Thursday, February 03, 2011
N.Y. Labor Department to Change Child Performer Rules
Backstage: "The New York State Department of Labor will make 'significant changes' to a controversial set of proposed regulations governing child performers, according to a department spokesperson. Leo Rosales said today that the volume of feedback the department has received regarding the regulations prompted a decision to revise them. He declined to enumerate the specific changes.
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2 comments:
This article was rather useless in a lot of ways because it was so vague on the proposed changed, if they even mentioned what some of them were, and the broad negative response that they have received because of one of them. I did get a sense that there will be stricter time restraints on children during the rehearsals time which is an interesting issue, as there already are some pretty restricting time issues for child actors, especially in film and tv. On one hand, I can understand that theaters would have difficulty mounting shows with children, especially shows like Annie or Oliver Twist, if stricter rules were enforced. It would no doubt result in more days in rehearsal to make up the time which is ultimately money. However, this could be good for the children so that they have a chance at a more normal childhood or at least more time to be a kid. Brian Russman once said he remembered plenty of days on Billy Elliott where kids would just get upset of cry because they were tired from the long days and repetition of things for extended periods of time.
I agree with Nicole in that I would like to have learned more specific facts from this article: I am genuinely curious about what these new limitations would be, as they could make it harder for shows employing children to run on any sort of "standard" schedule. I remember reading an article a few months ago about the West End production of Oliver, which had three casts of 45 children rotating as Oliver, the Artful Dodger, and the other orphans. As I remember, that casting decision was made as a compromise between the artists, who desired a large-scale cast, and the organization regulating child performer laws in Great Britain. These sorts of concessions made can take enormous chunks of a show's budget (in this case they had to tech multiple scenes with each cast and push back the starting date of previews) and make things much more complicated. There has to be a compromise between allowing children to perform to ensure authenticity in storytelling, and making sure those children are well cared-for, and I hope that is something New York can find in changing its laws.
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