NYTimes.com: IN the 1950 movie musical “Summer Stock” Judy Garland plays a farm owner who lets a young acting company rehearse in her barn in exchange for doing chores. As enthusiastic as the troupe might have been to sleep country style, these days the farm might be in hot water with Actors’ Equity Association. The union has negotiated rules about what accommodations its members are entitled to when they work out of town.
6 comments:
Personally, I think that it is nice that theater and film productions are upgrading the housing and the overall treatment of their employees. There are standards, safety and comfort being some of them and that is important to remember. It is especially important to remember things like this if you ever want to work with these people again. When you are working with actors or designers, they are making an impression on you when, all the while, you are also making an impression on them. It is not an attractive feature to be known as the person that is difficult to work with or the person that won't take care of his/ her co-workers. On top of that, these houses are lovely and hopefully, lots of talent will live and work in them.
I feel as though many of the examples that were shown in the article had amenities that are beyond being safe and basic comfort. I love the fact that the theatres that can afford it are really trying to make the living quarters that they use more like home but if all theatres are being required or expected to upgrade to this level there will be many theatres that will not or could not comply. With the tough economic times causing many theatres to close their doors it seems like the wrong time to be requiring more amenities for actor housing.
I agree with Luke in that the examples given are definitely above-average accommodation. And if these are the new bench marks for standards, a lot of theatres won't be able to keep up.
I once worked at a theater where their contract with Equity stated that every actor housing would be equipped with a kitchen colander. No doubt this rule was created because an actor didn't have one when they needed it, and filed a complaint.
I agree with everyone else that these housing conditions are certainly not the norm in theaters across the country. While there are certain standards theaters must meet according to equity, not many theaters go above and beyond. A lot of theaters also provide very nice quality housing for their actors and designers while their interns and technicians are kept in housing that is barely livable. It always comes down to the amount of money a theater has available for housing, and how much money the theater is willing to spend on housing.
I am happy that the theaters listed in the article are providing such grand housing for their employees.
I think this article is a little misleading, as people above me have mentioned. However, if you look at where some of these theatre are located, it's not really surprising that they have such nice accommodations. Many of the theaters mentioned are rural, in not-very-populated areas, where renting a victorian house for 6 or 7 people actually isn't that expensive, and may be much cheaper than renting 6 or 7 crappy apartments in an apartment building. From what I've noticed, theatres try to give the best accommodations they can find and afford, since they want the actors and crew members to come back. If you house people in a tiny apartment furnished with just a bed, dresser, and a stove, they may not want to come back and work for your theatre company again.
That being said, housing is still a large expense, and I've noticed a lot of regional theatres are hiring more and more local talent and only bringing a limited number of out-of-towners to cut back on housing costs.
These living conditions are great for theater people. I have done summer stock work and the housing is never this nice for the technicians. I wish that they had to put there interns in as nice of places, that would make the summer great. I also would like to see a list of bad ones and how they compare. I wonder if the actors that work at these places are willing to make less money since there housing is so nice? Another thing I wonder is what the cost is to the organization per person to put them up. I am sure that these places are nicer than some of these people’s homes.
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