Blog Stage - Acting in Film, TV, Theatre - Backstage

Damage Control

After AFTRA decided to "suspend" its 27-year joint bargaining agreement with SAG over the weekend, SAG President Alan Rosenberg dispatched a letter to Guild members on March 30 in which he challenged AFTRA's claim that the joint-bargaining relationship between the two unions disintegrated because of the incident surrounding The Bold and the Beautiful.  AFTRA quickly issued a press release pointing fingers at SAG for being dishonest.

In her blog, Nikki Finke published Rosenberg's letter to members, which included these juicy tidbits...

"AFTRA leaders claim…That SAG attempted to 'raid' its jurisdiction and to “campaign” to help The Bold & The Beautiful daytime drama actors decertify from AFTRA.

FACT: Actors from the show, who are also SAG members, asked to meet with us. We heard their complaints of extreme dissatisfaction with AFTRA, AND DIRECTED THEM TO TALK WITH AFTRA. We did not have a campaign of any kind. 

AFTRA leaders claim… The Bold & The Beautiful incident was 'the last straw,' but waited more than two weeks to raise the issue. Instead, the day before the joint SAG/AFTRA board meeting, they alerted the press (not SAG) and accused us of poaching. Two days earlier, they had participated in our two-day national joint Wages & Working conditions meeting where members of both unions VOTED UNANIMOUSLY to approve the proposal package. Didn’t the 'last straw' matter then?

AFTRA never has stated how it plans to come to the aid of the B &B actors. They are too busy blaming us for the problem. Institution first, members last.

FACT: SAG IS NOT INVOLVED IN ANY WAY IN ORGANIZING DAYTIME DRAMA ACTORS. While we have great respect for daytime actors, this is AFTRA’s area. In fact, the SAG national board passed a motion Saturday morning to assure AFTRA (as AFTRA requested) that SAG will abide by the AFL CIO rules regulating raiding.

FACT: Despite this expression of good faith and reassurance from SAG, AFTRA leaders voted to 'suspend' Phase One and go it alone. They marched into our board meeting, said they would not be bargaining jointly, and left. The joint board meeting to approve the proposal package for joint bargaining never even took place.

AFTRA leaders claim …SAG has undertaken a campaign to discredit them.

FACT: AFTRA bargained cable deals at rates lower than SAG minimums and waived residuals. They fully admit this and are now getting backlash from members who are wondering where their residuals went. AFTRA must be accountable for granting these waivers to the contracts we have fought hard to achieve. Again, how is this problem SAG’s fault? Will they now go bargain these sub-standard contracts for primetime network/pay TV programs and lower the bar for all SAG actors in the process?

AFTRA claims …that SAG Hollywood leaders are looking for a strike.

FACT: Not true. Nobody wants a strike, especially after the 100 day WGA strike. Elected SAG leaders across the country want to be strong on your behalf at the bargaining table. YOU elected your leadership. You elected me to achieve the best possible wages and working conditions. While the DGA and WGA made deals, we are not directors or writers. We are actors, and actors have different issues that are not in the DGA and WGA deals." 

Rosenberg ended the letter saying SAG was ready to negotiate with the AMPTP, especially given the national board's approval of the Wages and Working Conditions package on March 29. He also vowed to continue to "work hard to improve the lives of all actors and their families."

Meanwhile, AFTRA issued a press release that also claimed to have performers' best interests at heart.  Roberta Reardon, National President of AFTRA said...

"AFTRA's leadership believes that our union must devote its energies first and foremost to working on behalf of performers...During the past year, AFTRA has fought hard and expended an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources to maintain the integrity of our Phase One joint bargaining process with Screen Actors Guild so we could sit across the table from the industry with total and unequivocal unity. Unfortunately, SAG leadership has made this impossible.

"For the past year, SAG leadership in Hollywood has engaged in a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement, culminating in a recent attempt to decertify an AFTRA daytime soap opera. As a result of this continued and ongoing behavior by SAG leadership, which at its core harms all working performers and the labor movement, we find ourselves unable to have confidence in their ability to live up to the principles of partnership and union solidarity. AFTRA believes it must now devote its full energies to working on behalf of performers, and not wasting time assessing whether our partner is being honest with us.

"The board's approval of a suspension of Phase One -- not a termination -- was mindful of the fact that there many among SAG's leadership that are as troubled by the events that have led us to this point as we are. We are hopeful that someday, the historic trust between these two organizations can be rebuilt -- in the best interests of all performers," said Reardon. 

The release also announced that internally AFTRA has approved a deal on behalf of performers with the four major broadcast networks...

