The Price of Creative Freedom: 99-Seat Theatre Plan

I love getting paid for my work. I can’t deny that. Honestly, I don’t think that anyone can. Given the option of being compensated or not, I would venture to guess that 100% of people would rather earn money for their contributions to any particular business than give up their time and talents for free. Lately, this issue has become quite prevalent in the theatrical community based on a possible ruling out of Los Angeles that would drastically effect the operating procedures of small theatre companies.

Here’s a brief overview.

For decades, the Los Angeles arts scene has been full of small, 99 seat theaters. These theaters have a reputation for producing new, boundary breaking works that are sometimes considered too risky to mount in larger houses, but because of the small house sizes and production budgets, the companies that use these spaces can continue to innovate and grow despite their relative lack of financial gain. One key factor that helps this process is something called the “99-Seat-Theatre-Plan” which allows union actors to work in these houses for a small stipend as opposed to their usual union wages. These stipends often range from $7-$15 per performance with unpaid rehearsal hours and usually max out around $240 for the run of a show.

The new piece of legislation being brought forth by Actors’ Equity would require all theaters to enforce a $9 minimum wage during rehearsals and performances for their union members – effectively quadrupling the aforementioned budget allowance. This week, Los Angeles Equity members will have the opportunity to vote on this proposal, and as of now, both sides of the aisle are speaking quite fervently in order to convince the fence sitters of their position.

And honestly…I’m not sure where I stand.

Thus far, my theatrical education has cost over six figures. Many of my professional colleagues are in the same exact boat financially, and the idea of using that rather expensive skillset to work for nothing doesn’t necessarily make sense to me. I wouldn’t ask my accountant to do my taxes for free nor would I ask a graphic designer to make me a logo out of their generosity. All of these chosen professions have value, but artists as a whole seem to be more and more content to work for free or next to nothing – thus potentially devaluing the importance and respect that the craft deserves. If I’m running a company and one good actor will work for free while another good actor demands a check, the answer seems apparent. The books require me to save as much money as possible. The worry is this: if enough actors, painters, musicians, and designers give in to this mindset, there won’t be a reason to pay anyone anything, much less a living wage. Because of all that, I could absolutely understand voting YES on this proposal.

However…

Many of my friends in Chicago work at theaters where they are paid relatively low stipends, if at all, but whenever I have seen these productions on my visits to the city…the quality absolutely blows me away. The plays are bold and uncompromising, and it is clear that every single person involved in the process undoubtedly loves the product that they have created. In an industry where many bigger houses are asking actors to do Fiddler for the 42^nd time, these small companies are beacons of creative freedom, exploration, and innovation, and if they were all forced to quadruple the money needed to operate at the same level…many of them wouldn’t last the season. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and numerous other cities could potentially be robbed of their most interesting companies, and we as a culture could miss out on the opportunity to witness new works that multi-million dollar theaters wouldn’t risk staging in a thousand years. And for all of those reasons, I could absolutely understand voting NO on this proposal.

And here we find the current impasse within the artistic community. Both sides have extremely valid points, and regardless of this vote’s result, its impact will be felt throughout the country. Do we want money or creative freedom? Clearly, we want both, and occasionally, that is a very possible goal – I have been lucky enough already to be involved in incredible shows that paid me well, but I’m not foolish enough to think this commonplace in the industry.

I love acting. I love creating characters, and I love collaborating with some of the most intelligent and passionate people in the world, but I know that the questions that this vote poses will follow me throughout the rest of my career. Some of the most incredible processes I have ever been a part of have barely covered my gas money while the occasional mind numbing commercial gig has paid my rent in less than three hours. At twenty-three, I am also very aware that I have so much more to learn about the industry into which I have inserted myself, and luckily, I have attempted to surround myself with people that can do just that.

Ultimately, the vote in Los Angeles this week will make a bold statement about the actors of California (and quite possibly, the nation), but regardless of the outcome, there’s no job I’d rather have.

Migraine

The breath in my lungs never fills me completely.

Some unknown entity is taking up an illegal residency somewhere in my body,

seeping mercury,

and the toxicity is killing me.

Ionic frequencies ricochet off of my bones and pulse along my brain stem until my eye balls lubricate my cheeks in desperate hope of recognition.

I’m not a child.

I’m not a servant.

But I am slave to forces beyond my comprehension, cognition, and recollection.

God damn this lightning burning through the circuits of my mind;

frying ideas that have never been given a chance to shine,

and now

forever will they stand in the queue of cognizance unable to move up a spot in line. What promise they once showed.

What glorious advancement they swore to unveil,

and now,

their masters beat them into submissive passiveness removing all their drive to break free of chained oppression.

The rhythm is constant as the drums percuss violently into the cosmos through the pores already filled with sweat.

Let me out.

Let me out.

These bars are rusted and frail yet inexplicably hold fast against my constant battery.

Perhaps I’m weaker than I thought.

Perhaps the strength I thought I had has always existed as nothing but a hopeful mirage in the face of horrific destitution.

