He asked, "Now on a show like that - a really great role, like Brian Cranston's - would you do that for no money?"
Moment of thought. "No."
"What do you mean, you'd turn that down?"
"No. I mean, I'd probably do it for scale, for the first season - because that'd be a great opportunity, at this point in my career. But then it'd be time to renegotiate."
"Wait, so what you're saying, is, you're in this for the money?"
"Yes. Absolutely. Because this is my career. And somebody's making a pile of money off that show, and the actors deserve a cut."
He think a moment. "OK, you know, I can respect that. That's honest."
[For those of you not in the industry, "scale" is the minimum a production company is allowed to pay a union actor for the specific type of work they're doing.]
This past year, as I've worked very deliberate ways to turn acting from an exhausting, time-consuming, expensive hobby into an exhausting, time-consuming, expensive way to make a living, I've been more and more aware of the ways that people, even (sometimes, particularly) people within the performing community, look down on actors who expect to be fairly compensated for their work.
When I needed to miss one rehearsal (out of a six-month rehearsal process) to work on a film, our assistant director accused me of having "gone Hollywood."
When the cast of a show I was working on suggested that perhaps it would be better to hire an assistant stage manager to: set up the theater before each show, tear down the set after every show, and run the lights during the show; rather than making the cast responsible for those duties, we were chastised. We were scolded. We were told, "That's just how theater is." We were accused of being ungrateful.
I read a smug blog in which the author admitted, "I didn't cry when I said goodbye to my friend" (moving to LA), and praised herself for staying in Chicago, because "some are not in search of fame or sun or a change of pace."
(I'm going to try and trim most of the profanity from my response to all this. No guarantees, though.)
Nobody accuses a computer programmer of just being "in it for the money." Or someone running a restaurant. Or a florist. They all expect to be paid for their work - because they're doing something that people value, and over time they've acquired the skills to do it well, either through training or work experience. What makes acting different?
In every job, a person grows in ability over time, and becomes more valuable, and is generally paid more as a result. But even on their first day, when they're completely inept, they get their $7.25 an hour, because we, as a society, have said, "You can't pay people nothing." You know, unless they're performers. Somehow every acting job is thought to be so fulfilling, so educational, such an artistic expression that it's fine to abuse and impoverish actors. And actors have been trained to believe that as well.
Working for no money doesn't make your work pure and artistic. Frankly, it's more likely to make your work half-assed, since you'll be perpetually late (because you're coming from your day job), impossible to schedule for (because your day job boss won't let you have Saturdays off to rehearse), and constantly sick (since you likely don't have insurance and certainly can't afford the time or money to eat decently).
Theater companies complain that they can't pay actors, because the money just isn't coming in from ticket sales. Here's a thought: maybe, just maybe, if you can't sell tickets to your shows, paying your actors would help.
Paid actors are grateful actors.
I will go way the hell out of my way to promote a show that's treating me well, or one that's giving the cast a cut of the box office. Because I want that theater company to keep existing. If you treat me like shit and every night I show up hoping there's no audience and we cancel? If I've got no incentive to bring people in? I'll share the event on facebook.
Paid actors are good actors.
A theater that pays get way more actors to choose from at their auditions. More choice = better cast = better show = happier audience = puppies and unicorns for everyone. If you have to beg and plead people to come to your auditions, if you have to cast every guy who shows up and put mustaches on some women, if you have to recruit the parents of the kid who's in your show: no choice = painful rehearsals = embarrassingly bad show = uncomfortable audience = awkward silence when you ask your friends, "So, what did you think?"
Paid actors are responsible actors.
Acting is a job. If a job doesn't pay, who gives a shit if you show up on time? Or at all? Or if you've done the work that was assigned to you, met your deadlines? Because frankly, what are they going to do? Take away your opportunity to give up your Saturday afternoon performing a bad show for an audience of four? Oh, no, Br'er Fox, please don't throw me in the briar patch.
And here's the other possibility if a company is in the "but we don't have any money" situation.
Maybe, maybe, just possibly maybe, you should stop. Maybe Chicago doesn't need another theater company that was founded to produce the re-imagined adaptation of Three Sisters that could only have been produced by you and your six friends who all went to theater school together. Maybe nobody has a sufficient audience base because there are approximately 80,000 "storefront" theater companies in Chicago. Maybe if nobody's doing the kind of work you want to do, you should learn from the kind of work they want to do. Maybe if nobody wants to hire you to direct, it's because you're 22 and you think that improv games are necessary at the beginning of rehearsals, because that's how your teachers killed time in college.
Now, before you kill me: I think community theater is great. It's OK to do theater that's about training the people who work on the shows, about making theater accessible where it otherwise wouldn't be. I learned a lot performing for no money - I didn't get a degree in acting, so working for free was my GED as a performer.
I think we need a new name for that kind of theater. "Community theater" just makes me think of Waiting for Guffman, and I think it's nonsense to call yourself a professional theater company if you're not paying people a reasonable wage.
But please, just because you don't intend to make a career out of acting doesn't mean that those who do are in it for the money, seeking fame and sun, or throwing away their art. So stop sneering, stop asking stupid questions.
Because I swear, next person who does, I'm going to smash a breakaway chair over their head, beat them up in a carefully choreographed fight sequence, and throw you off a fake balcony onto an air bag. AND THAT CHEAP STAGE BLOOD WILL STAIN YOUR SKIN FOR LIKE THREE DAYS.
So there.
[PS: Stirring up controversy! Yay! But seriously, if you have a strong opinion, or even a mild opinion, share it. A lot of this was off the top of my head, and I might even be convinced to revise some stances.
Heh. Nah.]
people
who do show after show after show and five, ten years later realize
that no real work has been done - See more at:
http://www.chicagoelevated.com/2013/09/30/ones-stay/#sthash.aVkq2Ygy.dpuf
people
who do show after show after show and five, ten years later realize
that no real work has been done - See more at:
http://www.chicagoelevated.com/2013/09/30/ones-stay/#sthash.aVkq2Ygy.dpuf
