The Solution to Exploitation in the Theater: Join a Union
In recent weeks, a topic that has long simmered under the surface of the theater industry has once again come to the fore — the exploitation of non-union actors by theater companies. One prominent company in New York City that I’ve seen a lot written about is the Flea Theater, whose resident company of “BATS” did many years of unpaid work. The theater cried poverty, only to subsequently open a new multi-million dollar space, while the administrators and directors of the company were, themselves, making decent (if not extravagant) salaries and enjoying the power and perks of high-level jobs in New York theater.
The Flea is not the only theater to have exploited workers — these positions may be called internships, or fellowships, or residencies, or whatever the fuck, but it’s the same thing: unpaid work that sustains the theater (or school) in exchange for “experience” and a credit for a résumé.
In the wake of our country once again realizing that we live in an apartheid state built on a foundation of white supremacy and the exploitation of black and brown labor, stories have come to the surface of theaters’ particular exploitation of actors of color — including at The Flea and at theme parks and opera companies — where the artists’ skin color was used as another lever to marginalize, demean, and control workers. The public consciousness has also started to recognize that white, privileged actors are the only ones who are financially able to participate in unpaid work, thereby using their privilege to pad their résumés and, presumably, attain paid work in the future.
There are simple reasons why theater companies continue to exploit unpaid labor. Some of them are industry-specific, and I won’t get into them in depth — but suffice it to say that in no other legal industry would anything remotely approaching the level of exploitation that we see in the theater in the US even be possible. Factors include the desire of artists to work, an intense ethic of personal sacrifice, a fear of capricious and arbitrary casting decisions, and the fact that theaters and acting and dance schools often operate under the radar of most labor laws.
There is one truth, however, that applies across all industries. It was first articulated to me by my father, when I was working as an unpaid intern at a talent agency in New York City during a summer break from college. I was complaining that although I was working for free, and doing critical work for the office that was not being done by anyone else (contrary to New York labor laws governing internships), the people at the office treated me with utter contempt. He said, “Matthew, people will always treat you according to how you are being paid. If they pay you well, they will treat you well. If they pay you nothing, then they will regard you as without value, and will treat you as such.” It seems counter-intuitive — shouldn’t they have treated me better, since they weren’t paying me and I was doing all of this valuable work for them? But no. In every subsequent situation in my professional career, working for dozens of companies, I have found my father’s words to be completely true. The more I am paid, the better the company treats me. This includes micro-behaviors, like responding to emails quickly, perks, like a “welcome basket” upon arrival, and larger issues, like actually being paid the agreed-upon amount on the agreed-upon date.
So that’s why companies treat interns with such contempt. They’re not paying them, and so they don’t value them. Don’t take it personally. This is human nature in every industry. But what is the solution?
There is a simple one: All actors must join the actor’s union, Actor’s Equity Association. Notice I’m not saying “one” should join the union, or “you” should join the union. I’m saying ALL actors need to join, or it won’t work.
This is currently easier said than done. AEA is incredibly difficult to join. Complicated, antiquated, and esoteric rules govern membership. While I was an actor, one could join through a variety of paths — some of which were incredibly onerous, and some of which were not at all. One could accumulate 50 weeks (now it’s 25 weeks) of paid, non-union work as an Equity Membership Candidate (EMC) — an incredibly difficult thing to do, since most shows at Equity regional theaters in the United States only run for about four weeks. One could win the lottery and get cast in a Broadway show or tour, and join the union immediately, although I never met anyone of my generation who did this. One could earn their Equity card as a stage manager on a children’s theater tour. Or, one could buy into Equity after a period of membership in a sister union (SAG-AFTRA or AGMA or AGVA). This is how I joined Equity. I was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen at auditions and being paid substantially less than my colleagues when I did a regional theater job (less than half, for the same or more work). Joining AGMA had been automatic when I got a contract at the Metropolitan Opera as an Extra Dancer. AEA’s ostensible rationale for limiting membership to people who were actually skilled and employable obviously didn’t apply to me, as when I joined, I was performing in two shows simultaneously with New York City Opera, for audiences of 2500 people at Lincoln Center.
My wife was never allowed to join Equity, even though she worked much, much more than I did in Equity productions. She accumulated something like 47 weeks towards her card as an EMC, from being cast in more than six productions at a prominent regional theater in a major east coast city. She has a degree in vocal performance from a prestigious conservatory. She was infinitely more prepared, experienced, and seasoned as a performer than I was. But she wasn’t allowed to join. When we met, she was making $300 a week doing more work in the same show as me — but I was making $675.
