STAGE : Giving the Actor a Piece of the Action

Have you heard the one about the actor who was rehearsing a small theater production of “Hamlet” out in the Valley?

His Pinto threw a rod on the Ventura Freeway, so he needed an engine job. He hated the fabric samples for his costumes, so he chipped in for some real velvet. He had postcards printed to send out to industry people about the opening. He had new photos made. And, of course, he had to look great at the cast party. All in all, the gig set him back $1,300.

“But isn’t it wonderful?” he told his girl friend. “I’m working .”

I can’t vouch for the details but the gist of the story is true. The dirty little secret of Los Angeles small theater could be put on a bumper sticker: LA ACTORS DO IT FOR NOTHING.

Not at the larger houses--the Ahmanson, the Taper, the L.A. Theatre Center, the Shubert, the Pasadena Playhouse, etc. There, the players receive a paycheck every week.

But in the small houses, where the bulk of Los Angeles theater gets presented--and, as we were saying last week, where some of the most interesting work gets done--a fine actor can star in a play for six months and have nothing to show for it but the reviews.

That’s because since 1972 the actors’ union, Actors’ Equity, has allowed its members to perform without pay in theaters seating 99 people or fewer. This created an entity--or, as Actors Equity now sees it, a Frankenstein’s Monster--known as Equity Waiver theater.

It is about to be overhauled. Both the union and the small-theater producers agree that it’s time to put some money in the actor’s pocket.

But they disagree as to how to do it. Equity insists that each actor be paid a flat fee. The producers (some of them Equity members: in part, this is a civil war) propose that the actors share a portion of the gate.

The reader can see the difference. Under the Equity plan, the actors get the same fee, whether there are nine people or 99 in the audience.

Under the producers’ plan, the smaller the audience, the less the actors need be paid--leaving more money for the producer to pay the light bill.

And there are nights in Equity Waiver when the audience is very small indeed.

The major points of disagreement are summarized above. Not only do the producers fear that Equity’s plan will put them out of business, they resent the way the union got its plan approved by its members: By sending out a mail ballot that the producers say distorted their position.

The producers say they’re angry enough to sue. If they do, Equity could be temporarily enjoined from putting its plan into effect. This might send both sides back to the meeting table.

In any case, the local theater community is starting to feel the strain of all this. Are our smaller houses about to become more professional, as Equity hopes? Or are they about to become less professional? Are we going back to the bad old days when Los Angeles actors indeed got paid to act in small theater--and slipped the check right back to the producer under the table?

A New Ballgame

This much is clear. “Equity Waiver theater” as we know it is history.

On Oct. 3--barring a court order--Equity will stop looking the other way when its members want to perform in the smaller theaters. It will stop waiving its right to regulate their pay and their working conditions.

This had seemed a sensible idea in 1972. (See Ray Loynd’s article on Page 42 for the conditions up to then.) It relieved the union of having to police a tangled theater-workshop scene. It relieved it from seeming to play the bully against a dedicated small-theater collective like the Company Theatre (now disbanded).

Above all, it recognized the fact that Los Angeles actors will act, with or without union permission.

Under Waiver, the reasoning went, the actor could do so without getting ripped off too badly. If the cast didn’t stand to make any money in a 99-seat show, neither did the producer. But if the show proved a hit, it might move to a larger house--and a regular Equity contract.

In the years that followed, this didn’t happen as often as was hoped. But it happened more often than one would gather from Equity’s current position paper on Waiver. For example:

“Nuts” went from the Beverly Hills Playhouse to the mid-sized Las Palmas Theatre, to a Barbra Streisand movie.

“A Woman of Independent Means” went from the Back Alley to Broadway, to the Doolittle Theatre.

“‘Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?” went from the Cast to the mid-sized Hollywood Center Theatre.

“Tracers” went from the Odyssey to the Public Theatre in New York--and a national tour.

“The Common Pursuit” went from the Matrix to a year’s run Off Broadway.

“Checkmates” went from the Inner City Cultural Center to the Westwood Playhouse to Broadway.

Perhaps the most famous example was Catalina Prods.’ “The Hasty Heart,” starring Gregory Harrison. It was picked up by the Ahmanson after its first production at the Cast-at-the Circle. A TV deal followed.