"In unanimously approving the tentative agreement with the four major television networks and producers on the AFTRA Network TV Code, the National Board noted that the new agreement contains solid increases in wage rates for all categories, increased contributions for the AFTRA Health and Retirement plan, and addresses discrete issues affecting every category of performer. In addition, the agreement preserves significant principles which are a hallmark of AFTRA contracts -- such as universal coverage of background performers and contract security for daytime serial contract players."

Before concluding the release, AFTRA again noted how the new deal will benefit performers, especially in one of the areas of most concern -- new media...

"This contract is extraordinary for performers and made significant progress on many fronts, including importantly new media jurisdiction and compensation," said Reardon.

Obviously, both unions are eager to paint themselves as the biggest advocates for performers. Now it's just a matter of who can pound out a deal with the AMPTP first. We're taking bets...got 20 bucks?

Nominations Announced for Lortel Awards

The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers has announced the nominations for the 23rd Annual Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding achievement Off-Broadway, to be presented May 5 at the Union Square Theatre, 100 East 17th St. A limited number of tickets for the ceremony will go on sale to the public on April 1 through the Union Square Theatre Box Office and ticketmaster.com. The Lortels, awarded since 1986, will include three special awards given to Theodore Mann (the Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence), Primary Stages (Outstanding Body of Work), and Horizon, produced by New York Theatre Workshop (Unique Theatrical Experience).

--Anna Bengel

AFTRA Goes It Alone

The gloves are officially off!

AFTRA leaders made the much anticipated joint meeting with SAG board members short, sweet, and controversial today. According to published reports, AFTRA president Roberta Reardon and her coterie announced the union will suspend their 27-year joint bargaining agreement with SAG in order to negotiate a primetime TV agreement directly with producers.

In a just-released statement, Reardon implied SAG's recent attempt to gain jurisdiction over the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful--which has been operating under an AFTRA contract for 50 years--was the final straw.

"SAG leadership in Hollywood has engaged in a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement, culminating in a recent attempt to decertify an AFTRA daytime soap opera," Reardon stated. "As a result of this continued and ongoing behavior by SAG leadership, which at its core harms all working performers and the labor movement, we find ourselves unable to have any confidence in their ability to live up to the principles of partnership and union solidarity."

"AFTRA believes it must devote its full energies to working on behalf of performers, and not wasting time assessing whether our partner is being honest with us."

Oooh, snap!

SAG President Alan Rosenberg sounded somewhat shell-shocked in his statement responding to AFTRA's action. "We spent weeks working with our fellow actors in AFTRA on joint proposals to improve the lives of all working actors," he stated. "AFTRA's refusal now to bargain together with us and their last-second abandonment of the joint process is calculated, cynical and may serve the interests of their institution, but not its members."

AFTRA's move took this Strike Watcher by surprise. The two unions appeared to be working together more harmoniously than in recent months when they jointly announced their Wages and Working Conditions Committees had approved proposals the national joint board would have considered today. Fortunately, my esteemed colleague Andrew Salomon pointed out one never knows what's going to happen given SAG and AFTRA's rocky past. Tis very true today and will make for some awkward moments in the halls of 5757 Wilshire Blvd. on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, the AMPTP just weighed in with a statement applauding AFTRA's move. The producers and AFTRA have always been on the same page about opening talks as soon as possible. Now that AFTRA has decided to go it alone, I expect their negotiations (sans SAG) could begin as early as this week.

The AMPTP stated, "We are determined, as we have always been, to work hard and bargain reasonably with the actors' unions so that we can all avoid another harmful, unnecessary strike."

We'll keep you posted....

--Lauren Horwitch

2008 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award Winner Announced

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announces that Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder is the winner of its 2008 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright. The award is based on her career, but is focused on her 2007 play Gee's Bend, which depicts the turbulent history of African-Americans in the 20th century by focusing on a single family in the real community of Gee's Bend, Alabama.

The Osborn Award, established in 1993 to honor the memory of Theatre Communications Group and American Theatre play editor M. Elizabeth Osborn, is designed to recognize the work of an author who has not yet achieved national stature (e.g. has not had a significant New York production, been staged in more than a few regional theatres, or received other major national awards). The award includes a $1,000 prize and honorees are recognized in The Best Plays Theatre Yearbook.

Gee's Bend was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers Project, with a 2006 reading in the Project's Festival of New Plays and a fully-staged premiere in January 2007 at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. It has since toured the state and received productions across the country, with more scheduled for this year.

The award will be presented tomorrow, March 29 at the Humana Festival of New Plays in Louisville, KY.

-- Daniel Lehman

Playing Nicely... For Now

As my esteemed Left-Coast colleague Lauren Horwitch reported yesterday, SAG and AFTRA seem to be playing nicely after nearly severing relations earlier this year. But before everyone holds hands and cues up "Reunited", there is still a strong sense of wariness as the two sides finalize a list of demands for the studios and networks on a new TV/film contract. Two sources indicated to Strike Watch earlier in the week that no one is ready to commit to the idea that an amicable negotiation, at least on the union side of the table, means that long-standing issues between SAG and AFTRA will be resolved quickly.

