The Survey Says:

On the Actors' Equity Association’s website (www.actorsequity.org) Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is conducting a survey ‘focusing on individual artists who either are or are aspiring to be employed in the not-for-profit theatre.  TCG wants to know how artists feel about their careers, and ways they would like to see the field change to meet their needs.’  Every theatre professional should take this survey, the results of which will be published in the June/July edition of AMERICAN THEATRE magazine.

However, some of these questions seem to miss the mark, and some pertinent questions remain unasked. It seems to focus on the state of our environment, but not on our states as theatre artists.

The survey asks us to identify challenges, but not how we deal with them.  The survey asks us if we work, but not the kind of work we accept.  It asks how many theatres we typically work for in a year, but not whether we return to the same theatres, or about our feelings towards the theatres for which we worked. It does not ask if these companies are itinerate, if they have a permanent staff – or how large it is.  It does not ask what kind of contracts under which we worked.

The survey asks if we consider it a major or minor challenge that we ‘need to accept jobs below [our] capabilities to make ends meet?’  This question holds many nuances that are not addressed elsewhere in the survey.  What defines a ‘job?’  Does a job have to be a paid position?  If so, is a stipend or EMC hours considered compensation?  What about an Equity Showcase code?  What is meant by ‘capacities?’  Does the job adequately reflect the actor’s pedigree and talent?  It is difficult to answer this question when the work we accept does not contribute directly to our financial state.

‘Which of the following describes your artistic approach: Traditional, Alternative, Not Sure.’  The holes in this question do not need to be pointed out.  A better question is: how is your artistic approach perceived?  That perception influences funding and casting more than our opinion of our approach, which can quite often change from production to production, company to company.

The survey wants to know if the lack of opportunities ‘to train and refine [our] craft' posed a major or minor challenge.  This is the wrong question.  There are too many of these opportunities offered.  The challenges are finding the classes and programs that are affordable, and finding the opportunities that are worth the time and money.  Almost every theatre, whether or not they have mounted any productions and whether or not they have a reputation, offers classes in something.  Three pertinent unasked questions are 1) if we are pursuing training opportunities, how much time and money are we spending verses how much we are making through theatre; 2) are we receiving quality training, or acting as a revenue stream for the theatre; and 3) has training with these theatres led to a professional working relationship with them?

The biggest drawback of the survey is that it does not offer a comments section where we can state how the environment and conditions we are asked to describe affects us.  This would present us a chance to be a bit more specific, and perhaps offer solutions of our own.  At the moment, there is not place for us to illustrate how we would like the field of not-for-profit theatre to meet our needs, or what exactly we feel those needs are.

While the survey does not dig deep enough in its search for the state of theatre artists, it is a start.  When the results are published, perhaps TCG theatres will be asked to put forth ideas for solutions to the biggest challenges we perceive in the industry.  But by that time, given the federal, state and local budget cuts looming on the horizon, theatres and theatre artists may be facing different challenges.