New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
BACKSTAGE
and Brasile are among a dedicated group of wardrobe union professionals who’ve volunteered their expertise and time.
“Karin Lopez from the Palace Waterbury, Donna, Lisa and Toni Thompson from the Webster Bank Arena, and numerous other members helped in the beginning by sewing hundreds of masks and sending them to the first responders and nurses, as well as to our members who didn’t have access to them,” said Friscia, whose fellow IATSE members include stagehands, carpenters, electricians, props, audio, wardrobe, makeup and hair personnel.
Friscia added that union members Brad Bates and Matt Maraffi, both employed at Global Scenic Services in Bridgeport, “worked for several weeks making face shields using the CNC machine at their shop as these were in low supply in the beginning as well.”
Like the majority of rank-and-file workers nationwide furloughed or laid off these past four months, IATSE members find themselves trying to navigate their way through uncharted waters, with scant land in sight. Anxiety that the industry shutdown could outlast their unemployment benefits and health insurance, to say nothing of their savings, calls for distraction. Volunteering their skills for the common good has proved to be a boost to heart and soul, they say. Still, many IATSE members find this sudden and absolute work stoppage unlike any previous challenge.
“It’s hard to put an exact number on the wages our members lost during this pandemic, as it is still ongoing,” Friscia said. “To date, we’ve missed hundreds of performances and thousands of hours on multiple concerts, sporting events, touring Broadway and theatrical shows, symphonies and local community shows, the entire season of graduations and commencements, outdoor summer work and corporate industrial shows.”
Maher said her wardrobe crew on a Broadway show can include 10-15 workers. Productions such as “42nd Street” called for a crew of 24. These numbers can double during “load-ins,” when crews deliver a production onto the stage, as well as when loading a show out. Combine these figures with the other five department heads — props, electrician, carpenter, head of sound and flyperson — and the number of jobs lost swells.
Ashley Bishop, production manager at Milford’s Show Motion, which along with Global Scenic is one of a handful of scene shops in Connecticut is responsible for building nearly half of Broadway’s shows, said that most of her IATSE crew members remain home “working on their houses.”
When in “full swing,” Bishop said, Show Motion steadily employs between 50-100 IATSE members in addition to roughly 17 salaried employees to build an average of 20 New York productions per year.
“Our busiest time is November through February,” said Bishop, noting the Tony Awards eligibility dictates Broadway’s production scheduling. “It’s not unusual for us to be working on five shows at a time. That’s a lot of overtime and nights.”
Another source of income for Show Motion is through renting equipment to the New York productions of touring shows, many of them long-running hits such as “Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” “Jersey Boys” and “Kinky Boots.”
“You need that money to help you recoup the cost of building the show,” said Bishop. “When a show goes out the door (leaves Show Motion) but then shuts down, you’re losing out.”
Bishop remains optimistic that Show Motion and similarly large businesses will survive the work stoppage, which most in the theater community hope will yield to a brisk re-opening possibly in early 2021.
Friscia is cautiously optimistic Connecticut’s venues will tough out the drought and bring employment back to their workers.
“Nobody seems to be giving any concrete guidelines to any of these venues about just how they can come back,” Friscia said. “It’s going to come to the point where some of our guys will have to look elsewhere and do something else until the work comes back.
“We just want to be ready,” he added, “because when the time comes, I do believe that there’s a lot of acts that want to get back on the road and venues will want to make up for lost revenue.
“I think we’ll be slammed when we do start,” he said. “It’s just a matter of when.”
Meanwhile, IATSE members like Maher and Brasile continue making masks while crossing their fingers.
“Parents will need them for their kids when they go back to school,” Brasile said. “Going to need lots of masks.”