But “The Hasty Heart” also started people to wondering about the Waiver. Catalina was a film/TV company in the first place. Couldn’t it have afforded to do “The Hasty Heart” on a regular Equity contract from the beginning?

Another hope back in ’72 was that theater organizations would graduate from the Waiver sector into the mainstream.

Here there was a conspicuous success story: the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Actor Ralph Waite had started it in ’75 as the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre, a casual little operation near Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Ten years later, under Bill Bushnell, LATC had become a major downtown house, employing more Equity members per night than the Music Center.

But there was a disappointment here too. Ron Sossi’s Odyssey Theatre hadn’t managed to make its long-promised leap to the major leagues, although its budget in ’87 topped $500,000. How much of that were the actors seeing? (See Sylvie Drake’s adjoining interviews.)

Primitive Conditions

Waiver’s crassest aim--to serve as a showcase for actors--was definitely being met. With 50 or 60 or 70 Waiver shows available every weekend (the number seemed to increase every year), hundreds of actors got “visibility.”

Some found stardom. One season Ed Harris was doing “Prairie Avenue” at the Callboard Theatre. The next season he was starring in the film “The Right Stuff.” One season Brad Wong was playing a newsboy in “Gift of the Magi” at the Cast Theater and the next he was winning a Tony on Broadway in “M. Butterfly.”

Equity had invented Waiver, but it wasn’t sure it liked the way it was going. Two studies conducted for the union by analyst Carl Sautter, one in 1980 and one in 1984, indicated that it did have some problems.

The ’84 report cited primitive backstage conditions and noted suspiciously that many of the new Waiver theaters were structured as for-profit ventures, as opposed to non-profit theaters such as LATC and the Odyssey.

Still, that didn’t necessarily mean that anybody was getting ripped off. Sautter noted that 75% of the long-running shows had adapted “some form of compensation for the actors” and found “no evidence from organizational budgets that producers are making a killing in the waiver.”

But it added:

“An exception might be the handful of better-known rental houses which generally declined to provide budget information. . .”

The rentals. There was the rub. Equity landlords were now getting $1,000, $2,000, $2,500 a month for their houses, and new spaces were being opened all the time. Would that be true if there weren’t money to be made there?

The issue came to a head in 1985, when Paula Holt converted the Tiffany Theatre on the Sunset Strip into two 99-seat spaces. When Equity objected, Holt took the union to court and won her case.

Now an Equity actor could find himself working for nothing in a state-of-the-art house that rented for $2,000 a week . True, the producer might work out a financial arrangement with the cast; but this was strictly up to him.

Waiver Wars Begin

At this point--summer, ‘86--Equity knew that it had to stop looking the other way. A general membership meeting instructed union leaders to hold “thorough and ongoing discussions” with Waiver producers.

Three meetings were held--amicable ones, say the producers; tense ones, according to Equity representatives.

Then a year of silence, during which the producers say they kept asking Equity when the next meeting would be held.

Last March 21, they found out. Equity informed the producers that it had mailed its proposed new Actor’s 99-Seat Theater Plan to its members that morning.

Members had been given the choice either to ratify the new plan or to go along with Waiver theater as it was now--unsupervised. Opposing views on Waiver had been included on the referendum, the Equity officials added.

Reading the referendum, the producers felt snookered. Not only did it mis-state their position, it had only been an opening position. They had expected more discussions. This was a fait accompli . This was war.

So it has gone since--a series of meetings, resolutions, elections, claims, counter-claims, press releases and innuendoes to the effect that each side is trying to destroy theater in Los Angeles.

As refreshing as it is for a theater critic to hear somebody else accused of this, it is nonsense. What is going on here sets the scene for the next stage in the growth of Los Angeles theater--its artistic growth.

Seeking Respect

Gardeners know that growth comes from cutting back. Equity claims that there are 165 Waiver theaters in Los Angeles. That seems a high estimate, but there are clearly more theaters than the city’s audience base can support.

Whichever pay-plan prevails, it’s going to be more expensive to do business as a small theater from now on, and the number of shows will decline.

That’s good. It’s ridiculous and demoralizing to run shows for months to 25% full houses--including “comps.” At one house the other night there were so few in the audience that the cast took a vote about whether to perform.

