New Theater and the Unions

...The nucleus of the company is a group of theaterpeople, actors, musicians, dancers, and writers—some of them of great reputation— who have all of them, for from ten to fifty years, given themselves, often financially unrewarded, to the develop...

...By disposition such people are free-lances...

...go to it and we hope you succeed...

...this creates startling effects...

...As a group, then, they are peculiarly subject to be taken advantage of and exploited by producers who can give them any work at all...

...The union policy has been a discouragement—almost as bad as the unavailability of real-estate— and it has been attacked with the usual jeering debater's points by the tribe unsympathetic to unionism as such...

...There is no doubt that it is a vague or clear understanding of this that, in part, has led Equity to its own more flexible policy...

...and it is also a collaboration of many skills...

...The theater has less than 175 seats...

...That is, small non-commercial theaters of high standards, and trained professional actors, are mutually useful to one another...

...All this has become a familiar complaint...

...of acting de facto as powerful critics and censors far beyond their competence...

...The matter has an importance in itself, because in recent years there has been a growth in new theater "off Broadway" that may, if it is encouraged, come to some real living theater...

...The policy of Equity, distinguishing a commercial and a non-commercial theater, is a sound one...

...unemployed in the theater, they could get other jobs...

...It can set a definite rule that fits the real nature of the case, unlike the present abstract "policy" or alternative non-policy of making "exceptions...

...That is, it is precisely the intrinsic virtues of the talented, their hunger to work and their solitariness, that make them socially weak and liable to lower social standards...

...On the other hand, as soon as you free artists begin to get into the money, then the situation is entirely different, and we have a right to take our place in the enterprise and exact our fair shares...

...4) So-called "little theater" groups, making a great social effort and overcoming great obstacles, from real-estate to interpersonal relations, and with little income to ease the path, are driven by an artistic fatality into the daring and the radically new...

...it is in this thorny task that it makes a great social effort against many obstacles...

...Briefly, if we carefully consider the nature of theater, we shall see that new theater in general cannot make money and must overcome great obstacles in order to exist...

...but we, of course, are in a different situation from the actors: for our carpenters, electricians, press-agents, musicians, and so forth, there is no psychological necessity to perform in theaters...

...the company cannot fulfill them...

...Those who are politically hep point out that organized labor has fallen into the hands of racketeers...

...They are a constellation comparable, for example, to the fine group that cooperated as the Provincetown Players...

...Necessity of the Unions Let me insist that the principle of total theater unionism, including Equity, seems to me to be correct...

...Nobody would question that they are devoted to the growth of theater and not to making money...

...of importing European succesess that are exotically safe...

...The sign of successful new theater is that the audience is torn between fascination and the impulse to walk out in disgust...

...3) Understanding this, Equity permits its members to work, in certain circumstances, for as little as $40 a week, regarding this figure, I guess, as pretty near the decent subsistence-minimum that a person must have, no matter what his enthusiasm or other satisfaction in the work...

...you're a painter," he says to the director, "why don't you stick to pictures...

...2) Actors have a kind of hunger, a need, to act...

...without further ado, let me generalize...

...A Proposal to the Unions Bearing all this in mind, would not the wise, the statesmanlike, attitude of the unions be for them to say something like this: "New theater...

...of sometimes being intransigent and sometimes shutting the eyes...

...This is simply because of the nature of the theater arts and crafts...

...but theater art is common and simple...

...have pre-empted the means of life...

...3) But conversely, once a new theatrical advance has been made, it is likely to become immensely popular, for it is shared excitement...

...We reserve the right to examine your qualifications and check your books, and so you affiliate with us as your friends and pay a nominal dues...

...Therefore, theater requires a large social ef fort, setting many people in motion, and a certain amount of social capital...

...The anxiety of new theater is greater than with other new art because theater demands a response in public, and its medium is exceptionally close to the animal and social behavior of life...

...yet their means are limited...

...their aim is to achieve at least the excitement of the big professional entertainment—other...

...Our city abounds in people of artistic talent, eager to exercise their separate talents...

...Let me sum up these familiar propositions in a formula: The task of new theater is to find out and invent what must be unpopular and yet will soon be immensely popular...

...All this amounts to a financial burden out of all proportion to the company's other expenses, and to the profits they expect or even hope for...

...Naturally people are not too attracted by this prospect...

...The principle of unionism lays an unbearable burden on any new non-commercial company...

...We have the right because all wealth is social wealth, produced by society as a whole, and it must be apportioned according to the rules that society has come to at the present time, to achieve which we in labor have fought and suffered much...

...By and large, professional actors belong to Equity and most of the best actors are professional, so you want to cast them...

...by insisting, even inflexibly and intransigently, on their union, one can give them collectively some strength...

...Poor gifted musicians, painters, poets, dancers, and actors are severally weak indeed...

...If you don't have the money, stay out of the theater...

...The unions are inflexible in their demands...

...On the other side, the Equity actors connected with the company are in a rage and about to tear up their cards...

...2) Radically new theater, like any new art, cannot expect a mass-popular response, for it presents what is unfamiliar and is even actively resisted as meaningless, perverse, or dangerous...

...At the same time, it is resulting in a conformity that is by now inane and boring and will soon be dangerous, for nothing revitalizing can occur in an or ganizational plan and when something occurs outside the plan, it may not have space to grow...

...The process has two steps, and mindful of their own interests the unions must have a dual attitude: positively to foster the new and non-commercial, and to protect their standards in the commercial...

