A Labor Day Salute to Working-Class Actors

Somehow the weeks in July and August always seem to fly by more quickly than those during the rest of the year. And so here we are again at the end of the summer and, as I do every Labor Day weekend, I’m taking time out to celebrate some of the people who work in the theater. 

Over the past 16 years, I’ve singled out playwrights, drama teachers, stage managers, composers, casting directors, labor union leaders and, of course, actors. But as the strikes by screen writers and actors move into their fourth month I couldn’t resist saluting actors again this year. 

Now I know that whenever someone says actors, most of us automatically think of the stars whose names appear on the marquee or in big print in the Playbill but most of the people who perform for us aren’t headliners. They’re working-class actors, who’ve trained just as hard and work just as hard but earn far less than the more celebrated names who get the limelight.  

The minimum salary for Broadway actors is currently about $2,500 a week. That sounds like a lot of money. At least it does until you consider that agents get part of that. So do the acting teachers, vocal coaches and physical therapists who help those performers stay in shape to deliver the kind of performances we audience members crave. And that’s all before you consider that the average rent for a studio apartment here in the city is now $3,200.

Off-Broadway actors earn even less, with minimums for those working for League of Resident Theaters (or LORT companies) ranging from $800 to $1,800 a week.  And since shows come and go, there’s no guarantee that actors on Broadway, off Broadway, in regional theaters or in touring companies will work the entire year. 

So I’m also cheering on the strikers. And it’s not just because so many playwrights and stage actors also find work on movies and TV shows. It’s because those of us who truly love theater want it to be as diverse as possible and if all kinds of people can’t make a living in theater (or in TV and movies) then we might find that we won't get the kind of theater so many of us truly want. 

A Labor Day Salute to Stage Managers

Monday is Labor Day, which means that it’s time for my annual tribute to some of the people whose labor makes the theater we all love work. I’ve been doing this for 15 years now and I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am that I’m just getting around to celebrating stage managers, who may be the hardest working people in the business.

Stage managers are the linchpins that connect the creative and technical sides of every production. They make sure that actors don’t forget their cues and that props are where they should be onstage. They run tech rehearsals so that the lighting and sound folks can work out their plans and replacement rehearsals so that newcomers to a production can figure out what they’re supposed to do. They provide a shoulder for everyone from the director to the dressers to cry on. And they gamely—and graciously—shoulder the blame when things go wrong, even when it isn’t their fault (click here to read some specific stories about what they do).

I got some further insight into what it takes to be a good stage manager by reading “Whenever You’re Ready: Nora Polley on Life as a Stratford Festival Stage Manager.” When Polley first started out in the early 1970s as an assistant stage manager at the Ontario-based festival, an old-timer told her “If anybody notices you are doing your job, it’s because you’ve just made a mistake…good stage management is invisible.” 

Over the next four decades, Polley would take that to heart, quietly dealing with everything from doling out breath mints to actors about to engage in an onstage kiss to administering first aid when an actor collapsed in the middle of a scene. And, like her brother and sister stage managers at theaters large and small, doing it all without the glory that comes from being onstage, content to settle for the occasional compliment of “Good show.”

Polley had retired by the time Covid created the unprecedented crisis of closed theaters all over the world. But Richard Hester, a Broadway stage manager who has worked on such shows as Titanic, Sweet Smell of Success and Jersey Boys, swung into action and, in typical stage manager style, kept up the morale of his colleagues in the community with a series of blog posts about how he and they were making it through the pandemic. He’s collected those tales about that darkest time between March 2020 and April 2021 in his new book “Hold, Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic.”

Another thing to come out of the pandemic was the call for greater diversity and inclusion backstage as well as onstage. There have been stage managers of color in the past. My college schoolmate, the great Fémi Sarah Heggie, got her start with the Negro Ensemble Company and was one of the first African-American women to get an Equity card as a stage manager. 

Over the years, Fémi has worked on such Broadway shows as Ain’t Supposed to Die A Natural Death, Jelly’s Last Jam and Once on This Island.  And there have been others, including Lisa Dawn Cave, who has some 20 Broadway credits over the past two decades, including the original production of Caroline, or Change and Shuffle Along. 

