My “Opening Night” Of August: Osage County
Posted by Francis Guinan on 11/21/2007
On November 20, August: Osage County was scheduled to open on Broadway. It didn’t.
As many of you know by following the news, Broadway has been shut down by a strike by Local 1 of IATSE, the New York stagehands union, and a lock out by the Producers’ League. This is the first such strike in over a century of the two sides negotiating contracts.
The cast has been marooned in New York since previews ended on November 9. A further disappointment landed when renewed negotiations broke down on Sunday, guaranteeing that both our opening date and Thanksgiving would pass with the Imperial Theater darkened.
Our New York producing team, headed by Jeffery Richards, has been both generous and realistic in addressing our situation: generous in that the team has continued to provide our housing stipend throughout the strike (so far) and realistic in recognizing that it would be impossible for the cast (indeed, the production) to remain in New York without it.
The cast’s days have not been completely at leisure, however. Our union, Actors’ Equity (which supports IATSE), requires that we arrive at the theater for our usual half hour call to sign in “ready and available for work.” Otherwise, our time is our own.
I have chosen to spend part of that time on the picket line with the striking stagehands. And that is where I was when the hour of our “opening” passed.
Now, I can’t claim to have any great insights into the dispute. The contested contract is the Byzantine, cobbled-together result of a century’s negotiations. Yet several things seem quite clear to me. First of all, should IATSE accept all the changes demanded by the Producers’ League, scores, if not hundreds, of skilled union workers will lose their livelihoods. These are people, many with families and children, holding on to a middle class existence in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. And unions do not exist to undermine their membership.
I have been an actor and union member for nearly thirty years. I know that without union organization and support, most actors would be subject to impossibly reduced circumstances. My union memberships provide me and my family with health insurance, pension benefits, a safe work environment. The same is true for other organized workers: stagehands, musicians, TV and film writers, commercial pilots and stewardesses, coal miners, agricultural workers, custodians, grocery store workers, automotive workers. By our labor, we earn a share in the wealth we create. And the money we spend fuels the economy.
In the current national environment where the middle class is shrinking, pension plans are under-funded and organized labor is under attack (remember the air traffic controllers union?) every demand to retreat from hard-won benefits must at least be resisted.
So I march with the stagehands not because I fully understand the minutiae involved in the dispute but because I know that next time it will be me and my family’s well being at stake.
Will a compromise be struck? Of course it will and no doubt very soon. August: Osage County will open to extravagant praise, garner several well-deserved awards, sell lots of tickets and generate lots of dough…some of it coming to Steppenwolf actors and stage managers courtesy of their union-negotiated contracts.
Until then I will be here in New York cleaning my apartment, sketching in Central Park and spending an hour or so each day walking the picket line with my IATSE brothers and sisters.