Saturday, March 23, 2013
Performers left unpaid after tour
News - The Stage: Actors employed on a touring musical are owed thousands of pounds and fear they will not receive full payment after it emerged the show’s producers have a history of not paying performers properly.
The cast members were part of A Viennese Strauss Gala, staged by Theatre Productions, which is run by Stephen Leatherland and Karie Musson. Both are known to Equity and are named on the union’s Special Attention list for issues concerning performers’ payments.
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6 comments:
Not paying workers, in this business especially should really be an end-all-be-all for a company. That is when a company does not pay their actors, production team, or crew they should be carefully watched and basically blacklisted. For example I worked on a show with the Joffery and they did pay us (the technical director and the crew) or the venue, owing thousands of dollars that two years later has not been paid off. Now, performances done by the Joffery Jazz has a very hard time finding venues in NYC unless the pay before even loading in (which does not happen).
Before coming to CMU I bounced around theatres and high school districts working freelance and had to handle my own paycheck by making sure things like this wouldnt happen. One incident left me unpaid and out of contact for a year and half until the group tried to come and use the space again. Thankfully the people incharge of booking liked me enough to the company that they werent allowed to come at all until i was paid in full for both jobs. Things like this are an unfortunate side of our industry that people are usually only familiar with the other side of employers asking around about whether or not a potential employee is good or not. rarely do we discuss asking if a company that has offered a job is reliable.
So by reading this blog I have begun to fear the sack of my income as well as hundreds of other horror stories that this blog has instilled into my mind. I know that chance of this is rarer than I think. However I still can't help think that there is so much that could go wrong an a lot of the problems is not something that I could predict. The problem is I don't know if I could design a show and survive without getting paid for a show.
Reading things like this reminds me that I need to be conscious of and on top of my earnings when I enter the job field. It sounds like this company needs to either dissolve itself until it gets its expenses in order or get on top of their stuff fast. For people of the entertainment industry especially, who work freelance and go job to job, it is vital that they are paid. I think the performer was right in saying that his contract demands that the company have the money, since the contract is with them. They should be responsible enough to to procure whatever funds needed to pay their performers.
This is a little scary. Its clever that blacklisted groups can just dissolve themselves and then reform under a different name. I wonder if they are trying to avoid paying their employees because they don't have the money or because they are trying to maximize profit by making as much as they can and then disappearing. Either way you would think there would be some legal way to obtain money through a court if the contract specifies payment within 14 days. Im surprised the show is still touring if they are worried they are not going to get paid they should go on some sort of temporary strike.
I have encountered several news about problems with payments since I started to comment on this blog. Another incidence like this makes me sad once again because it will be painful for the actors to fight with the producers over the payment when they show has already finished a month ago. I think the reliability of producer is very important when it comes to a production because people are working under him/her. This unfortunate happening will definitely upset the actors and will make them to hesitate to work with others since it will be hard to believe others. I also think it is important to check before one decides to work with someone else because looking at this article, it shows how the producers have a history of not paying performers properly. So, previous research about the producers should be done in order to avoid this kind of uneasy incidence.
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