But a study conducted by Actors' Equity Association (which represents stage managers as well as actors) revealed that between 2016 and 2019, fewer than 3% percent of the stage managers working on professional productions in the entire country were black (click here to read more about that). And when African Americans do get hired, they tend to get hired primarily for shows by black playwrights or those with largely black casts.

Lately, there have been some more hopeful signs of change.  Both the La Jolla Playhouse in California and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta have started programs that provide BIPOC fellows with salaries, benefits and the opportunity to work on major (and hopefully not just black) professional productions. 

There’s obviously still a long way to go.  But as we move along, I hope we’ll all take the time to recognize and appreciate the vital work that all stage managers do. In the meantime, I hope they’ll accept this belated salute and my most sincere wishes that they—and you, dear readers—have a Happy Labor Day.

B&Me's Annual Labor Day Salute This Year Goes to Theater's Frontline Workers: Ushers

What a difference a year makes.                  

Or doesn’t. 

During the spring and summer evenings of 2020 we New Yorkers stood at our windows or out on the sidewalks to applaud, bang on pots and make whatever other noise we could to cheer the essential workers who were caring for the sick, delivering food and otherwise keeping the city going through those early scariest days of the ongoing pandemic. And I devoted my annual Labor Day salute last year to all the performers who appeared in the online concerts, Zoom productions, panel discussions and podcasts that kept us theater lovers going through those days when theaters everywhere were shut down.  

This summer some live performances, particularly those outdoors, came back and nearly all the productions and theaters that were closed have set reopening dates. Hadestown and Waitress returned to their stages just last night and a new play Pass Over kicked off the new season last month. 

But I fear the cheering for all that may be premature. The delta variant of the virus has been pushing infection numbers up again, creating new uncertainties and anxieties. So I’ve decided that my Labor Day tribute this year should celebrate some other essential—and usually unsung—workers of the theater community: ushers.

It was the illness of a Broadway usher that first brought the virus home to the New York theater community and helped prompt the total shutdown on March 12, 2020 (click here to read about that).  And as all of us—casts, crews and audiences—return to the theater, it may be the ushers who will be most at risk again.  

For starters, they’ll have to interact with people coming to see the shows who, even though they now will have to prove they’ve been vaccinated or recently tested (click here to read the guidelines) they may still be carriers of what is turning out to be an insistent and highly infective form of the virus, increasing the chances that the ushers may contract it or unknowingly pass it on to others.

Moreover on top of directing people to their seats, answering their questions and reminding them to turn off their cell phones, the ushers now will have the added responsibility of checking vaccination credentials and making sure that audience members are keeping their masks on. That won’t be easy work.

British theaters, where masks are optional, have found—no surprise—that most people prefer watching a show without their masks. They’ve also found that mask-adamant theatergoers don’t want to sit next to laissez faire mask wearers. And as New York magazine theater critic Helen Shaw pointed out in a tweet last month, a coughing fit by one audience member can paralyze those around him or her with fear. Resolving those issues can transform ushers into referees and wardens. 

On top of all that, there have been lots of stories about how badly people have treated waiters once restaurants and bars reopened (click here to read about that).  The more expensive the place, the worse the behavior in many cases because those customers seem to feel that shoveling out all those dollars entitles them to a certain kind of service and they’ve somehow forgotten that the people providing it are laboring under restrictions imposed by a pandemic. 

Theater tickets cost a lot of money too so similar boorishness could pop up in our venues too. And there are lots of potential triggers. It may take longer to get into the theater or to be seated as ushers check credentials. Intermissions may be cut and bars closed so that people can’t mill around as much. Some seatmates may not be as rigorous about their masks as others. 

Without ushers—the unionized ones on Broadway (click here to listen to a 2016 story about them) and the volunteer ones at off-Broadway venues like Playwrights Horizons and the Irish Rep—the whole experience could disintegrate into chaos.

To be honest, I’m really nervous about the prospect of sitting in a theater alongside a lot of strangers whose health habits and history I don’t know.  But once I do get there, I’m going to try very hard to remember to thank the ushers for the essential work they’re doing and I hope you will too.  In the meantime, Happy Labor Day.