At least they were given a vote. Equity again succumbs to overkill when it claims that “what started out as a showcase for the actor became a showcase for everybody else.” Waiver today is no less a showcase for the actor than it was in ’72.

But it is disappointing to note how the Waiver actor has been, if not exploited, insufficiently respected, simply because actors in this town are so grateful to have somewhere to go at night.

The Hollywood acting pool . How often we’ve heard the phrase, with its image of a well-stocked trout pond into which one dips a net in order to extract the evening’s fish.

True, our fish volunteer for the pond. But that’s no excuse to regard them as casual labor, last hired, first fired. How ironic that the people performing the show should be the last to realize something from it.

Even in the classier Waiver houses, the rule has been to treat the phone bill, the lumber bill and the public relations person’s bill as fixed costs, while the actors’ fees are variables, something to think about only after the show is in the black--which it rarely is.

Somebody has had his consciousness raised when the producers propose to share part of the take immediately with the actors. Equity has scored a victory here.

If the producers and Equity do sit down for discussions, it would be pleasant if the producers began by acknowledging that Equity presented them a gift in ‘72--the right to do serious theater with serious actors, without having to pay what a larger theater would pay.

It would be nice if the producers also acknowledged that even now, Equity continues to waive its interest in several areas that it would have to be concerned about if this were an actual contract negotiation--the fact, for instance, that $14 per performance still comes down to less than the minimum wage.

It would be equally pleasant, while we are fantasizing, if Equity would acknowledge that most of the theaters have made reasonable use of that gift. The actors’ union these days characterizes Waiver theater as a disaster, leaching audiences away from the small mid-sized houses that used to thrive here--the Coronet, the Las Palmas, etc.

In fact, those houses weren’t particularly thriving before Waiver and didn’t go under after it. Indeed, some of them presented shows that had been developed in the Waiver houses. Rather than making Waiver the villain of the piece, one could equally well give it credit for keeping alive the idea of quality small-theater in a tough time for theater in general.

What has been accomplished artistically since ’72 at the Odyssey, at LAAT, at the Cast, at the East West Players, at the Matrix is something to be proud of, not something to sweep under the rug.

Something has been accomplished sociologically as well. We have a theater community here now, at least in the minimal sense that Yeats once defined Dublin’s literary community--a sprinkle of people living in different parts of town who can’t stand each other.

Well, it’s a start. One thing most of the people in our theater community have in common is a small income. That includes the producers. When one sees Ted Schmitt of the Cast packing lighting equipment into his old car, it’s impossible to view him as an exploiter of anybody.

A few shrewd people have abused the Waiver system, but most haven’t done so. The system does have to be re-examined, and that should include clarifying the kind of contract Equity will offer a 99-seat show when its 12-week run in Waiver is up.

At the moment the choice seems to be between the all-but-defunct Hollywood Area Theatre contract and the “experimental” Small Professional Theatre Contract. One doesn’t blame the producers for wanting to look at the fine print here.

Equity’s western regional director, Edward Weston, said a revealing thing in a recent interview. I remarked that, even if he didn’t like what had happened to Equity Waiver--his baby, back in ‘72--he had to admit that it had produced an excellent crop of producers.

“I think they’re would-be producers,” he replied. They’re basically actors.”

If so, then everybody in Waiver is in the same boat. Why sink it?

How to Run a Small Theater--Two Views

EQUITY’S 99-SEAT PLAN

1. Rehearsal time: 8 weeks limitation.

2. Rehearsal honorarium: none.

3. Show may run up to 12 weeks if presented in a 99-seat house. Longer if presented in a smaller house, but eventually all shows must convert to an appropriate Equity contract or close.

4. Performance “reimbursement”: from $5 to $14 a performance, depending on the seating capacity of the house.

5. Equity reserves the right to change this plan at any time.

6. Goes into effect Oct. 3.

PRODUCERS’ 99-SEAT PLAN

1. Rehearsal time: unlimited.

2. Rehearsal honorarium: $25-$50, depending on the number of performers in the cast.

3. No limit on allowed run.

4. Performance “reimbursement”: from 6% to 14% of the gross, to be shared equally among cast members and accruing the longer a show runs.

5. Provides for a 6-month trial period, after which the plan will be in effect for three years.

6. Goes into effect Sept. 12.