Stage | The Guardian: For many of us, there’s a time before you know the amount actors are being paid to perform off-Broadway, and then there’s the time after. The first, more innocent life is full of breezy trips to wonderful shows, the occasional standing ovation, a flush of pleasure when an old favorite wins an award. How happy everyone is at the curtain call! How delighted we all are to have come together for art, for entertainment, for something beautiful!
Your life after is a bit less breezy. I remember when someone first told me that actors in a show I had seen were taking home less than $500 a week. These were the bright lights of the theatre; I was at a prestigious venue; I had paid more than $100 to be there. What the hell?
1 comment:
It hits incredibly hard to hear that performers in New York are making under $600 a week, considering the cost of living. I can't imagine it being too much better for stage managers either, and the author even confirmed that a stage manager that worked 49 weeks out of the year never felt totally comfortable financially. It's heartbreaking to both hear that a lot of theatres don't feel as though they can afford the cost of a wage increase while performers don't feel as though they can financially continue their acting careers while having such small equity minimums for their performances. Not to mention the mention of how money is seemingly given more freely to show budgets for experimentation rather than setting aside some of that money in the first place for fair wages for performers. With LORT theatres, Equity has negotiated special rates and rules for individual theatre companies that happen to be special cases, and I definitely think a similar model should be upheld with theatres in the "Big Six" in New York.
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