A Special Labor Day Salute to All of Broadway's Truly Essential Performers

Traditions are important even—maybe especially—in troubled times. And so although theaters remain dark and I’ve been posting here infrequently, I’ve decided to go ahead with my annual Labor Day salute to some of the people who make the theater we all love. In the past, I’ve celebrated actors, playwrights, drama teachers, casting directors and theatrical unions.  But the choice was a no-brainer this year because I’m in awe of all the performers who despite having had the thrill of opening nights and the security of long runs pulled out from under them by the coronavirus, continue to entertain us with online concerts, readings, Zoom productions, panel discussions, podcasts and other interviews (an extra grateful kowtow to Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley for their tireless work on “Stars in the House”; click here to see what they've been doing).

Even more impressively, most of these appearances and performances have been done pro bono to help out one charity or another, which means the performers were paid little or nothing. But just like the rest of us, they need to pay rent and mortgages, to put food on the table and clothes on their kids. So instead of stringing together a whole lot of words about how much I appreciate them, I’m going to show my gratitude by writing a bigger-than-I-can-afford check to The Actors Fund, which provides assistance to all of the essential theater workers who make shows, from headliners to stagehands, and has already given out some $15 million to over 13,000 of them so far this year.  And I’m also going to ask you to send the Fund as much as you can too, which you can do my clicking here.

In the meantime, my pals at BroadwayRadio have invited me to join them this coming Sunday in a discussion about our favorite shows about working stiffs of all kinds, which you can listen to by clicking here.

Update:  At the end of the “This Week on Broadway” episode on plays about working James Marino promised that he would link to the list I’d assembled (with the always invaluable help of my theatergoing buddy Bill, whose contributions I've highlighted in red) and so I’m posting it below. As you’ll see, the list is play-focused, although I’ve added a few musicals at the end:

 

CONTEMPORARY PLAYS

Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz

Cuban immigrants working in a Florida cigar-factory hire a “lector” to read to them and relieve the boredom while they work but his narration of “Anna Karenina” leads to turmoil and tragedy in this 2003 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

Assistance by Leslye Headland

Headland, who once worked for Harvey Weinstein, chronicles the emotionally abusive relationship between a tyrannical boss and the underlings who struggle to cater to his every whim.

 

Clarkston by Samuel D. Hunter

The warehouse of a big-box store provides the backdrop for the stories of two young workers, one a rich kid trying to find purpose in life, the other a local guy trying to keep from being overwhelmed by an alcoholic mother and a dying town.

 

Continuity by Bess Wohl

An indie film crew works hard to get in a final shot of the day while dealing with a first-time director, a peevish screenwriter and a temperamental star.

 

The Desk Set by William Marchant

A 1950s comedy about a group of female research librarians who fear they may be replaced by newly-developed computers.

 

Endlings by Celine Song

Three aged haenyeo, female Korean deep-sea divers, engage in the traditional but grueling work of harvesting seafood without the aid of air tanks or any other scuba equipment, while a New York playwright struggles to tell their story in this meta-drama.

 

The Flick by Annie Baker

Three lost souls in a rundown movie theater try to figure out their lives as they clean up the soda cans, popcorn boxes, condoms and other filth customers leave behind in this 2014 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

Fulfillment Center by Abe Koogler

A thirtysomething middle-manager and a sixtysomething worker attempt to navigate the soul-crushing work of the shipping center of an online retailer.

 

Fully Committed by Becky Mode

A young actor tries to manage his day job as the reservations clerk and jack-of-all-trades-nobody-else-wants to-do at a hot restaurant in this one-person comedy.

 

Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus by Taylor Mac

Two servants are tasked with cleaning up after the bloody massacre at the end of the eponymous Shakespearean tragedy in Mac’s comic meditation on how to save a world that's collapsed into chaos.

 

Glengarry Glenn Ross by David Mamet

Real estate agents push way past the limits of propriety as they try to make their monthly quotas in this Pulitzer-Prize winning vivisection of the American Dream.

 

Gloria by Brandon Jacobs Jenkins

An ordinary day in an ordinary office turns into a cautionary tale when a too-often-overlooked worker takes revenge.

 

Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire

After a cashier at a dollar store is fired for being late, she tries to reconnect with old boyfriend who has done better in life.

