Messages

1726

The Hardline / Trying to explain LORT scheduling rules to actors

« on: Aug 30, 2008, 01:23 pm »

I have never received as many questions regarding rehearsal hours as I do with this cast. 

Below is something I have typed out.  (I attached as a word document as well).

Any LORT SMs want to look over and see if it makes sense, or I am making some stupid, stupid mistake?

- - - -

I have been getting a lot of questions regarding rehearsal hours and scheduling and want to just sort of explain the whole process.  Please ask to take a look at the LORT rule book, or you can download it online from the AEA Web Site.  All of these are rules for LORT; if you are working on a different contract, there are different rules.


Equity gives us a block of hours per week for rehearsal:
•   During Non-Performance Weeks, small cast shows (14 or less) the work-week is 48 hours long, with no more then 45 hours allotted for rehearsal.
•   During Non-Performance Weeks, large cast shows (15 or more) the work-week is 50 hours long, with no more then 47 hours allotted for rehearsal.
•   During the seven days leads up to the first-public performance (preview), the work-week is 52 hours long, with all 52 hours available for rehearsal.
•   During a week that is both rehearsal and performance, the work-week is 50 hours long, with all 50 hours available for rehearsal or performance.  (This applys to previews, as well as rollover situations.)

(The extra hours for the work-week, that are not for rehearsal use are for photo calls and/or costume fittings)

We are allowed to schedule up to 6 hours (outside of rehearsal hours) for costume fittings or photo calls per production.  (We can schedule more, we just have to pay overtime.)  Note costume fittings that fall with in rehearsal hours, do not count against this 6 hours.

These photo calls/costume fittings must be scheduled consecutive to the rehearsal block.  (So no fair calling you in for a costume fitting at 8:00a, and then rehearsing you from 1:00p to 11:00p.)

The Span of the Day cannot exceed 12-hours without going into overtime.  You must be given 12-hour notice of the span of the next day.  (Although there is no rule about when the schedule needs to be broken down.) 

There is the terminology of rehearsal days where we call something an 8 out of 10, a 7 out of 9 or the infamous, 10 out of 12.  This is reference to the rehearsal block.  Basically this means once rehearsal begins, for the typical 8 out 10, I have ten hours to schedule 8 hours of rehearsal.  If I start rehearsal at noon, I need to be done with rehearsal 10 hours later, and can only rehearse 8 out of those 10 hours.  (An 8 out of 10 assumes a 2 hour break . . . )

But remember when I said the span of day could be up to 12 hours long, that give us 2 hours to schedule photo calls or costume fittings, so given the example of rehearsing 12:00n to 10:00p, I could do costume fittings from 10:00a to 12:00n, or 10:00p to 12:00m.

Everyone knows the breaks are 5 minutes after 55 minutes or 10 minutes after an hour-and-20 minutes.  You get a meal break 5 hours into rehearsal – most of the time.

If a costume fitting is attached to the rehearsal, the rules allow you to go six hours from your first call to your meal break.  (That can be a 1-hour fitting and 5-hour rehearsal, or a 5 hour fitting and 1-hour rehearsal.)

In the case of a straight six, the rules basically state a 20-minute break needs to be scheduled during the day.  If you are doing an occasional straight-six day (that is, not an entire week of straight sixes), the six hours is your total workday.  Nothing else can be scheduled without overtime.  (If you are doing a week of straight sixes, there are 2-hours outside of rehearsal that can be scheduled for fittings or photo calls.  The actor is given an option to have a meal break between rehearsal and other calls.)

Interesting bit of trivia, if a straight-six is scheduled, it counts as 8-hours against your total rehearsal week.  (Don’t ask why, it’s very complicated)

Also, note, all these rules apply individually to the actor or stage manager.  So, one actor could have a span of day from 10:00a to 10:00p, and another could be from 12:00n – 12:00m.  As long as the rules are all followed for each individual actor.  (So one actor could have a straight six, another one could have a 10 out of 12.)

And, remember, anything can be scheduled, as long as overtime is paid.


 
Now . . .

If you are in performance / rehearsal situation – such as preview week or in a rollover situation, the following rules are in place.

•   You have a 50-hour work-week.
•   On one performance days, you can rehearse 5 hours per days, as long as you show call (half-hour until the end of curtain) is 3.5 hours or less.  (If your show call is 3.5 to 4 hours, you can only rehearse 4.5 hours, and so on . . . )
•   If you elect NOT to rehearse on a two-show day, then on one-show days, you can rehearse an extra 30-minutes.  (so 5.5 hours as long as your show is only 3.5 hours.)

