BRACING FOR A ‘LONG TAIL OF RECOVERY’
The Actors Fund is helping members suffering from financial insecurity
A week into the pandemic shutdowns, the Actors Fund cast its virtual “safety net” onto the web.
The national nonprofit provides for the welfare of entertainment professionals, including those who work in front and behind the scenes in film, television, theater, opera, dance, music and radio. It offers social services and financial assistance, mental health and career counseling, and health care services.
As western regional executive director Keith McNutt puts it: “We do not believe in starving artists here at the Actors Fund. You should be able to pursue your dreams and your craft and still have a decent economic life.”
The Actors Fund has looked after entertainment professionals one way or another for nearly 140 years, all with no strings attached. Famous showmen “Buffalo Bill” Cody and P.T. Barnum and Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth’s big brother, helped found the Actors Fund in 1882.
At the time, prejudice against members of the theater profession was widespread in society.
“It was so scandalous to be in the performing arts that churches wouldn’t bury people in consecrated ground,” McNutt says. “They were literally dumped in potter’s fields, six people deep, in anonymous graves. So we started to raise money to bury people with dignity, which, interestingly, we did a lot of again in the AIDS crisis.”
Today, as entertainment professionals feel the pandemic pinch, the nonprofit continues to meet their needs. Financial hardship, food and housing insecurity, and concerns about the future were among the top issues affecting the community, according to a new Actors Fund survey of more than 7,000 respondents from across the United States shows.
The majority of the respondents work in television (67%) and film (64%), followed by theater (49%), music (24%), digital (19%), performance art (15%), radio and audio (15%), dance (13%), cultural center and performance venues (11%), clubs (6%) and theme parks (4%). Their median income was slightly more than $34,000.
We asked McNutt about the