Exeunt Magazine: The concept of community theatre is evolving. A new wave of productions are casting local people in commercial shows, alongside a principal cast of professional actors. In the past few years, top London theatres including Almeida Theatre, Bush Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Young Vic Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East and National Theatre have all made use of this casting method. But it isn’t exclusively a London thing; the Actors’ Touring Company production of The Suppliant Women cast a new group of women in each city of its UK tour. More recently, Royal and Derngate’s Our Lady of Kibeho and Eclipse’s Princess & The Hustler join the list of productions that feature a community cast.
4 comments:
As I was reading this article I saw many parallels between this issue, and the issue of unpaid internships. You are doing some sort of substantial work for a company, but are not receiving monetary benefits. It was brought up how that people who sign on to perform these roles should often expect that, and that they should be doing it for the experience. However, spending a whole summer, or a whole semester doing work for someone and not getting paid, but still having to pay, is not financially stable or able for some people. I hear the directors and producers who rely on community chorus' voluntary participation, and understand that sometimes they rely on this because otherwise they wouldn't have money to do a show. Except, for the duration of time that these people are committing is too significant to just allow them to put it on their resume and not receive compensation.
To answer the articles question, yes this is completely and most definitely exploitative of community chorus members. Our industry has plenty of people, plenty of actors that are ready and eager to get onstage and act their heart out in a chorus role, but also they're ready to receive a paycheck. I've always found the idea of community theatre quite perplexing because, why put in that much effort when you really only receive joy and happiness out of it-- which kind of answers my question. Still, my concern still says, why would you be in a commercial grade production of something and not be paid a single penny. At that point, it isn't even a proper learning opportunity, it's free labor and free bodies onstage to get what you want. I think that if this practice ever makes it to the United States it would be met with great outrage from both people and unions alike because it wastes people time.
I haven't heard of this before. I know that back in my hometown, the Muny Kids/Teens program is similar in bringing the community into the shows, but this is always in addition to the regular cast which is all professional and paid actors. Entirely replacing roles for adult actors for free labor is completely wrong. We need to end this implied trajectory of doing unpaid work in order to ever get paid work or advance your career. Even just using it to promote the show by providing people with the allure of working alongside industry professionals is super demeaning. Using it as an educational opportunity for children who legally can't be paid is understandable, but how they are able to fill these shows with enough adults who don't have full time jobs and are okay with doing that much free labor is a mystery to me. If this trend ever appeared in the United States I doubt that it would last very long
I’m not completely opposed to the idea of people volunteering to perform, if there is something someone is willing to do without getting paid for it then I don’t think that is a problem. I think the fact that some people do theater as a hobby and some people do theater as a profession creates a problem where people ask theater professionals to do things for free, but I don’t think that means people performing for free is a problem.
However, I definitely see the issue of theater as a hobby being cost prohibitive/ opportunity cost prohibitive for many people. It is a time consuming hobby, and if you need to work during that time, then you need to work. I think that applies to all hobbies though. Many people can’t afford the supplies to take up painting, the equipment for sports, membership fees, transportation to activities, or the time to do any of those things. Being able to do things just for fun in a luxury not everyone can afford.
I think it could be good if theaters having community members perform could offer some sort of stipend to at least offset costs, but the second they start paying enough to have the performers be getting a reasonable salary for it, professional actors will audition, which isn’t a problem, but means it no longer serves the goal of giving people an opportunity to act just for fun. To me the problem is really income inequality and the fact that many jobs don’t really pay a living wage, and I don’t think changing community choruses is really going to help with that.
Also, physical/verbal abuse and mistreatment in general are obviously not okay in any work situation (or non work situation for that matter) regardless of whether those working are paid or volunteers. That behavior is unacceptable in any context.
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