 

Jitney by August Wilson

A gypsy cab office provides the setting for this drama about the romantic and filial relationships of a group of drivers working for a car service trying to stay afloat in a gentrifying neighborhood.

 

Kill Floor by Abe Koogler

A female ex-con experiences shunning by her son, sexual harassment and despair when the only job she can find is on the killing floor of a cattle slaughterhouse.

 

The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker

 A day in the life of the stressed kitchen crew of a café that plays out in real time.

 

The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini

The rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment firm.

 

The Lifespan of a Fact by Jim Fingle and John D’Agata

A fact-checker takes on his magazine’s star writer in this comedy based on the authors’ own experience.

 

Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan

Security guards and shady cops clash in this workplace dramady about criminal justice, racism and sexism.

Lucky Guy by Nora Ephron

A bio-play about the tabloid journalist Mike McAlary.

 

Paris by Eboni Booth

The desperate lives of non-unionized workers trying to make it through the holiday season at a big-box store for just $5 an hour in the mid-‘90s.

 

The Pitman Painters by Lee Hall 

The author of Billy Elliot recounts the story of the real-life coal miners who became minor celebrities before WWII after taking an art history class and becoming painters themselves—and, in the process, realizing the different opportunities given those in the upper and lower classes.

 

Rasheeda Speaking by Joel Drake Nelson

Tensions rise in a medical office when the doctor promotes a white worker over her Black colleague and the two women fall into a war of passive aggression.

 

The Receptionist by Adam Boch

The titular character is having a typically mundane day until someone from the home office shows up and the ominous doings of her firm are slowly revealed.

 

Seared by Theresa Rebeck

It’s art versus commerce when a talented but temperamental chef clashes with his business partner over the direction of their restaurant.

 

Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morriseau

Four workers in one of the last automotive stamping factories in Detroit face the possibility of layoffs in the midst of the 2008 recession.

 

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Based on interviews with real-life workers in one of the poorest counties in the U.S., this drama focuses on an interracial group of friends whose relationships are strained when their factory threatens layoffs. It marked Nottage’s Broadway debut and won her second Pulitzer Prize.

 

To the Bone by Lisa Ramirez

A drama about Latina immigrants, some undocumented, working in an upstate New York poultry factory and trying to figure out how much they should—and can—stand up to their bosses.

 

CLASSICS:

The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill; 1922

A ship worker’s sense of self is disastrously shattered when the daughter of an industrialist casually dismisses him as “a filthy beast” in this allegory about the dark side of capitalism.

The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice; 1923

A meek accountant murders his boss when he learns that he’s going to be replaced by an adding machine and ends up in purgatory in this Expressionistic drama that was adapted into a musical in 2007.

 

The Front Page by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht; 1928

A group of reporters go all out in pursuit of a story in this comic send-up of tabloid journalism and crooked politicians.

  

Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets; 1935

Cab drivers try to decide whether to strike for higher wages in this landmark drama inspired by a 1934 New York City taxi strike.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller; 1949

An aging traveling salesman with delusions of grandeur is brought low when he is let go by the firm where he’s worked for decades in this Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece.

 

A FEW MUSICALS:

Billy Elliot 

Caroline or Change

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

The Pajama Game 

Sunday in the Park With George

Waitress

Working

 

 

 

An Atypical Labor Day Salute to Producers

Where did the summer go? I usually spend part of it thinking about which group of people in the theater community I want to salute on Labor Day for working so hard to give all of us the shows we so love. But I lost track of time this year and I thought I was going to have to break with that annual tradition until I saw the piece The New York Times recently ran about the growing number of women who are serving as lead producers for some of the most exciting shows on Broadway (click here to read that story) and I decided that I would  salute them.

Now I know that producers are considered “management” when it comes to negotiating contracts in the theater and that Labor Day is supposed to celebrate rank-and-file workers, the kind who might join one of the labor unions I celebrated last year (click here to read that tribute). And, as lots of people have pointed out, the current sorority of female lead producers is sadly all white. But I’m going to pay them tribute anyway because, at least for now, these women seem to be doing things that are helping to redefine what it means to work in the theater.

