Live Performance’s New Union Wave Goes Way Beyond Broadway
From planetarium lecturers to performers at strip clubs and escape rooms, Actors’ Equity is organizing live entertainment workers far beyond traditional musicals. The union’s strategy could be crucial as unions brace for a potential anti-labor administration.
A planetarium lecturer narrates a show exploring the 2012 Mayan doomsday myth at the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Over the past three years, the union Actors’ Equity has strengthened its membership by organizing live performers outside the theater world, opening its ranks to escape room performers, strip club dancers, and Disneyland cast members. These organizing campaigns are beginning to have concrete effects, as the union recently secured the first two contracts of this wave of expansion – first for actors and front-of-house staff, then for planetarium lecturers in Los Angeles. With the likelihood of an anti-labor Trump administration looming, the union hopes an aggressive mobilization effort will be the counterweight it needs.
In October, Equity negotiated the first union contract for Drunk Shakespeare cast members in four cities across the United States. Performers and front-of-house staff at Drunk Shakespeare had unique safety concerns because some cast members have to drink on the job — around five drinks per show — and bartenders serve patrons throughout the show. Dealing with the alcohol mandate was a first for Equity, which has traditionally represented actors and stage managers on Broadway and in other large theaters across the country.
One traditional Equity member, Lawrence Karl, was at the forefront of the Drunk Shakespeare campaign. Karl earned his Equity card as an actor in Pittsburgh before moving to New York City. He has been a bartender with Drunk Shakespeare for almost two years, and his past experience with Equity made him enthusiastic about unionization.
In addition to establishing guardrails around alcohol, Karl says better pay and access to benefits were also priorities in the Drunk Shakespeare organizing campaign. “Often in theatrical settings,” says Karl, “there are blurred lines if you don’t have union contracts in place.” Under their new contract with Brass Jar Productions, Drunk Shakespeare employees have received more consistent safety protocols, including a provision ensuring that actors will receive transportation to and from the theater on days when they are designated to drink during performances.
From Shot Glasses to Star Shows
In early December, the union also reached a contract agreement for a group of planetarium lecturers at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. As Equity continues to recruit new groups of performers, Director of Organizing and Mobilization Stefanie Frey says these new members share common professional concerns.
On Broadway, at Disneyland, or in a strip club, she says, “The safety issues are very similar — even if the settings and the clientele are slightly different.” With the rise of immersive theater, the boundaries between these workplaces seem blurrier than ever. Most of Equity’s new shops have some distinctive element, from the alcohol at Drunk Shakespeare to the cliff divers at Casa Bonita, the Mexican restaurant-cum-entertainment complex owned by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, where Equity launched a joint organizing campaign with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) in October. “But,” says Frey, “who’s to say a Broadway show wouldn’t have some diving in it in a couple of years?”
Many performers agree with Frey. Suzanne Ford has acted on TV shows like Friends, The Middle, and Grace and Frankie, but she also works at the Griffith Observatory as a lecturer, narrating educational videos in a 290-seat planetarium. Ford, who has been a member of Actors’ Equity since 1971, says her lectures feel like a direct extension of her acting career, especially now that she’s gotten comfortable. “At the very beginning, I was too formal,” she says. “It took me a while to realize that I could be loose and free in the way one is when one does television or film or theater.”
Ford has been working at the Griffith since 2014, and she says most of her colleagues are actors, too. When they started considering organizing, the lecturers had a list of problems, but the group “didn’t really have a way to talk about them with management.” They contacted Equity because they wanted to work with an organization that represented live performers, and they were pleasantly surprised to hear back. “We didn’t even really expect them to be interested,” says Ford. “There are only twelve of us, you know — it’s not like organizing Disneyland.”
For the lecturers, having Equity on board felt like recognition for their work at the Griffith, which bills itself as the world’s most visited public observatory. Organizing formally allowed the lecturers to negotiate regular raises — the first in over a decade, since before Ford came to the Griffith — and procedures for regular meetings about workplace concerns like scheduling and safety. The new collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, also addresses one of Ford’s biggest concerns: the safety issues around navigating the crowded planetarium in complete darkness midway through the presentation. Now, the Griffith has agreed to provide additional lighting.
Building Power Beyond Broadway
This is exactly the kind of organizing that brought Frey back to Actors’ Equity. She started her career as a stage manager and Equity member. Her first job in organized labor was at Equity, too, as a contract associate. After a stint in workforce mobilization for the NewsGuild of New York, Frey returned to Actors’ Equity three years ago with a new passion for organizing from the bottom up. The union’s incoming executive director, Al Vincent, Jr, shares that commitment. Instead of waiting for theaters to contact Equity about hiring its members, under Vincent the union has gone out of its way to organize new workplaces.
Frey says the new organizing campaigns have strengthened the union, helping revive its membership after a drop-off during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Membership has rebounded and the monthly inflow of new members is back to pre-pandemic levels. The union’s recent mobilization efforts have also emphasized workplaces like Drunk Shakespeare and the Griffith, where workers have open-ended contracts with more job security.
These new efforts give live entertainers a chance to combine stable employment with strong union representation — something that was rarely available to past Equity members outside of long-running hit musicals. Frey hopes the membership will continue to expand to include entertainers of all stripes. Apart from dancers and live musicians, who have unions of their own, Frey says, “I think that we are uniquely positioned to represent any live entertainer, pretty much full-stop.”
Drunk Shakespeare workers and Griffith Planetarium lecturers are the first two groups to receive a new contract as part of Equity’s expansion. Both groups received voluntary recognition from their employers, but other workers have faced more substantial obstacles. At Star Garden in Los Angeles and Magic Tavern in Portland, Oregon, the only unionized strippers in the United States have faced shutdowns and shortened schedules, prompting National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) intervention. In Las Vegas, the Chippendales are facing similar hurdles.
Frey says the outgoing Biden administration’s pro-labor policies have made it easier for Equity to take on uphill battles, but unions may need to be more cautious about the risk of legal hurdles in the next four years. “We don’t want to rely on the NLRB” under Donald Trump, she says. However, she hopes Americans will keep looking to organize, especially as the incoming administration threatens to unravel the Affordable Care Act and roll back workplace protections. Even if the NLRB is weakened, she hopes Equity will “fight like hell” to keep organizing new members.