IT SEEMS TO ME BY HEYWOOD BROUN 1933 The actors and the stagehands are at odds. I have never been a stagehand, and yet my sympathies go to that group rather than to my own. As I understand it, the stagehands are called upon to take a cut upon the plea that unless they help to modify costs, most of the plays in town will have to close. At the moment their answer seems to be, Let em close. To many this attitude appears irrational, selfish and without vision. But the many are composed of those who do not understand both logical and courageous , for in effect, he is saying, Better sacrifice the job than the wage scale. It is wholly unfair to say that he looking after himself at the expense of others. The reverse is true. The temptation to take a cut must be great. The stagehand does not enjoy being out of work . In that situation he suffers more than the average actor. His refusal to take less than the established rate is based upon his feeling of solidarity to the craft to which he belongs. WITH HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE. The union has been and still is a strong one, and its strength lies in its reluctance to compromise. After all, a comparatively high wage level was obtained by dint of persistence and effort. The question at issue is not the prolonging of the life of some individual show but the scrapping of an arrangement which it took years to win. I say a :comparatively high wage level because even the best of times few members of the union got anything like fifty-two solid weeks a year. The present pay represents salary plus unemployment insurance, If the pay were computed on the earnings of the average member for the entire year it would be no more than a trifle a week.. The actor ought to understand the psychology of his associates in the theater a little better than he does, After all, many a player has followed a strikingly similar policy. Broadway is quite familiar with the four-hundred-a-week actor who would rather starve on the curb just outside the Lambs Club than work for anything else. He, too, feels that it would be better to suffer much than to allow a standard which took years of building to be swept away overnight. Of course, it will be said at the moment many offers have been made for co-operative endeavor. Unfortunately, the adjective co-operative has a rather chilling connotation in the theater, And I ought to know. AS A LAST RESORT. In almost every instance co-operation has been a last straw, and it has broken more camels backs than it has saved drowning men. When a show begins to pluck at the counterpane somebody is pretty sure to pop up and say, Lets go co-operative. With very few exceptions the co-operative principle in the theater has been no more than a last and futile resort to oxygen. Several of the entertainments which quit within the last few days blamed their fate upon stagehands. But in almost every case that was an alibi rather than an accurate report. With or without stagehands each one of these enterprises had already heard the fluttering of angels wings. Upon occasion certain managers have posed magnificently by making the superb gesture of saying, I will turn the show over to the cast. It is the generosity of the departing householder who says, You can have my pet alligator. I am all for co-operation both in the theater and elsewhere, but it should be a principle which includes within its scope the smash hits as well as the forlorn hopes. The actor does not love the stagehand very much. He is ready with a hundred stories about the man who had nothing to do but move a table across the stage and play pinochle for the rest of the evening. But I fancy that anybody who was compelled by his job to stand in the wings for 200 nights would probably come away with less than a passionate regard for the performers.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 01:47:38 +0000
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