Posted: 10/16/21 at 12:11am
With 10-out-of-12s, I can understand why people feel like: even though it's always been done this way, all it takes is one look at the practices with fresh eyes to see how unfair it is. But with the regular show schedule, I don't know, it feels like more of a grey area. I've only done 8 shows a week on a few occasions, for some very short runs. So I can't speak to the experience of doing this over the course of months.
So I'm actually wondering: IS this something that theatre workers find to be an undue strain? Because we can try to parse out the math all we want, with their breaks per hour, hours per week, weeks per year, and how that compares to their pay. It's worth scrutinizing that data, but at the end of day, the only way to really know how much of a burden it is, is to do it.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop from the Twitter-sphere, but are people actually raising widespread complaints with the performance schedule? Or is this just a spin-off conversation from a Theatremania article about the pros and cons of alternates? I looked at the NM10/12 website and I'm still unclear on whether their "6 day work week" refers only to tech rehearsals, or to regular runs in general.
In any case, the more we run through this, the more I'm reminded of how fragile and seemingly unsustainable the entire commercial theatre model is for the world we live in, on so many levels.