They’re hiring more female writers and directors than their male counterparts usually do. They’re putting their money and muscle behind fresh voices, as Mara Isaacs and Dale Franzen have done with Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for the Tony-winning Hadestown. They’re supporting new formats, as Diana DiMenna did with the crowd-pleasing What the Constitution Means to Me. They’re advocating for the LGBT experience as Dori Berinstein did with The Prom. They’re reaching out to younger audiences as Jennifer Ashley Tepper did with Be More Chill.

And without loudly patting themselves on the back for it, these women producers are casting black and brown people in major roles that usually have been reserved for white actors. One example is Eva Price's support for the casting of Rebecca Naomi Jones as the classic ingenue Laurey in Oklahoma! Similarly, Carmen Pavlovic put two women of color in iconic roles with the casting of Karen Olivo as Satine in Moulin Rouge!, the role played by Nicole Kidman in the movie; and Christiani Pitts as Ann Darrow in King Kong, the object of the ape’s affection played by Fay Wray and Jessica Lange in the film versions.

So although they aren’t laborers in the traditional sense, these women and others—including Sonia Friedman, Jill Furman, Stacey Mindich and Daryl Roth—are doing the kind of hard work that portends well for future of Broadway and that I think deserves to be celebrated this Labor Day as we head into the new fall theater season.

A Labor Day Salute to Theatrical Unions

Maybe it's because I'm getting older but time seems to be passing more quickly than ever and the entire summer just flew by. One minute, I was watching my DVD version of 1776, which I try to do every Fourth of July, and now we're at Labor Day weekend. I usually observe the latter by using my blog post to celebrate some of the people who work hard to make the theater that folks like you and me love but I'm going to do something a little different this year. I want to salute the labor unions that represent the people who work in theater.

This isn't a good time for labor unions in general. Membership is down and just as the summer was starting, the Supreme Court ruled, 4-5, that government workers who choose not to join unions won't be required to pay fees that support collective bargaining efforts even though they benefit from those efforts. The decision doesn't have a direct effect on theater unions but it contributes to the overall belief that labor unions don't serve an important function. But they really do.

All the theater unions—the American Federation of Musicians, Local 802 (of which my husband K remains a proud member); the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, Local 18032; the Dramatists Guild, which represents playwrights; the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees; the International Makeup Artists-Hair Stylists Union Local 798; the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers; the Theatrical Protective Union Stage Hands, Local 1; the Theatrical Wardrobe Union, Local 764; and the Treasurers & Ticket Sellers Union, Local 751—make sure that their members work under safe conditions and for decent pay.

But I'm going to give an extra cheer to the Actors' Equity Association, which started in 1913 with 112 actors and now represents more than 50,000. Its creation was a game changer back at the turn of the last century, when actors were held in low esteem and treated worse. They often had to buy their own costumes and pay their own travel expenses. And even then, it wasn't unusual for some shady producers to run off and leave the actors stranded without pay at the end of a tour.

From 1913 to 1929, the union fought for the right to represent its members in contract negotiations with producers. During that time, some of the biggest names on the stage, like Tallulah Bankhead and the Barrymore siblings, leant their names to the cause, even joining  strikes and walking picket lines.

Once its authority was established, Equity took up other progressive causes, advocating against racial segregation as early as the 1940s, refusing to participate in the McCarthy blacklists of the '50s, lobbying for government support of the arts in the 1960s and responding to the AIDS crisis in the 1970s and right up to today with its Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising campaigns. You can find out more about the organization's history in "Performance of the Century" by Robert Simonson (which you can find by clicking here).

Equity is currently lead by Kate Shindle, a former Miss America and the youngest president in the union's history. Under her leadership, the group has continued to champion the underdog. It's renamed the ceremony in which the chorus member with the most Broadway credits dons a robe on opening night and circles the stage for good luck. That garment is now known as the Legacy Robe instead of the Gypsy Robe, a term some found offensive. Equity is also lobbying for the Tonys to create an award for ensemble members in Broadway shows. 

I support the robe decision, have some issues with the idea of an ensemble Tony but am grateful that Equity and all the Broadway unions are standing up for their members and for the belief that it takes a village to make a show.