So . . . a typical one-show day for rollover/preview period would be, for a cast that has elected NOT to rehearse on a two-show day, and wants 2-hour break.

11:30a   Costume Fitting
12:00n    Rehearsal
5:30p      End of Rehearsal

7:30p      Half-hour
8:00p      Performance
11:30p   End of the Day

   

1727

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Ricola

« on: Aug 28, 2008, 07:33 am »

They do charge for shipping now.

1728

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Question For NY SM's

« on: Aug 26, 2008, 09:15 am »

In general, where what's comfortable for the work you will be doing; and as professional as you want to be taken.

1729

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: At A Cross Roads

« on: Aug 23, 2008, 09:07 pm »

I have been staging managing professionally for 9 years with no more then 2 weeks off between gigs (I did take one six week vacation, but that doesn't count), and I have been supporting myself solely through stage management for 12 years.

It can be stable if you are good at it and hustle.

1730

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: At A Cross Roads

« on: Aug 23, 2008, 09:22 am »

Do you have to choose a major today?

Do you GE, try a couple classes of each - see if you can intern in one or both fields, or at least shadow.

Then make a decision.

At 17,18 or 19 is not the best time to making huge decisions.

1731

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Slightly Nervous, Advice and Words of Wisdom Please?

« on: Aug 22, 2008, 03:49 pm »

Working with an experienced asm is a blessing.

I think to often we get hung with I am the SM, your are the ASM, that is the PA - if you are smart, in my opinion, you are team, and having strong, strong people on the team is what you want.

1732

Employment / Re: Leaving a job

« on: Aug 21, 2008, 02:42 pm »

If you are not on contract, then I think you are giving plenty of notice.

And if it makes you feel better, I left this industry twice.  Each time I left for a different reason, and it gave me a tremendous amount of insight into myself and why I had gotten into theatre in the first place.  It's amazing to go out and do SOMETHING else for awhile that may just highlight why you loved theatre (or stage management) in the first place.

If you chose to leave theatre, remember it will be here when you are ready to come back - just as well as stage management.  If you plan on leaving stage management, and go into other aspects, know that your time as a stage manager will be a tremendous asset in other areas in theatre.  (One of the best lighting designers I have worked with is an ex-stage manager.)

1733

Employment / Re: Leaving a job

« on: Aug 20, 2008, 07:26 pm »

Breaking a contract without adequate notice will almost always reflect negatively on you - but giving enough notice, offering to to train a replacement, and working on making your transition out the door easier . . . all will help.

Giving legit reasons to back out - like what you have written here - also helps.

1734

Students and Novice Stage Managers / On College from WSJ

« on: Aug 19, 2008, 12:26 am »

http://wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

OPINION
For Most People,
College Is a Waste of Time
By CHARLES MURRAY
August 13, 2008; Page A17
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different purposes.

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the bachelor's degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics -- and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the local public library?

Certification tests need not undermine the incentives to get a traditional liberal-arts education. If professional and graduate schools want students who have acquired one, all they need do is require certification scores in the appropriate disciplines. Students facing such requirements are likely to get a much better liberal education than even our most elite schools require now.

Certification tests will not get rid of the problems associated with differences in intellectual ability: People with high intellectual ability will still have an edge. Graduates of prestigious colleges will still, on average, have higher certification scores than people who have taken online courses -- just because prestigious colleges attract intellectually talented applicants.

But that's irrelevant to the larger issue. Under a certification system, four years is not required, residence is not required, expensive tuitions are not required, and a degree is not required. Equal educational opportunity means, among other things, creating a society in which it's what you know that makes the difference. Substituting certifications for degrees would be a big step in that direction.

The incentives are right. Certification tests would provide all employers with valuable, trustworthy information about job applicants. They would benefit young people who cannot or do not want to attend a traditional four-year college. They would be welcomed by the growing post-secondary online educational industry, which cannot offer the halo effect of a BA from a traditional college, but can realistically promise their students good training for a certification test -- as good as they are likely to get at a traditional college, for a lot less money and in a lot less time.

Certification tests would disadvantage just one set of people: Students who have gotten into well-known traditional schools, but who are coasting through their years in college and would score poorly on a certification test. Disadvantaging them is an outcome devoutly to be wished.

