Equity in the News American Theatre

The new agreement between Actors’ Equity and the Broadway League covers both workers and audiences for Broadway shows as well as sit-down productions across the U.S.

What will the union’s new Open Access mean for the theatre industry? Here’s our stab at an explainer.

For the first time, the award presented by Actors’ Equity Association and Foundation will go to 2 individuals.

The guidelines, established to last the duration of the pandemic, were unanimously agreed upon.

The actors’ union, advised by former OSHA head Dr. David Michaels, lays out core principles for stage safety.

As Utah Shakes’s summer season shutters, theatres from Missouri to Massachusetts weigh alternatives to staying dark for the rest of 2020.

The union, which will have a say in when and how actors and stage managers return to work, has retained David Michaels to help develop workplace safety standards.

Streaming and video-captured options for shuttered shows could be more than a stopgap solution.

“If this had been something that we just caught wind of with six months or three months to spare, we would have gone under for sure.”

Just over a month and a half after Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) went into effect in California on Jan. 1, Liz Lisle, managing director of Berkeley, Calif.’s Shotgun Players, considers her company lucky. AB 5, California’s new bill aimed at reining in employers who incorrectly or wrongfully classify workers as independent contractors, has sent shockwaves through the California theatre community, especially small, non-Equity companies.

According to the Actors’ Equity 2018 Regional Theatre Report, which measured work weeks in cities other than the entertainment meccas of NYC, Chicago, and L.A., there’s work to be had outside of the major markets. Below we profile half a dozen AEA members who are making a living, and a life, in their resident metropolises.