...The Nature of New Theater Reflect a moment on the following commonplace observations: (1) The theater is a fine art for an immediate present public...

...In this impasse there is at once generated enormous heat and idiotic remarks...

...it is quite unfeasible...

...and Equity recognizes this obvious fact...

...figure it out...

...they try to make enough to sustain themseli Now in casting their productions, they want to employ Equity actors...

...Therefore, it is only from small intensely personally involved groups, and a small public of the likeminded, that we can expect new theater to emerge...

...some are kept at $1, so students can come...

...wise, why bother...

...the work done by stage-hands is what almost everybody connected with a little theater is skilled at and does with pleasure...

...When, then, this company sends out a casting-call in the professional journals, there are hundreds of responses from actors eager for any part, hoping to advance their careers by appearing and getting notices, and many of them glad to work in a cultured non-commercial atmosphere on intrinsically more interesting material, where they can learn something...

...Instead, it gives the theater-crafts a noble and protective role in the growth of the culture of the people...

...and when any of your enterprises crosses that line, it must be total union...

...All that is off-Broadway and fairly non-commercial, but it is not new theater...

...Or alternately they make daring simplifications, and this creates startling effects...

...and yet the principle itself is a necessary one...

...Here is a company devoted to new theater that has now for nearly ten years kept at work under arduous conditions, in larger or smaller quarters as it could get or build them by their own and their friends' voluntary labor...

...Therefore they explore new ways of handling limited means, to get as much meaning as if they had extensive means...

...Nevertheless, dispassionately considered, the solution of this dilemma is easy...

...In the case here, the burden happens to be particularly galling because the director himself is a gifted and well-known scenic-designer...

...and if you don't, there will be only a dying theater...

...Like most of the "off-Broadway" theater at present, people prefer the easier task of performing modern classics (the new theater of one or two generations ago...

...A new advance in some other art need not become popular in this way, for, although humanly important, it may be specialist and learned...

...and everywhere in integral theater there is a need for live music, it can never be omitted, and canned music is deathly...

...The case is with us in America that, by and large, vast organizations, of state, capital, pro duction, labor, communications, educa tion, urbanism, etc., etc...

...Not necessarily a large capital, compared, say, with architecture, where the very medium is expensive...

...But unfortunately it works out as follows: When the director of the company goes to the various craft and staff-unions to get a counter-signature to allow Equity players to play, he is told that he must continued on page 474 continued from page 370 employ 1 union stage-hand at $137 a week, 1 union press-agent at $145, 1 union scene-designer at $40 per day (for at least 3 days...

...and yet eventually it must in turn become immensely popular and make a lot of money, becoming the exciting novelty in commercial theater...

...And the paranoid demonstrate that there is a conspiracy among the unions, the critics, and the owners of theater real-estate, to prevent anything new and better from happening...

...says a distinguished functionary of one of the unions...

...ment of our modern art...

...or of giving museum-like revivals, more properly the function of university players and dedicated amateurs...

...But as for the actors, directors, and creative artists of scene, word, movement and music, who need the theater-public to exercise their talents, we shall not stand in their way...

...They are not dilettantes or amateurs...

...it works to the disadvantage of Equity actors...

...For if you do, there will be a new kind of immensely popular and paying theater...

...When everything is done according to a cer tain pattern, it is hard to imagine how some other pattern could work at all...

...The same anxiety, by the way, is felt even more by the players than by public, as any one who has rehearsed new theater with conventional actors can testify...

...Therefore we shall, by some reasonable rule of thumb, set a figure, perhaps an income-figure, perhaps a profit-ratio, at which we think your free art has entered the cash-nexus, a dividing line, at which the excitingly unpopular is beginning to be the immensely popular...

...and there ought to be a definite rule to mark the passage from the first stage of the process to the second...

...like all other artistic groups, they prefer to couch their press-releases and other public relations in their own style...

...The professional theater, however, is organized also on the principle that Equity players may not act in a nonunion play, a play whose staff is not union...

...This is currently in evitable and doubtless in many ways desirable, though not so unquestionably desirable as most people think...

...Now the situation among actors is as follows: (1) About 95% are chronically unemployed...

...I do not mean, by the way, that the company I am discussing is a pure model of new theater, but it is one of the best of a bad lot, and nothing is perfect here below...

...A New Responsibility I said at the outset that this small ques tion contains a great question...

...but an even larger social effort than architecture...

...and the state of serious art in our society is such that, until they make a lot of money, free artists have little status or security and cannot easily maintain their rights and dignity...

...I want to suggest simply that with their power, these organizations have acquired a new, strange, and trouble some responsibility: to limit the exercise of their power more intelligently than they are accustomed to, to stand out of the way in order that there can be a future also for themselves...

...Many of those who voluntarily built the place they now occupy are Equity actors, and naturally, having laid the bricks, they want to act...

...and whenever there is to be a little live music, there must be union musicians at similar figures...

...What then...

...Without mentioning names, let me tell the story concretely in a case where I happen to know the facts...

...This, I submit, is the wise, the statesmanlike, attitude that loses nothing for the unions, and that encourages the growth of theater...

...and when taken advantage of, they act effectually as scabs and lower the standards of honest employment...

...and we see no reason, therefore, to lower their standards in any way...

...In my opinion this principle is a correct one (for reasons I shall briefly mention in a moment...

...476...

...But especially I want to discuss this question because it is, in parvo, a remarkably apt case of what is becoming the chief problem of our contemporary culture: how to live and breathe creatively in a society whose technology and organizations unavoidably make for conformity...