs its workers and mobilizing its workers to push for those reforms. We don’t have 8-hour days and no child labor in this country because businesses on their own reformed these practices; we have it because unions demanded reform of their industries or workers wouldn’t work. I think if AEA could mobilize a “week without theatre” in this country to make its points (whatever they might happen to be), it would be interesting to see the result of that. Does AEA want every theatre under its contracts to offer at least 5 year-long contracts to a core ensemble of actors? Stage carpenters get this; why not actors? It’s that kind of reform at the union level I am talking about.

The second is that we need to make other geographic areas more attractive to artists so that they will consider more strongly leaving New York. Frankly, I think there are many geographic areas which are already very attractive, so I wonder whether the question is that we need to make geographic areas more attractive, or whether we need to alter the current mindset among theatre artists that New York City is where the best happens, and where you get every other national job. Here’s a situation where I think, again, AEA would be helpful: stop the practice of casting regional shows out of New York. Force theatres to hold local auditions for every show and don’t allow them to come to New York to cast. I’ll bet you anything that if this were to happen there would be a mass exodus out of the city. In the late 1970s, Canada, as a nation, created a series of so-called “Canadian content laws” designed to stem the onslaught of American culture and open opportunities for Canadian workers and artists. This has largely worked, and the Toronto theatre scene is a good example of how well it’s worked.

At the very least, make LORT casting regional. If a theatre in the southeast region, for example, wanted to cast a show, they could only go to, say, Atlanta to hold auditions. That would make Atlanta attractive, help build its theatre community, and actors could get regional work which might not require so much moving around. I’d treat NYC as its own region: if you lived in NYC, you could only work in NYC. Make the NE regional city Boston or Phildelphia; any city but NYC.

Thirdly, artists need to broaden their understanding of what the phrase “make a living from my art” means. It must begin to have a wider meaning than exclusively acting or exclusively directing in a professional theatre. Doing children’s shows is making a living from your art. Being a teaching artist in the schools is making a living from your art. Getting involved in community projects is making a living from your art. Writing can be making a living from your art. Just about anything which might have theatre as its focus (drama therapy, business education, “role playing” training workshops) should be considered making a living from your art. Educational institutions with theatre programs have perhaps the greatest responsibility in this area. They need to stop training their students exclusively with the pre-professional model. It’s up to our colleges and universities to offer options and solutions to these issues. I’ll be writing more on this in the near future, so for now I’ll just leave it at that.

Like every other laborer in this country, artists have to eat, pay rent, pay bills, and, I think, have the opportunity to enjoy at some median level the material fruits of their efforts. Now, if miners and steel workers and automobile factory workers and workers in just about every other industry were able to band together to obtain better working conditions and reform their industry practices, why, I wonder, can’t artists? Why do they consistently accept – and even defend – the status quo? Perhaps that’s something to ponder on this Labor Day weekend, for “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” -twl