Union: No theatres safe without guidelines for reopening
WITH its entire membership of 51,000 professional actors and stage managers out of work, the Actors’ Equity Association on Tuesday announced the health and safety guidelines it expects theaters to follow before it will authorize its members to return to the stage.
The list of “core principles” devised by David Michaels, a former federal public health official retained by Actors’ Equity, is a statement of four broad concerns the union wants theater producers and companies to address.
It covers issues such as widespread testing and contact tracing, the quick isolating of individuals symptomatic or ill with the coronavirus, modifying theaters and productions to minimize the spread of the pathogen, and a process in which the union is included in any decision-making about how and when to reopen.
In a video news conference, Actors’ Equity President Kate Shindle and Executive Director
Mary McColl made it clear that conditions for productions to resume have not been met anywhere in the country.
They confirmed that they were advising their members at this point not to go back to work at any theater that has announced plans to reopen.
The schedules for most theaters are thin, though a few companies with summer programs, including the Muny in St. Louis and Barrington Stage in western Massachuse s, have disclosed tentative plans to reopen in July and August, respectively.
“We believe when we reopen we have one opportunity to get it right,” McColl said.
Michaels – an epidemiologist who was an assistant secretary of labor in the Obama administration and is now a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute of Public Health – noted the health and safety obstacles faced by live venues.
“Our understanding of our primary tools to reduce exposure – they’re challenging in some situations and impossible in others,” he said.
Because of the many challenges that close physical contact presents to actors and other stage personnel, Michaels stressed that no single approach to ameliorating the threat would guarantee safe conditions. He likened the proposed remedies to slices of Swiss cheese placed one on top of another, with each layer covering up some of the holes in the slices below.
The release of the core principles – which the union said it will pass on to theaters and producers, as well as to its members – underscored some of the unique and urgent issues affecting workers in the arts and entertainment industry.
The public unveiling grew partly out of a concern that much of the a ention about guaranteeing safety in theaters was being directed at audience members. — The Washington Post