San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Lily Janiak: New policy shows how we fail Bay Area actors.
In July, the union Actors’ Equity Association surprised the theater industry, including many of its own members, with a new “Open Access” policy. Effective immediately, it said, any actor or stage manager who has been paid for any gig could join — no matter the theater company, no matter how meager the wage or honorarium.
Previously, one way members could join was by working a certain number of weeks (for many years, 50 weeks; then, starting in 2017, 25) as an Equity Membership Candidate. That process could take a very long time — actor Ed Gonzalez Moreno, who recently moved to New York from the Bay Area, said it took him a year; Oakland actor Brennan Pickman-Thoon said it took him two years.
In an email to members, the union framed the change as a racial justice issue. The old system gave too much power to employers who pick which shows to mount and which actors to cast, according to the email. The new policy came from the union’s Diversity and Inclusion Retrofit, an antiracist initiative created following the murder of George Floyd.
“Equity theaters, and indeed all entertainment industry employers, are disproportionately led by and populated with white people,” the email read. “Our membership rule has created a disproportionately high barrier to access for actors and stage managers of color.”
But the new membership policy also follows more than a year’s worth of dire-sounding emails sent to members about paying their dues. “We understand that many of you have a long list of competing financial obligations and very little income,” said one email from April 3, 2020, which was shared with The Chronicle. “If you can pay your dues, or even a portion of your dues, it is especially urgent that you do so.” Widening the membership pool could be a new income stream for the union after a year of retrenchment, but spokesperson David Levy said AEA is not in financial crisis; in fact, it’s already rehiring staff it laid off or furloughed during the pandemic.
“The majority of our income comes from working dues, not initiation fees,” Levy added.
To theater audiences, a union’s membership policy might seem like an insidebaseball issue: “How does this rule change what I see onstage?”
But Bay Area actors’ reactions to Open Access show just how much our society leaves theater workers in the financial lurch.
Open Access came after a year of what many described as the union’s slow or insufficient adaptation to the pandemic. Gonzalez Moreno — who has performed with Aurora Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, New Conservatory Theatre Center and others — recalls trying to get an online acting gig in March with PCPA, which performs in Solvang and Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County). He had almost booked the job, until the theater found out he was a union actor. PCPA had already exhausted all the union contracts it could afford, according to Artistic Director Mark Booher. If Gonzalez Moreno took the nonunion rate, he would risk losing his membership.
One of the union’s chief objectives, of course, is to ensure a minimum standard of pay for its members. It won’t accept just any amount offered on an ad hoc basis. That, along with its benefits and its safety protections, is one of the main reasons actors and stage managers join.
But Gonzalez-Moreno said he didn’t feel protected. He felt as if he were getting nothing instead of the non-union $250 to $300 honorarium because the union wasn’t being flexible enough during the pandemic.
“I was like, ‘Here’s the only opportunity I have right now — a staged reading via Zoom — and I can’t do it because you’re stepping in,’ ” he said.
In the Bay Area, there are fewer union gigs than there are union actors. That means that even with Open Access’ lowered barriers, it might not make sense for many to join — especially with a $1,700 initiation fee, said Oakland actor Devon deGroot. “That would be a pretty steep price to pay just to not be able to work in the Bay anyway,” she said. (As part of Open Access, AEA is giving new members more time to pay that fee.)
New AEA member Ashley J. Hicks, a recent graduate of American Conservatory Theater’s Master of Fine Arts program, asks a similar question about Open Access: “What does this change do to make it possible for artists to make a living, and not just paying dues (in order) to not work?”
Still, non-union acting is hardly a path to financial security. Theater, after all, is one of the industries that will likely make radical changes under AB5, the so-called gig work law that makes it harder to classify workers as inde
pendent contractors. The mere idea of paying all workers minimum wage was enough to destabilize much of the state’s theater industry. (The latest state budget sets aside $50 million to help small arts nonprofits comply with AB5, but it’s not yet clear whether that allocation is enough for all the underfunded arts nonprofits in the state.)
It’s possible that Open Access is a step in the right direction. A sister union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, allows prospective members to join with proof of paid work on one eligible gig.
“Is it a good idea? Yes,” said Berkeley union actor Rinabeth Apostol, who was a regional delegate to AEA’s first-ever convention in April. “Do I think there’s a long list of fine print that goes with this that isn’t necessarily being advertised? Yes.”
She likes the idea of giving prospective members more control over their careers. But she also notes that theaters are still gatekeepers; they’re still selecting and casting the shows. She also questions the timing of the policy.
“I think it’s very interesting that after a year of pandemic, where theaters are just starting to slowly open back up and jobs are starting to become available, that the union would make a decision like Open Access, calling everyone who’s willing to give money and percentages,” she said. AEA can’t fix theater’s financial and racial problems by itself. That’s not the expectation, and part of the ill feeling surrounding the policy’s announcement might be AEA’s insufficient acknowledgment of that broader context.
Bay Area theatergoers want to regularly enjoy the worldclass work of actors such as James Carpenter and Lance Gardner. But apparently, we don’t appreciate them quite enough to fund a system where Carpenter doesn’t have to work as a barista between gigs. Or where Gardner can afford to stay in the profession.
Actors are visionaries of this art form, just as much as playwrights and directors and artistic directors are. They’re
...
theater’s equivalent of tech’s highly trained engineers and inventors, but we expect them to figure out how to deal with the difference between what we’re willing to pay in ticket prices and taxes and what it costs them to live. We say that’s OK, because acting is fun and theater is mere ephemeral gewgaw — never mind that we don’t pay techies or doctors or lawyers any less if they find their work fun; never mind that art kept many of us tethered to sanity during this pandemic.
It’s disheartening that the best our society can come up with for them is a solution like Open Access, and not a way to make a living as an independent artist, not a permanent and robust social safety net. No, we just ask others to sign up for the same impossible game.
For The Chronicle’s playlist of this week’s picks, and to watch music videos of select songs, go to datebook.sfchron icle.com.