Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Now you can tell whether the ‘Broadway’ musicals at the National Theatre are Equity
The Washington Post: When you see the ads and buy tickets for those musicals you’ve heard about touring from Broadway, you never know if the show has a cast of Equity actors – members in the union. But you still may be paying full price.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think that this is a fascinating push by Equity, both in terms of what it is pushing to the public but also how it is doing it and the means they are advertising by. First, I completely agree with why Equity is trying to get audiences to participate in this campaign. I think that there is a definitely a conversation to be had about equal and rightful pay and benefits and Equity is starting the discussion in the right way. Not only is Equity cleverly raising the importance of this issue, they are also doing a little rightfully-earned self advertising. I’ve talked to people that work on tours and have been on tour in the past and more often than not it is not easy especially with the working conditions they are under, and I am glad that Equity is being proactive about this issue and I look forward to seeing where this campaign leads.
To begin, I thought that all National Tours were and had to be Equity casts, so I'm glad this article taught me otherwise. However, this does bring up a good point. Are audiences willing to pay full Broadway price for a National Tour that isn't Equity? It's a tough question. I believe that if you're paying to see this touring show, which is supposedly the exact same as the production in New York, you deserve to have actors of the same caliber. That doesn't mean that you have Audra McDonald and Anthony Rapp at every performance of every show, but you are paying to see someone with comparable skill sets. This is not to say that Non-Eq actors are bad or don't have talent, though. However, if you're advertising a touring show based on a Broadway production, it should be as close as you can get to the actual thing. And that means Equity actors.
Post a Comment