collective action round-up: WTF & the O'Neill (part 2!)

mad as hell & not going to take it anymore: summer festival edition

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this week in collective action: williamstown theatre festival

On July 14th, the entire sound department at the Williamstown Theatre Festival walked out of a tech rehearsal for the upcoming outdoor production of Row due to “unsafe conditions, poor management, understaffing, and rain.” The news initially broke from the @changeberkshireculture Instagram, an advocacy account for non-profit cultural workers in the Berkshires.

LA Times writer Ashley Lee reported out the full story on July 20th. Lee details the stormy conditions and repeated poor treatment that led to the crew’s walkout, and the aftermath:

The rain started pouring even harder, and the crew — already working 13-hour days, earning a relatively low wage without overtime and paying for festival housing — hit a tipping point. With the full solidarity of the present creative team, the entire sound crew walked out…

The next morning, the sound crew met with [AD Mandy] Greenfield and the festival’s leadership team and secured modest increases in pay, safer working conditions and a more reasonable work schedule: an eight-hour turnaround between shifts and a 10-hour cap on the number of hours worked in a day.

After the publication of the LA Times article, someone sent me an open letter from a current WTF employee. (It was published in an invite-only group and the author approved its circulation as long their identity remained anonymous.)

The letter provides clarification on the offered concessions:

1) The “modest pay increase” for most is the equivalent of going from $13.50/hr to $15/hr. This raise, equivalent to 9% across the board, was only given to hourly employees. Salaried staff (including department heads and middle-management) were excluded. All staff were contractually obligated to waive their right to OT in their initial contract, and there has been no clarification or sign that this position has been reversed. 

2) The 8-hour turn around for work day, no more than 10-hour work day, and one day off per week had already been promised at the beginning of the season. This was not new information, but a recommitment that it will not be violated further. 

The letter also cites the continued mismanagement and ignorance of senior leadership and the institutional structural issues that obstruct meaningful change (which reflects my own experience of working at the mid-level):

Most middle management here are actively and fundamentally in support of making positive changes to the system... What has become clear, is that they lack the ability to do so within the bureaucracy of the institution, even when their own requests have been ignored. The ability to grant actual change and provide flexibility in policy within their own departments (budgets, scheduling, humane treatment, etc.) is reserved for a small handful (i.e. 3 to 4 people) of top management who are blissfully out of touch with the needs of their workers, and are still reacting in fear of their own public image.

The author cites that there is additional organizing happening around the inhumane treatment and subpar living conditions for non-equity company members and hourly staff. As staffers noted in the LA Times piece, the dam is about the break on WTF’s history of exploitative practices:

“This is a Band-Aid on the bigger problem that is the way this festival treats its workers, and especially how it abuses the youngest and most vulnerable theater workers who are just entering the industry, and don’t know that they can and should stand up for themselves,” one team member said.

Fator added: “…But young people are realizing that there’s strength in numbers. And I don’t think theaters are going to get away with exploiting college students or young professionals anymore.”

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this week in collective action: the o’neill

On July 21st, the current apprentices and writer’s assistants at the O’Neill Theater Center posted an open letter calling in the board, leadership, and year-round staff.

The letter had been distributed privately on July 17th, but the collective chose to publish it after receiving a response from executive director Tiffani Gavin that was “patronizing in tone, closed a conversation rather than opened one, and did not provide sufficient specific, transparent action plans.”

As always, I encourage you to read the full letter and list of demands. The collective succinctly summarizes the “flurry of online and internal conversations about the livability of the apprenticeship program” and acknowledges the progress made while also citing the continued harm: the unacceptable wages for 70-hr work weeks (approx. $2/hr), disrespectful and inhumane treatment, lack of educational opportunities, and a “deeply offensive” Juneteenth celebration.

The letter includes a list of demands, including a living wage, regular days off, humane work hours, transparency and clarity of job duties, third-party HR services, and mandatory, consistent anti-racism training for all staff.

Full disclosure: I was an intern sixteen years ago at the O'Neill, and returned the next summer as unpaid junior staff. (I was so young I had a blue dot on my ID badge so no one would serve me at the pub.) At the time, interns received no compensation and paid $2600 for housing. (I lived in a barebones, sweltering dorm room with the word "COCK" spelled out on the ceiling in glow-in-the-dark stars.) My two summers were subsidized by a generous grant from my undergraduate college and financial support from my parents.

I met lifelong friends at the O’Neill, and every literary management job I've held has been due, in some part, to the connections I made there. Relationships and access matter in theatre, and my career benefited from the O’Neill’s pedigree, along with a confluence of other privileges.

But that formative unpaid work experience also conditioned me to devalue my own labor. Over the course of my 15-year theatre career, I accepted countless low salaries and promotions without raises. It’s well-documented that unpaid internships perpetuate socioeconomic divide and racial inequality. (A 2016 National Association of Colleges and Employers study found that “unpaid internship participation was negatively correlated to student salary and employment outcomes.”) At a time when American theatres are issuing passionate public statements about their commitment to anti-racism and equity, it’s beyond hypocritical to continue relying on unethical compensation models.

I know many artistic directors and managing directors subscribe to this newsletter, so I’m addressing the following to you: If you do not pay your workers a living wage, you’re not committed to anti-racism and equity. Are your institutional core values a practice, or are they words on your website?

Like many summer festivals, the O’Neill is built on a bedrock of labor exploitation. I fully support these incredibly reasonable demands from this year's apprentices and writer's assistants. These positions are the backbone and lifeblood of the conference, and they deserve to be paid fairly and treated humanely. As my friend and fellow O’Neill alum Aislinn Frantz noted in a recent Twitter thread, it’s clear from this letter that these individuals love the O’Neill, and want the company to fulfill its mission as the launchpad for the American theatre:

We are writing this because of the potential we see within the institution for growth, collaboration, and improvement, and our desire for the O’Neill to not only be the place where the theatre of tomorrow is created, but a leader in the building of the new, equitable standards of the American theatre. It is also our belief that we can build a better work environment for all of us, together.