Broadway and its Up-and-Comers Reexamine Overwork
The theatre industry has traditionally been reliant on overworking its employees for its success. In the world of COVID, professionals and student artists alike have begun scrutinizing that reality.
“I need to escape.”
Caroline McPherson had just gotten out of a three-hour-long rehearsal for New York University Tisch School of the Arts’ production of Head Over Heels, the Go-Go’s musical. Prior to that, she had gone through a full nine-to-six day at school. It was 10:30 p.m. when she called her sister. “I need to get out of the city. At least for this weekend. I’m burned out.”
Burnout is no new phenomenon to those in New York’s theatre industry. “It’s not rare to have actors wake up at 5 a.m. to line up outside Ripley Grier” — an industry studio space — “for an audition, then have full days afterward,” says Justin Albinder, an actor who is currently on tour with a Broadway show.
However, since the COVID pandemic, a record number of artists have left the industry because of those long, grueling days. Though the reasons for departure range from pay to instability, many workers cite overwork and burnout as the driving force behind quitting.
Despite that, top-tier university theater programs are flinging students back into pre-pandemic standards of long conservatory days coupled with long rehearsals as they return to in-person operation. But after a year of pandemic-ridden Zoom chaos, students like McPherson are burning out faster compared to students of years past.
Francine Torres, who’s currently an acting teacher at NYU Tisch, has taught theatre at all education levels. She’s been able to observe different generations of actors’ relationships with work. Most recently, she bore witness to the pandemic’s heavy toll on students’ work stamina.
“The pandemic revolutionized how we view work as a society, and how theatre works as a field,” she emphasizes. “Now, students are a lot more vulnerable and feel a lot more vulnerable. I see a lot of students having to take breaks during class, not knowing why they’re crying but being overwhelmed.”
She attributes this to a collective awakening the world underwent over the pandemic. “I think that post-COVID, people realize that life is precious and life is short. Not every day is promised. It’s a beautiful thought, but it also means we have a collective trauma.”
Torres graduated from the University of San Diego with an M.F.A. in Acting in 1995. Reflecting on her own experience in theater school, Torres said existential concerns like the ones current students are facing were uncommon. “It wasn’t even a thought. You felt like you had all the time in the world, you didn’t have any worry about getting sick, or financial stress. You
could do whatever you wanted, right?”
Though Torres’ student years ended before the turn of the century, her carefree experience wasn’t dissimilar to that of those in school right before the pandemic.
Albinder, who graduated from Ithaca College with a B.F.A. in Acting in 2018, said his time in school was busy, but not existentially burdensome. “We weren’t being pushovers, we were doing the things that needed to be done and that we wanted to do,” he stressed.
Additionally, when Albinder needed a break, he would take one. “I slacked, yeah. I slacked because there was so much to do and other people were doing it too. It made it seem okay, like we were in it together,” he added.
Albinder’s reality starkly contrasts with the isolation of current students living in an age of disconnect. COVID has left students without physical contact, and beyond that, without a crucial tool of connection: faces.
“The inability to read facial expressions in class is such an unspoken pain-in-the-butt,” Torres explains. “We as actors need to connect with each other in order to do our work. Losing access to half of our faces to help establish those connections makes our job so much harder. The loneliness is crippling.”
McPherson, one of Torres’ students, says that masks prevent the pseudo-camaraderie Albinder described. Instead, they contribute to a negative culture of cyclical commiseration. “Misery loves company,” she admits. “We kind of just repeat, ‘I’m so tired, I’m so tired.’ The shared sentiments validate our emotions, which make us wallow in that emotion even more.”
She adds that policies instituted by her program exacerbate the already grim situation. “It’s hard to forgive ourselves,” laments McPherson. “We have a strict attendance policy that says if we miss more than two days of class, our letter grades get dropped. That makes it hard to make that choice to take time for ourselves.”
In such a long semester, the first to operate mostly in-person in over a year, only being allowed two absences may seem harsh. However, the policy’s rigidity mirrors the industry’s standards. “At the end of the day, you have to be a self-starter in this industry. No one cares if you can belt to the heavens if you can’t get yourself up for the 6 a.m. trek to Ripley Grier,” says Carlyn Barenholtz, a senior in Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s musical theatre program. “You won’t get the gig if you don’t show up,” she states.
Showing up no matter what is sacrosanct in the theater if you want a booming career. However, that mentality can also result in the deterioration of an actor’s health.
In September, an actor working on Broadway’s Jagged Little Pill prior to the pandemic revealed the consequences of refusing self-prioritization. “I was intimidated, coerced and forced by multiple higher ups to put off CRITICAL AND NECESSARY surgery,” tweeted Nora Schell, the actor in question. “I’m still dealing with the consequences of waiting to get this surgery,” they admitted.
In a post-COVID world, that won’t fly. Since reopening, several big-ticket shows like Aladdin and Wicked have already canceled multiple performances due to breakthrough COVID cases in their companies. When a mild cough could spell potential catastrophe, the industry needs to adapt.
“We can’t change what we do, but we can change how we do them,” suggests Ben Caplan, an NYU Tisch alum who writes and produces his own theatrical material. “A solution could be to hire more understudies. That way, we’re not forcing people to show up when it’s unsafe to do so.”
Understudies fulfill more than one part in a show. They have their regular “track,” which is the role they normally play, and the track they’re understudying, with completely different lines and choreography. “Problem is, there aren’t enough people who want to put in that work right now,” identifies Caplan. “Producers see that, and are able to say: ‘there are solutions you’re unwilling to take, might as well just stick to what we have.’”
To change the industry, actors must first hurdle their current obstacles to work. “The ones who get through this and keep with the rigor while taking care of themselves. My hope is that they’re the ones to change the industry,” says Torres of her current students. “At the end of the day, we really have to want what we do, really love it. Our future is to work on being kinder and gentler to ourselves and those we work with. That’ll take time, and it’ll take pushing past and not resigning to our current issues.”
