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1

The Hardline / Equity breaks again

« on: Apr 18, 2016, 10:19 pm »

I swear that I saw this somewhere either here or in the Equity rules and now I can't  seem to unearth the quotable sections...

I have one Equity actor on my cast of six. It has been my understanding (along with that actor and the director) that in a scheduled six-hour rehearsal day ONE of the breaks (of the several 5 or 10 minute breaks that happen at 55 or 80 minutes as the director decides) needs to be a 20-minute break for lunch. Everyone on the cast has been fine with that approach. The Executive Manager (without a professional theatrical background) is concerned for the actor's well-being (long story, but his health is fine) and tells me that we must schedule a 1-hour lunch into the day - because according to Equity (according to said manager) an actor can't legally be made to work more then five hours without an hour-long break - thus making it a scheduled 7-hour day.

I've explained the 20-minute break rationale, and she's insisting that I enforce a rule that I can't find backup for EITHER WAY.

Please help. Thank you.

2

Introductions / Never thought to be doing this again...

« on: Apr 11, 2016, 05:58 pm »

More than a decade ago I was married to the SF Bay Area Equity rep, got to know many theatre people in the local community, and found my way into stage management - and mostly loved it. After 12 productions in 24 months, I had gotten very tired of needing to be hunting for work the instant I/we'd opened a show, so I found my way out again.

In January of this year I had an SM gig offered to me, two weeks after the start of rehearsals - no, they hadn't lost a stage manager, they just hadn't gotten around to hiring one. The best description of that job was five actors, four directors, and three weeks to put on a musical... and for all the chaos, I felt as though I'd come home. Since they were busy playing catch-up, my own catch-up got somewhat lost in the shuffle, but I'm still working on catching up. Whew. Before that show had opened, I found myself another SM gig, for a company that was hiring in January for rehearsals which won't start until June. (I'm sure you can see why the notion was appealing.) Then, to my surprise, the first company asked me to run another show for them, so...

Once upon a time I knew a lot more about professionalism than I feel I do now, and I'm needing to relearn and worse, see if I can reestablish the director's and cast's confidence in me. Ouch. I wish they weren't right, and I think I can be who they need again, but at the moment the whole mess feels pretty uncomfortable, which isn't helping my attitude even a little bit. I'm owning up to my errors, and more than glad to learn - but if anyone has any good suggestions (besides a continued striving for perfection) for building other's confidence I'd be more than happy to learn them.