No technical barriers stand in the way of evolving toward a system where certification tests would replace the BA. Hundreds of certification tests already exist, for everything from building code inspectors to advanced medical specialties. The problem is a shortage of tests that are nationally accepted, like the CPA exam.

But when so many of the players would benefit, a market opportunity exists. If a high-profile testing company such as the Educational Testing Service were to reach a strategic decision to create definitive certification tests, it could coordinate with major employers, professional groups and nontraditional universities to make its tests the gold standard. A handful of key decisions could produce a tipping effect. Imagine if Microsoft announced it would henceforth require scores on a certain battery of certification tests from all of its programming applicants. Scores on that battery would acquire instant credibility for programming job applicants throughout the industry.

An educational world based on certification tests would be a better place in many ways, but the overarching benefit is that the line between college and noncollege competencies would be blurred. Hardly any jobs would still have the BA as a requirement for a shot at being hired. Opportunities would be wider and fairer, and the stigma of not having a BA would diminish.

Most important in an increasingly class-riven America: The demonstration of competency in business administration or European history would, appropriately, take on similarities to the demonstration of competency in cooking or welding. Our obsession with the BA has created a two-tiered entry to adulthood, anointing some for admission to the club and labeling the rest as second-best.

Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone -- is one way to help us to recognize that common bond.

Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality" (Crown Forum).

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

1735

College and Graduate Studies / Re: Is an AA degree enough?

« on: Aug 18, 2008, 05:32 pm »

It depends on who is interviewing you.

All things being equal, two identical resumes one with AA and one with BA, I would probably favor the BA.  (I tend to favor MFAs over that as well, but my personal bias.)

When someone hires a stage manager, they are hiring the skill set, but also paying for the education and experience. 

1736

College and Graduate Studies / Re: Is an AA degree enough?

« on: Aug 18, 2008, 04:55 pm »

Enough for what?

I am huge advocate for getting an education for education's sake.

There is no degree requirement to be a stage manager, but, as a human being, you might want to continue your education.

I try to strongly discourage the concept of going to college for a specific job.  It puts tremendous pressure on people to make up their minds what they are going to do for the rest of their life at the age of 17, which makes A LOT of people miserable in their 20's as they TRY to make the career they went to college work for them.

Hell, at 17 (even at 20), I had no idea I wanted to be a stage manager.  I had no idea that was going to do theatre - but I cherish my education because it made me an all around more rounded person.  (I know this sounds a little pollyannaish - but the my entire random, odd and long education experience makes me part of who I am today.)

But, hell, if you are working at the level you want to be working at and you feel you are marketable at the level you want to be working now, and ready to be the business of one - then go for it.

1737

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Gratuitious Paperwork

« on: Aug 15, 2008, 08:40 am »

It's very interesting, when I started this job, I thought it was all about fancy paperwork and my technical skills, now, I know, it's all about my personality and my people skills (and the fact I bring bagels in once awhile.)

Paperwork is a tool.  You don't show up at a job site with every tool in home depot, you bring the tools you need to get the job done.

1738

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Gratuitious Paperwork

« on: Aug 14, 2008, 01:33 pm »

I actually find myself doing less and less the more I travel down this career path.

I think the show will demand exactly as much paperwork as it needs, and doing more it just plan silly.  Although, I have had to work on some complicated shows that required me to create extensive paperwork (heavy automation shows to make sure weight loads were correct and numbers of rotations not violated . . .) and when I have to do more complicated paperwork, it makes me feel better for having a purpose to do it rather then just doing it.

(I am also really keen on one format - multiple uses - like using the prop list as a basis for the prop pre-set; using the character scene breakdown to create costume quick change plots.)

The more time I spend in rehearsal

1739

Employment / Re: I've offered the job but no response?

« on: Aug 13, 2008, 03:57 pm »

You know it's funny . . . I have totally accepted a job via e-mail, but I have never hired someone only by e-mail.  Interesting.

I think indeed you should e-mail the first party and give them a deadline of 24 hours, and then move on.  But in the end, if they are not responding within 24 hours, I think you can move on to the next person.  Heck, even if I called someone to offer a job and left a message, if I didn't get an answer in 24 hours, I would on.  Especially in ASAP situation. 

1740

Employment / Re: Resume question--current show

« on: Aug 13, 2008, 07:14 am »

I always find my rule of thumb is once I sign the contract to add it to my resume . . . currently right now I have four shows on my resume that I haven't start rehearsal - I put the season and the year next to it (spring, 09) for example.