"The balance of politics and issues for this coming weekend is razor [thin], to say the least," one wrote in an email this week.

That may have something to do with the members of the unions' joint negotiating committee. According to Daily Variety, representatives for SAG include George Coe and David Joliffe, partisans of Membership First, the Los Angeles-based faction that holds a vast majority of the seats in the Hollywood branch and has favored a hard-line stance against AFTRA. According to a Membership First source, Coe contemplated resigning his seat on the board after SAG withdrew in February a resolution that might have dissolved Phase One, the longtime joint-bargaining agreement the guild has with AFTRA. Then again, it may not have anything to do with that at all. No one is commenting much outside of news releases.

Still, it stands to reason the unions will do their best to find common ground in the run-up to talks with the networks and studios. What happens after that is anybody's guess.

--Andrew Salomon

'Stop-Loss'

Stop-Loss boasts the same emotional sensitivity and fine craftsmanship of filmmaker Kimberly Peirce's acclaimed feature debut, Boys Don't Cry. Unfortunately, it lacks the key element that made that film such a transcendent experience: a tour de force lead performance.

Ryan Phillippe stars as Brandon King, a good ol' boy Texas soldier who's just come home from Iraq. Brandon is eager to return to civilian life, but finds himself the victim of "stop-loss" -- a military policy wherein soldiers are sent back into combat after they've completed their voluntary contracts. He bolts, going on an impromptu road trip with his best pal's girlfriend (Abbie Cornish), hoping to find a way out.

The role of Brandon requires a good deal of dramatic heavy lifting, and Phillippe just isn't quite up to the task. He goes through the motions, occasionally hinting at solid, honest emotion, but he never fully reveals the conflicted soul viewers are supposed to connect with. There's something a little blank slate-ish about his presence, a stoicism that's been used to fine effect in films like Breach and Crash. Here, it doesn't quite work - we never truly feel Brandon's passion and anguish the way we should.

This wouldn't be quite so noticeable if the cast around Phillippe wasn't so uniformly excellent. As Brandon's unstable buddy Steve, rising star Channing Tatum (Step Up, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) proves that he's one to watch, infusing his performance with charisma and verve. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, meanwhile, continues to demonstrate that he's one of the most interesting young actors working today: playing a tormented, sleepy-eyed vet, he makes you feel his character's lack of direction and deep-seated pain. The Australian Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) is appropriately understated as Michelle, Steve's girlfriend, and lets her beautifully expressive eyes do most of the talking. Relative newcomer Rasuk, meanwhile, almost steals the show entirely as a badly-injured vet trying to keep his good spirits about him.

Though Phillippe's ho-hum performance leaves a bit of a hole at the center of the film, Peirce is still in fine form. She tells her story with a keen focus on simple human emotion and an obvious empathy for the plight of her characters. The Iraq-set combat scenes are brutal and devastating, while the States-side sequences pack just the right amount of dramatic punch. If nothing else, Stop-Loss shows us that Peirce isn't merely a one-hit wonder. We can only hope that next time, she'll find a star worthy of her talents.

Reviewed by Sarah Kuhn
[email protected]
Genre: Drama   
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Written by: Mark Richard & Kimberly Peirce
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish, and Victor Rasuk

Think Broadway Is Expensive?

Theatre critic Mark Shenton writes in his blog for the U.K.'s The Guardian that "the West End is now officially more expensive to see a show than on Broadway. Top price tickets to see the original production of Hairspray in New York are currently $110 (£55), whereas it costs £60 to see the same show at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. Ditto the Royal Opera House, which is already the most expensive opera house in the world, with a current top price of £195, compared to the New York's Met (£147), Milan's La Scala (£160) or Glyndebourne (£190)."

Shenton notes that in a "Robin Hood" move, some of the most expensive tickets at London's Royal Opera House will continue to rise in price, while the "cheap" seats will get a little cheaper. And even though ticket prices likely cannot be cut without sacrificing cast or production values, attempting to democratize the theatre once again -- in price, at least -- would undoubtedly bring  a large new audience to many shows.

Just don't complain about the weak dollar quite yet. Our theatre-going friends across the pond are getting ripped off, too.

-- Daniel Lehman

'No' Contest

Readers continue to write in about our new column Secret Agent Man, written by an anonymous talent agent. Here are two such letters. The first is in regard to the March 13 column, "No." The second is in response to the Feb. 28 column, "The History Boys (and Girls)." To read Secret Agent Man online, click here.