I am emaciated and atrophied,

but every minute of self-pity is assaulted by the war that rages eternal behind these walls.

I surrender.

I submit.

Take this cup from which I never drank, and fill it with

sand,

blood,

love,

anything to satiate the thirst of he who punishes his inferiors.

There is no shame in this submission,

and even if there was,

you would hardly see me protesting.

This treatment cries out for respite,

but ears of stone are deaf to mortal pleas.

Rivers cascade across the valleys of enlightenment forever destined to elude my grasp,

but their force resonates still even deeper than before.

Screams coalesce with solidity in my throat;

further hindering the breath already weakened by the battles, and deeper I sink beneath despair until I reach a level that has never known the warmth of light in hopes of finding peace.

Bury me in shadow if therein lies my destiny of silence,

for I shall no longer fight in a conflict that holds no victors.

Rest.

Rest.

Rest.

On Mental Illness/Developmental Disabilities

I almost witnessed a fight today.

It was terrifying.

I have been substitute teaching for almost two years now in a variety of schools, and although I have received attitude from a number of relatively annoying individuals, I have never felt afraid in a classroom. Until today. I was not the target of any aggression, nor was I the sole party working to stop the fight before it began, but throughout the rest of the class period, I couldn’t shake the tension that was assaulting me. My breath was labored, my palms were sweaty, and my equilibrium felt slightly off despite the fact that no actual violence had occurred.

I don’t know how it started. One of the many issues plaguing American education is the increasing volume of class sizes, and when faced with 25-30 kids at a time, it is rather difficult to monitor every morsel of semi-intelligible conversation. My days are often filled with a soft focus wherein I pretend not to hear the kids swearing to each other under their breath (you have to pick your battles), so you can imagine my surprise when I see a kid in the back of the class stand up and challenge his neighbor to hit him. Customarily, this invitation would be spoken with an air of fallacy or comedy, but the student’s voice remained disturbingly vicious throughout his declaration. His eyes were piercing, his body was rigid, and from thirty feet away, I could tell that every muscle in his body was ready to explode the second that his terms were accepted.

“Do it! Fucking do it, man. You ain’t shit. I’m not gonna back down. I’ve already hit you before.”

His words were dripping with malice as he dared his victim to throw the first blow and absolve him of responsibility, and I’ll admit…I hesitated. For a person who stages violence for a living on occasion, I am quite unaccustomed to the actual thing. I know what the body should look like when preparing for an altercation, and I know how to convincingly portray the force necessary to inflict a specific amount of pain, but I had a feeling that these guys weren’t going to stop if I called “Hold!” My toolbox had nothing to equip me for this situation, but in my second of hesitation, another woman stepped between the boys. She immediately began talking the larger boy down and eventually got him out of the room before the seated boy had a chance to retaliate.

She’s a paraprofessional. The seated boy has Asperger’s.

From what I gathered by listening to various conversations after the incident, this was not new information to any of the surrounding students.

“Yeah, his parents used to hit him…”

“He gets like this sometimes…”

“He’s fucking crazy, man…”

I was shocked. Awareness was not the problem. Evidently, the aggressor had a temper problem of his own, and for some reason, today was the day where he wanted to exploit this student’s disability to fulfill his personal well of violence. Thankfully, any physical violence was halted before it could begin, a specialist took the students out of class, and a relative sense of calm swiftly returned to the room…but this incident continues to fester in my gut, because it signals a much larger problem that I haven’t considered in quite a while.

Awareness isn’t enough. When I was in high school, I barely knew what autism was, and I think I may have heard the term “Asperger’s” on a tv show, but I definitely wasn’t educated on the proper way to understand someone with any type of mental disorder. Any type of mental illness or developmental disability was seen as weakness, afflicted students were bullied, and we blissfully continued our lives in ignorance. Nowadays, students are clearly aware that these conditions exist, but as today showed me, they are still far from understanding how to properly address these students with any sort of compassion and empathy.

After the class was over, a fellow teacher and I had a brief discussion about the benefits and downfalls of “mainstreaming” education – the practice of dismissing the need for Special Education classes in favor of a more inclusive strategy with tudents of all backgrounds taking the same courses. Personally, I’m still not sure where I stand on the issue. I would never want to socially or professionally ostracize a group of people in a discriminatory fashion, but I also believe that it is ignorant to assume that the implementation of students with disabilities will have absolutely no adverse effects on the classroom environment as a whole.

Maybe the students this morning were having a legitimate argument that escalated beyond repair, maybe the aggressor knew exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate this other student into forcing his hand, or maybe this violent flash appeared out of nowhere…like I stated earlier, I will never know. Perhaps his disability was a factor, and perhaps it was inconsequential, but at the end of the day, the paraprofessional and I had to spend the rest of the hour fearful for the safety of the rest of our students, and that is a feeling that I would very much hate to replicate in the future.

Regardless of your stance on mainstreaming education, the events of today proved to me that the discussion needs to continue not only to maximize the effectiveness of each child’s education, but also to create a generation of young adults that are respectful and informed about issues that many of us like to keep in the shadows.