SAG-AFTRA Locked In Dispute With Actors’ Equity Over Taping Of Live Theater

At the heart of this dispute, detailed in Deadline (https://deadline.com/2020/10/sag-aftra-actors-equity-dispute-live-theater-taping-1234593269/#comments), is "longtime Equity employers signing with SAG-AFTRA, often for performances taking place in a theater so it can be captured for future use."

I am making an assumption here, and I hope it can come to fruition under fair labor conditions, but it sounds like it is possible Broadway productions are trying to film their current show?



edited to add the NYTimes has more details, seems to be only smaller regional theaters right now:

"Among the theaters named by Equity as normally producing with that union but now working with SAG-AFTRA are the Guthrie, a leading regional nonprofit in Minneapolis; North Coast Repertory Theater, in Solana Beach, Calif.; and TheaterWorks Hartford. But the practice appears to be increasingly pervasive as the pandemic drags on — just this week the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia said it would film a site-specific production of “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” with its performers represented by SAG-AFTRA, not Equity."

Updated On: 10/7/20 at 08:27 PM

Leave it to the miss management of Mary McCall of Actors Equity (who has a salary of 400,000 per year)

to screw actors over. She's been doing that since she's been elected head of equity.

I'm really sick and tired of the pompous gatekeeping of what theater is right now on this board. We are in a Pandemic. I don't know why you all care so much to enforce rules and regulations. Theatre is going to be presented in new ways in order for it to survive. Just because we aren't in a packed house doesn't make it any less "theater like". Things are going to change and be bizarre, but instead of breaking it down and not calling it theatre, let's lift it up and celebrate the hard work that is being done.

goldenboy said: "Leave it to the miss management of Mary McCall of Actors Equity (who has a salary of 400,000 per year)

to screw actors over. She's been doing that since she's been elected head of equity.

"

McColl is not in an elected position at Equity; as executive director, she is staff. And as has been discussed here before after you brought it up once, her salary is commensurate with the position and she has taken a pay cut.



If people actually read the articles here, you’d see that SAG-AFTRA’s agreements typically leave out stage managers. This is not AEA preventing something and SAG allowing it- this is AEA being cut out entirely.


As Hogan notes: this is not about the concept of streaming or archiving live productions. Theaters are essentially creating broadcast works in the pandemic- work that was never meant to be seen by a live audience, but rather meant solely to be streamed. For the purposes of SAG and AEA, who each have specific jurisdictions, the question of what is and is not theater is central. It’s not gatekeeping, it is literally determining what sort of contracts the people working these sign.

Updated On: 10/15/20 at 07:43 PM