I've noticed this trend the last few shows I've worked on, and I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed it in their work, as well. I have a lot of actors and designers (and the occasionl producer) "multi-tasking" multiple shows at once, AND it's affecting the show I'm working. I realize that to make a living actors and deisngers need to work on more than one contract at once, (heck, I even have a day job) sometimes, but up until the last year or so, I've never had experience with it seriously affecting the show I was working on, with them.
However, in the last year, I've worked a couple of times with an otherwise brilliant sound guy who has never been to a tech, ran half a tech without either sound or lighting designers in the space, canceled or seriously abbreviated three rehearsals because a vital actor suddenly had a "shooting day," had to string along a young hopeful understudy without actually going to the expense of hiring her (in a theatre that typicaly doesn't do understudies) because one of the cast members "might have a film gig one week in the run, and can't guarentee filming will wrap up every night in time for me to get to the theatre," (that one made me ill, it was so unfair to the prospective understudy) and had to re-shuffle an understudy's tech put-in two days before it was to happen because the producer rented out the mainstage space to a conference the afternoon we were scheduled to rehearse.
Has anyone else noticed an upswing in this sort of behavior in the past few years? And how on earth do you deal with it when the Producer says, "That's ok, we'll work around it," but doesn't give you any lee-way to actually work around it? I'm getting so frustrated with being the only person working on a show acutally focused on the show!