The Clyde Fitch Report: “How do people get away with that?” was the question hurled at me during a recent over-caffeinated rant about the storefront theatre in Chicago. My response, in the moment, was, “That’s just what theatre people do.”
It’s a sentiment I often hear echoed by my Chicago non-Equity theatre world – by actors, designers, and directors alike: “People who work in the arts … are going to be people who are passionately committed – given that they could earn so much more in another field.” Yes, we are the ones who don’t just accept, but embrace the sacrifice of high expectations and little pay to prove our passion for the cause.
5 comments:
This was an interesting article for me to read. I still do not fully understand the basis behind equity and non-equity, but the way this article framed it truly put it in perspective. As theatre artists, we know high pay is not guarenteed. But we pursue it anyway because we know we must. The thought of living the rest of my life just on the passion and not the money and respect I deserve really hits me. People become equity members to stop this martyrdom. I see no reason not to pursue my passion and be treated like any other working human being. <54-102> 54-102 <54102>
This is the bane of my existence. When I was beginning trying to design, I worked for free in order to get people to put their trust in a student costume designer. I fully believe that that kind of work has its place. I worked a long and productive summer, proved my worth, earned the trust of the director, and made some good work besides. I had no problem with that. The problem came the next summer when the director wanted the same thing all over again. I liked the group I was working with, but she was asking me to do well over 100 hours of work for nothing. As much as I love the work, that is unreasonable. I do not like when people assume that artists can consistently work for free. The time and the effort are joyous experiences, but it is still lots of time and effort. It deserves compensation.
I really appreciate how this article empowers artists to work for the wages they deserve, and I think it's important to remember that we can't just do this "for the love of theatre" and not get bulldozed.
The trouble is, at what point does one have the clout to demand payment as a professional? The "internship system" in American regional theaters requires that we spend at least a few summers (if not years) working essentially for free before people in the industry are willing to consider us for full-time jobs. Of course, this education is incredibly valuable in a young artists' training, but I have heard of other artists who have gotten stuck in internships where they either didn't learn much new information, didn't have networking opportunities, or had to do work as interns that should have been under a full-time employee's prevue. While most internships provide incredible experiences, sometimes artists get stuck in less-than-ideal positions for little pay just to be able to work in their field. It's not just the "love of theatre" that gets us stuck working for free; it's the "need experience to get work, need work to get experience" paradox we face as young artists.
In addition, this becomes tricky to navigate for young artists (and for not-so-young artists in the non-profit sector, especially looking at the 99-seat theatre debates in LA right now) who want to make work together but can't afford to pay each other for their work. I have heard that it is okay to work for free if no one else in the company is making money off the project, but how long is this sustainable? At some point we can't work for free all the time because we would be starving and homeless. How do we find the balance, especially when our network while we're just starting out likely consists of other artists just as broke as we are?
I’ve thought about my motivations for theater a lot over the years and you see a lot of the martyrdom ideals in college. I’m my class it is clear the folks who study to be praised and remembered. They don’t last very long, those that have made it this far are on a constant down ward spiral. After a while I think the other professionals drive the martyrs out, they give us a bad reputation, and that’s something that means everything in this world. But what about those who unknowingly fall in to it? Is there a way to avoid the martyr mentality? We strive to feel important but there doesn’t seem to be anyway to note the line between ego and appreciation. We deserved to be praised for our wok, but at some point I think everyone experiences a drop in their confidence, and this brings out the martyrs, that search for the confidence that is so quickly loss in our cutthroat world.
Though the School of Drama has its own culture of sacrifice, the CMU student population as a whole really champions this sense of martyrdom. Common lunchtime chats include students sitting, cradling their heads upon the table, sighing, "I only got 2 hours of sleep last night." Far from being concerning, this is often perceived as a testament to the gumption and dedication and unswerving passion-with-a-capital-P of the student body. I don't mean to say the hours spent staying up well past any conventional bedtime are empty - sometimes these hours are genuinely required. But they can be largely avoided.
I think many of my peers (and I) have lost or reduced our ability to assess and understand diminishing returns. We don't shy away from staying up two more hours to perfect a particular detail, but come morning, how much return did we actually get from that time spent? This is the peril of the arts - without a rubric or "right answer", we never truly have to be done with something.
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