1-16-09
CAT Contracts Plunge in 2008, While Production Weeks are Up
CAT Contracts, Chicago's bread and butter, dropped almost 14 percent from 2006/07 to 2007/08, but the production contract gained.
It may have been a harbinger. It may have been a fluke. But three months before the economy went into freefall, Actors’ Equity Association Central Region saw its work week numbers fall.
Equity lost 65 total work weeks in the central region, which cover 13 states plus part of Ohio. That represents a minor 12 percent drop, with 52,238 total work weeks at the end of FY2008 versus 52,303 weeks in FY2007. Equity’s Fiscal Year runs July 1-June 30.
Chicago, though, took a big hit. The Chicago Area Theatre contract lost 13.92 percent in FY2008, plummeting from a record high of 8,379 work weeks in 2007 to 7,355 work weeks in 2008. That’s actually fewer CAT work weeks than in 2006, when Equity recorded 7,806.
Much of the drop, according to Central Region executive director Kathryn Lamkey, was due do the closing of many large, commercial productions that worked the CAT contract. Last year’s numbers included The Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Drury Lane Watertower Place, Shear Madness a the Chicago Theatre and Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit at the Royal George Cabaret. All of those are now closed or not running in Chicago.
If you take the bigger, commercial productions out of the mix, CAT weeks were largely flat, said Lamkey.
“The standard, Chicago based theatres stayed pretty steady.”
Equity also lost work weeks on its Special Agreements, which cover producers such as Marriott’s Lincolnshire and Second City. They also cover every production of Menopause, The Musical in the country, and many of those closed. Special Agreement weeks dropped 16.11 percent, from 9,679 in 2007 to 8,336 in 2008. Once again, the number of weeks worked in 2008 were lower even than the 2006 numbers, when Equity actors worked 9,474 weeks under the Special Agreement Contracts.
The only contract to see a meaningful jump in work weeks in the Central Region was the Production contract, which covers most large, commercial shows, such as Wicked, and commercial touring productions with a Chicago point of origin. Over 1,800 weeks were added to the Production Contract regionally, with a total of 7,145.
That number may drop next year, as Wicked is set to close it’s long-running Chicago production at the end of the month. When it goes on tour, it will be a New York point of origin. Lamkey hopes that shows like Dirty Dancing and Mary Poppins will be able to pick up the slack.
The other news in the Production Contract was that it was successfully renegotiated in 2008. Actors came away with a 3.25 percent increase in minimum salary, plus a “media fee” for digital or video capture of images to play for promotional purposes. That would encompass snippets of shows that run on the web, and also promos for the stage version of the show played before the movie version of the show. Right now, the media fee is only in effect for musical productions. The pay is 1 percent of the Production Contract minimum salary for the first year, up to 2 percent at the end of the 39-month contract.
The other outcome of the Production negotiations this past summer is that lower-budget touring shows have been pulled out and given their own contract. This is in response to the incursion of non-union touring companies in the last decade or so.
“Our intent is to recapture as much of the market as we can in touring,” said Lamkey, noting that Equity still covers the majority of touring in the U.S.
The new Short Engagement contract is only open to productions with guarantees (that is, bookings) below $264,000 a week. It will pay actors $500-$850 per week—well below the $1,558 minimum pay for the Production Contract, and even below some CAT and LORT contracts. That pay change was needed because touring houses increasingly guarantee less money to incoming shows. Just as important, Equity changed work rules to be more flexible for a touring schedule. Producers are allowed, for instance, to book shows in a 4-week block, rather than commit to eight shows a week. They also now have the ability to schedule more performances in fewer days to accommodate audience demand. Most of the shows, Lamkey said, will only be running a week, or weekend, at a time before moving on.
Taking the smaller touring shows out of the Broadway-based Production contract also allows Equity to go after shows like Blast, which are not necessarily actor-driven.
Despite the recent growth in non-union touring entities, Lamkey said producers weren’t necessarily averse to going with the union. “Producers want to keep hold of their product from beginning to end,” she said. In the past, because of the Production Contract’s work rules and salary requirements, producers “have had to turn it over to non-union touring companies.”
Now that the Production Contract is out of the way, Equity will focus on the LORT and CAT contracts. LORT, which covers The Goodman, Court and Northlight in the Chicago area, will start negotiations next week. Lamkey hopes that they’ll be done by the end of February, followed soon after by the CAT negotiations. At issue in both contracts are the media fees that Broadway producers agreed to. Lamkey also said Equity wants to tackle the issue of productions to and from other countries. Specifically, Equity wants to make sure things like pension and health are paid, even when local actors are in Europe or the actors performing here are from another country.
“There are various obligations they would need to meet so it doesn’t displace American workers,” Lamkey said.
Other, smaller contracts that affect Chicago theatres saw modest rises, including Developing Theatres (4.96 percent) Dinner Theatre (7.76 percent) and TYA (1.93 percent). TYA also renegotiated its contract in 2008. Children’s theatre producers were originally looking for a salary rollback, said Lamkey. Producers and the union settled instead on a shorter, 18-month, contract.
Despite the dip in Chicago’s numbers, this area is overrepresented on a national scale. Central Region accounted for16.6 percent of Equity’s national 314,681 work weeks in 2008. That despite only having 8.6 percent of members.