Thursday, November 18, 2021
Theater Workers Call for an End to 10 Out of 12s
Backstage: Actor Rachel Spencer Hewitt was once in a show at a well-paying regional theater. Unfortunately, the money she was making wasn’t enough to support her family. “Between groceries for my two kids, childcare, [and] tech week, I had $9,” Hewitt recalls. This was after spending 12 hours a day in rehearsals, which meant she couldn’t tend to her children and that the cost of childcare ate up most of her take-home pay. “I just wept in the dressing room.”
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This was such a sad article to read. I have always thought that 10 out of 12 days are tiresome but I never factored in things like having a family or not having enough time to go rest. Having been in a 10 out 12 only twice in my life, I was just tired at the end of the day. But things such as commute, healthy living and rest times are things that are being overlooked and it is no surprise that is affecting people to this extent. I cannot imagine, as a graduating stage manager, how tired I would be for those 10 out 12 days, for in addition to working for those 10 hours, there is work that always needs to be done. In a 24 hour day, if all one is getting 8 hours of free time, how many things can they do properly. Sleep is limited, one needs to unwind, getting ready for work in the morning, commuting to and from work. I really think that if only the footprint of shows was to increased, giving them more days and eliminating the need to work for "10 hours" every day, it would just make the situation so much better.
To me at least, it's kind of ridiculous that theatre workers are STILL fighting for things like a 5 day work week and no 10 out of 12s. Almost every other industry does this as standard practice because they understand that the quality of work goes up when the quality of life of their employees goes up. Why aren't we taking a page out of the big tech companies employee treatment book? They are fully aware that people with more flexibility and rest time are more productive during the times they are working and are happier and more willing to do more and care more when it's really crunch time. Needing one or two super heavy long days in a week is one thing, and is natural in a process, but having every day be that way for weeks or months is unsustainable. We know this. We have known this for a long time. At what point will places like the film industry stop throwing money at this problem and acknowledge that their grueling practices have to change?
I am certain there is no shortage of people lamenting the lack of basic labor rights for entertainment workers, but it bears mentioning again and again. I mean, how hard can it be to treat someone right? Being called for fifty percent of the day sounds like absolute blasted hell and I am glad that so far I have not really had to do that. That is, of course, a bit of lie, if you factor in schoolwork on top of show conditions, where I could be in Purnell from about eight or nine in the morning until ten, eleven, maybe even twelve at night. I cannot even imagine having to pull a ten out of twelve or more with a family, with having to keep up a social life, with having to take care of myself by myself. It really is such a shame that the entertainment industry is so lacking in proper working conditions, both from my perspective as someone in it and as a person who cares about people.
At my old school I would often end up being in the theater and production areas from around 9 AM to 11 PM simply working in shops or in rehearsals. Back then, I didn't really mind, as I was incredibly committed to the shows, and it felt actually pretty nice to be able to dedicate myself to those things. As time went on though, the importance of rest and being able to do something outside of theatre became clear to me, and it kind of scares me now knowing that I'm working to enter an industry that practically eliminates any kind of outside life due to working conditions. I simply can't understand how you can expect artists to be creative under those conditions - Inevitably we're going to get burnt out. I and pretty much everyone else working creatively have experienced it.
Happy to see people pushing for the end of 10/12's and five day rehearsal weeks, but geez, it's upsetting that we even need to push for it in the first place.
Going into this year without 10/12s and Saturday rehearsals concerned me a bit. If we had this before, how could our show come together without it? But as my director and I planned out our rehearsal schedule and what we needed to accomplish by when, we made it work. We all appreciate our weekends and tech day cutoffs, and our show has not suffered from it. If we can do this at school, where we are still learning and growing and balancing feedback from advisors while putting together a production, I don't doubt professionals can do this as well. It's definitely true that while a 10 out of 12 may mean one thing for the cast, the crew and production team often works beyond those means. And often times the design and rehearsal process is longer than the actual run of the show. We can't just accept misery when making a production happen, we must make it fulfilling throughout.
I really hate the term “work-life balance.” It conjures an image of a scale with work on one side and all of your life on the other side. Your family, your friends, your mental health, physical health, errands, and social gatherings all have to fight for space on one side of a scale because of how much our work demands from us. I have never done a 10 out of 12 where those last two hours produced any meaningful work. Everyone is so tired by that point that they are making simple mistakes. Even if those hours were useful, the 10 out of 12 really only applies to the actors. Those meal breaks almost always end up as notes calls and the crew doesn’t get to leave until after production meetings and more notes. Hopefully this push for fairer hours that do not overwork people leads to meaningful and lasting changes. We, as an industry, should be prioritizing people’s well-being over any production or work of art.
This article does a really good job of laying out specific reasons that 10 out of 12’s are harmful to everyone, but especially people with family commitments. It’s also important to note (and the article did) that good theater is being produced without this long work day. I know I find personally that pushing past 16 hours makes me wildly less efficient and fun to be around and there’s a reason that unions a long time ago demanded 8 hour work weeks and five days to that week. It’s a good thing that theater is finally catching up with that. It’s also disappointing that actors with kids are having such a difficult time. It’s also interesting that here at CMU I know we spend 12 hours a day four days a week (at least for me). Getting in at 10:10am and going home at 10:30 constitutes a 12 hours day and then you’ve still got homework when you get home.
Genuinely, how freaking hard is it to treat people like human beings? How can anyone be so greedy and money hungry that they stop caring about others? It’s sickening. Even as a college student, back during freshman year it would be so exhausting to have run crew for show work go until 11:30pm, only to still need to do homework and be up again for class at 8:30am. I remember doing 10 out of 12s and it felt like an eternity. Especially as crew since we often had to arrive earlier, stay during parts of the breaks, and stay late for additional notes and changes. But that was only a couple days, not every workday for weeks on end. Even still I was burnt out and exhausted from it. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for people actually working in the industry trying to support children, families, etc.
Articles like this really emphasize how a sense of urgency in theatre allows inequitable practices to thrive and people to be actively harmed. 10 out of 12s are uncommon or non-existent in other industries but those industries don’t depend on creating hype and public attention. Because of the process of creating hype around media, productions will set a public deadline or release date that ensures people keep their excitement. That public release date just creates a rigid environment where things must get done in an allotted amount of time no matter how painful it is to get it done. This mixed with a lack of money and staff creates the environment that 10 out of 12s thrive in. Situations like these remind me how important it is for production companies to be transparent about their practices and more open to delays. Consumers are usually very receptive to production worker’s well being and will rally behind them when they come out about being exploited. It makes me wonder why production companies are so unwilling to publicly announce delays for the sake of worker’s well being.
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