League's Open Letter to Actors & Stage Managers

so why are they not even giving an inch?
You have to negotiate and talk.

I'm not an actor. But I saw the letters (there's another, more general one for 'Employees'), and I thought the letter to actors were quite clever in the way it says, "Your Equity leadership is lying to you, and if things go wrong next summer, it'll be their fault."

Whatever their intention was, to this reader it came across a little creepy.

Updated On: 11/21/07 at 02:10 AM

I think that if Non-eq touring is again a sticking point, AEA is going to ask for solidarity from IATSE on that issue. IF all of the locals around the country decide to refuse to work non-eq shows, then the road would essentially be shut down(at least in major markets).

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I agree, this is a little creepy. The first thing that came to mind was the old line.

"Come Into My Parlor Said The Spider To The Fly"

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You know what's creepy? Claffey talking to the actor's saying "you know you're next". There's something to be said about instilling fear for your own purposes. If the Leagues' letter is true, and the deal they offered WAS refused, then Tom Short needs to get rid of Claffey.When the musicians struck and they accepted the deal which I believe cut about 30 percent of their work nobody blinked. What makes the stagehands think they are any better. It's economics people!

I've attended a lot of producers' meetings at the League over the past few years and the only contract I ever hear them complain about is the Stagehands'. I can't even remember a gripe about Equity or other contracts. My guess is that the League is expecting some percentage increase on the Equity contract as to be normal for doing business.

I thought the League's letter was very nice and not a "ploy." You should sit there and hear these producers talk about all the work and ingenuity they've done to bring a show to Broadway and how unbelievably hard it was. Trying so hard to market the shows to find their audience. We are not talking big corporate producers here but smaller folk who have often banded together to scrape together the money to mount a show. These folk admire and adore actors and if they didn't, and didn't have a deep love of the performing arts they wouldn't risk so much of their lives and time to produce. They don't own the theatres and they aren't landlords. I admire their grit, intelligence and dedication. You should have heard how Little Women scraped so hard to get their $500,000 of initial capitalization to begin their Broadway mounting after an out-of-town tryout at a University in like North Carolina to save costs (and where they had a lot of the costumes built).

And what is really strange to hear on here is, these people who are so dedicated to bringing show to life that can provide jobs are by some being looked at as "the enemy" when in truth they are more like a hard-working parent.

If representatives from the big corporations attend those meetings you wouldn't know it--they might send an intern or more likely, an intern who hopes to eventually become a producer will attend on their own. It's individual producers and often there are artistic and management staff from the Off Broadway theatres who hope and expect they will have a show succeed Off Broadway and move up to Broadway.