Back to the unpaid interns. The simple solution is this: Equity should immediately open up membership to any actor who has ever worked in a theater with any Equity contracts. The idea that Equity is effectively screening membership for those who will be successful actors is ludicrous, as is the idea that the Union is protecting its current members from hordes of non-union actors, who would be their competition were they allowed to join. This is ridiculous, because it is already happening.
Currently, there is a large and increasingly experienced pool of actors who are non-Equity. They work in Broadway tours, regional theaters, and even in New York. Most Equity theaters have a mix of Equity and non-equity actors. My sister did the Broadway tour of Rent for a year. The entire company was non-union. The tour was directed by the director of the Broadway production. It had the same set and costumes as the Broadway production. The only difference was that the actors were underpaid. If every actor was invited to join Equity, after a few years there would be no way to effectively cast non-Equity tours or regional productions. Then Equity would have the leverage to negotiate for better salaries and protect its members from exploitation, racism, and abuse.
Current Equity members worked hard to obtain their memberships — there is tons of “how I got my card” mythology in the Equity world. In continuing to keep membership in Equity an exclusive and capricious honor, current members are letting their own struggles occlude the whole point of a union, which is to use collective bargaining, leveraged by universal membership, to protect workers from exploitation.
Briefly: I hear the screams. But what about the American Theater???? How would these theaters survive if they had to pay Equity wages to all of their actors??? How would they do large chorus shows???
They won’t. They will go out of business. They will dramatically reduce how many plays they produce and how many people are cast.
I’m sorry. But like any other business, if theaters can’t survive without exploiting people, then they shouldn’t be in business in the first place. Actors and other artists don’t have some kind of magical food wand that they can wave and produce the sustenance necessary for life. They don’t live rent free and they aren’t immune to illness. They need money, just like everyone else. If we want to move to a more equitable and diverse theater, then we need to include people whose parents don’t have the means to buy them an apartment in Greenwich Village or pay for their health insurance until they’re forty. We’re currently in a semi-disguised system of patronage masquerading as a market-based system. It’s not a market-based system. It’s patronage, but from your parents instead of the King of Austria. We have to move to the next level if we want diverse artists and real remuneration.
The audiences of this country have been watching exploited labor for a long time. If we take away their theater, it may never come back. But if it does come back, perhaps it will be because people demand it, and rather than pay higher ticket prices, they will insist that the United States does what every major industrialized country in Europe does — provide state funding for the arts. This is the elephant in the room — the problem behind every story of exploitation. THEATER DOES NOT MAKE MONEY FROM TICKETS. Our American business model does not create great art. It exploits artists, ruins their lives, and results in sad, boring productions that make audiences lose interest in live theater. The audience then seeks out entertainment elsewhere — at home at the computer — and we lose the communal nature of art. For three thousand years, societies have bonded over the shared experience of live theater. Actors and other artists should stop fighting with each other over crumbs, band together, and demand change at the federal level.
We have a sovereign currency in the United States, and we only “borrow” in our own dollars. That means we can literally never “run out” of money. Let me say that again, so that you understand that I’m being serious. The federal government cannot ever run out of money. In a time of deep unemployment and stagnant production, inflation is not a concern. We can rebuild our society through the arts — creating thousands of fulfilling, middle-class jobs, utilizing the dreams, creativity and education of thousands of our citizens (I haven’t noticed that the Universities have stopped giving out degrees in the arts, even though there are no living-wage jobs available), and building vibrant economic zones around cultural institutions, so that the entire society benefits. We could do all of this without any negative financial repercussions. No higher taxes, no taxes on the rich, nothing. If we were already producing at full capacity and near full employment, that would be a different story, but we’re not. We haven’t hit the target inflation rate for years.
Anyway, it’s not going to happen, because we have a backwards, frontier-based, gold-standard, PAY-FOR mentality. In America, theater is basically an old-west traveling show, a caravan full of dirty costumes and dreamers, that rolls into a mining camp to entertain the prospectors for two nights only with a pastiche of Shakespeare and melodrama at the Odd Fellows hall. The inhabitants of the town find the theater deserted on Monday morning, a handbill lying on the floor, and sniff, “I ain’t never seen anythin’ that purdy before,” before they go back to the saloon and the mine. The frontier individualism that is now killing thousands of people a week (masks!) is the same rejection of commonality that is at the heart of the Equity members who fight to keep membership exclusive: “I got mine.”
Maybe we have the theater model that we deserve, having never atoned for our national original sin.
But the solution to exploitation and racism is union membership. The union should change the rules for joining. It’s that simple.