I wanted to express my gratitude for your recent Back Stage article about the importance of saying no. I am an early-career actor new to NYC, the experience of which has been expectedly slow-going, mostly in part to my feeling that actors -- especially women -- are too apt to do anything.

I was particularly taken by your use of the word prostitute to describe participation in a reality show. In my view, the word actor is still somewhat synonymous with whore, as it was several hundred years ago.

Few people seem to realize that ultimately the industry cannot change unless performers are willing to refrain from projects that don't serve them as artists or serve art itself. I do not feel any less dignified as a temporary receptionist than when I am working as an actor on meaningful projects. After all, we are willing to strike for money. Why are we not willing to do so for other aspects of the industry?

I hope to see more articles from Secret Agent Man in the future.

-- H.W.
New York

The tired cliché of the "business of show business" has really taken away a great deal of the fun of acting. I have great memories of absorbing Hollywood history when I started in the late 1970s. A friend of mine, Charles Pogue, who later became a fairly successful screenwriter, and I used to spend some of our off time exploring old Hollywood haunts, watching old movies, and hearing great stories from an old bartender at Formosa Cafe [in West Hollywood].

I personally feel that saturation in the industry served us far better than these casting-agent seminars ever could, provided me with some great memories, and it was a hell of a lot more fun. In other words, your column was good advice.

-- Patrick Skelton
Los Angeles

Premature Evaluation

In his March 5 column in the New York Post, Michael Riedel revealed an email exchange between himself and John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America. Weidman upbraided the theatre reporter for delivering his opinion of some of the songs performed at a “sneak peek” of the new musical Shrek. Weidman objected to Riedel reviewing an important element of a show that hadn’t even gone into rehearsal. Riedel responded that with Broadway tickets going on sale months in advance and prices soaring to $200–$450, it was appropriate for columnists “to give their impression of a show” well before its opening date. His point: If producers are going to charge such prices, the theatregoing public has a right to as much information as soon as possible. “These people are not making art. They’re in it for the money. Period,” Riedel concluded.

Regardless of their motives, the creators of a theatrical work are entitled to some leeway when their show has yet to play a public performance for a paying audience. Riedel’s criticism of Shrek’s score may be accurate, but the show is a work in development, and his premature assessment could damage its chances even if every song he heard is replaced before performances commence.

In this age of instant information and Internet chatter, it’s inevitable that nonprofessional opinions of previewing productions will proliferate. As soon as a show starts previews, numerous chat boards are filled with amateur reviews. One of those boards, All That Chat on TalkinBroadway.com, is attempting to curtail early reports by refusing to post opinions of dress rehearsals or gypsy run-throughs—performances not meant for the general public and where the invited audience consists mostly of theatre professionals.

Journalists should not be delivering their opinions on shows that have yet to give a public performance. As a reporter—not a critic—Riedel can certainly write about a show by quoting sources close to the production and monitoring the advance at the box office, but courtesy and fairness demand he withhold his own opinion until the show is before a paying audience.    

-- David Sheward

Monologues for Youngsters

A book of monologues that's equally concerned with helping young actors understand theory and develop characters, Private Stories is often right on the mark, but at times it's too simplistic and confused about its thesis. Though most of the information in the preface and the "Notes to the Actor" seems old hat, it's easily digestible and a good starting point for young actors with no clue how to begin.

An acting teacher and drama therapist, Elizabeth Bauman developed her "seven key questions" while working with a young actor who couldn't connect to his material. They include "Who are you?" "Where are you?" and "Why are you there?" -- all of them familiar to actors. The seventh -- "What clothing (costume) or props do you need?" -- demonstrates how basic some of this advice is. Following the introductory sections are 32 age-appropriate monologues for boys and girls. All are original pieces written by Bauman based on conversations with her students.

Bauman's tone can be kind and nurturing. Urging her readers to make interesting choices, she writes, "Remember, there is no right or wrong" -- helpful advice to a young actor concerned with looking foolish. Yet her tone can also turn gooey, such as when she notes that actors need a "supportive, safe, and nurturing environment in which to validate and express those emotions." Here's another: "It is a most magical journey."

The book is rife with grammatical errors and bad margins, and it's set in an off-puttingly large font that makes sense only when you consider the book's target readers. Then again, Bauman's audience is unclear: Is she writing for young actors, their teachers, or their parents? But her biggest gaffe comes after she lists her seven questions. She writes, "These are questions to help you. Use them only if you want to." Huh? Given the book's subtitle, it's surprising she's now making her questions optional. Is Bauman trying not to pressure young actors? One would hope she would stick to her guns.

'Private Stories: Monologues for Young Actors Ages 8 to 16 and the Seven Key Questions to Unlock Your Imagination', by Elizabeth Bauman, Limelight Editions, 2007, paperback, 152 pages, $10.95.

-- Scott Matthew Harris