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Messages - JMullane

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The Hardline / Re: "7 out of 9" vs. "8 out of 10"
« on: Aug 14, 2015, 03:57 pm »
I suppose the takeaway from this discussion is that there are many interpretations of even the most basic rules in the contract, so getting lost in theoretical details may not be as productive as handling each practical situation as it arises.

It's a little crazy to me that Equity Business Reps can and have ruled differently about whether or not you should count an actor's rehearsal hours based on the span of day they are called for (minus only the meal break), versus actual hours spent rehearsing (minus any time during the rehearsal day they are not called into the studio).

I can imagine legitimate arguments for both ways of doing things, but it seems like a really big fundamental disagreement that could vastly change how much overtime someone gets. Just the idea of that being subject to interpretation makes me uneasy.

But my unease aside, this has been a very interesting topic for me to read other people's opinions about. Thanks Matthew and Ruth!

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The Hardline / Re: "7 out of 9" vs. "8 out of 10"
« on: Aug 05, 2015, 01:45 am »
Of course I'm making it too complicated, Ruth.    :)
I'm definitely thinking more hypothetically than practically. And that always gets me into trouble. Anyway...

Ruth's response makes me think about the rule slightly differently. Now I read it more like a menu with two options.

On non-performance days, at the theatre's option, rehearsal can be either of the following:
For rehearsals that consist of 7 work hours or less, the rehearsal span of day must be 9 hours or less.
For rehearsals that consist of more than 7 work hours up to a maximum of 8, the rehearsal span of day must be 10 hours or less.

So in this case, a rehearsal that is 12:00n-5:00p, 7:00p-9:00p is a legit 7 out of 9. But if you try to schedule an actor for 12:00n-5:00p, 8:00p-10:00p it exceeds the "out of 9", so you have to credit the actor for an 8 out of 10.

But that brings up yet another question in my mind. Can you actually give an actor a 2-hour break and have the whole break not count as rehearsal hours? Or does it break this other rule?...
Quote
Rule 51(C)(6)(f): "Rehearsals must be consecutive except for a break of 1½ hours after five consecutive hours of work. This break shall be reduced (or eliminated on a 5½-hour rehearsal day when permitted under section (C)(4) above) in accordance with section (E) below."

I read that rule to mean when you tally an actor's rehearsal hours, you can only deduct 1.5 hours (or 1 hour if reduced) for their meal break, and the rest of their rehearsal span of day counts as rehearsal hours whether they were really rehearsing the whole time or not. And if that's correct, then you couldn't ever really reach the span of day limits of a 7 out of 9 or an 8 out of 10 without running out of rehearsal hours first.

But I'm probably making all that out to be more complicated than it should be too.  ;)

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The Hardline / "7 out of 9" vs. "8 out of 10"
« on: Aug 03, 2015, 03:32 am »
I have a question about a particular rule from the LORT agreement, Rule (51)(C)(1): "At the Theatre’s option, on non-performance days, rehearsal shall not exceed “7 out of 9” or “8 out of 10” consecutive hours."

My question is this: Why not just say that rehearsal shall not exceed "8 out of 10" consecutive hours?

It seems simple to determine what exceeds an 8 out of 10. You just can't rehearse more than 8 hours that day, and you have to make sure the entire work day is less than 10 hours inclusive of the meal break.

But what exceeds a 7 out of 9 that wouldn't just automatically become an 8 out of 10?

Are we saying that if you want to rehearse an actor more than 7 hours in the rehearsal day, the actor's span of day must then count as 10 hours (since it exceeds a 7 out of 9, you must call it an 8 out of 10). And how does that affect things? Does it affect 12-hour turnaround, so that if an actor rehearses 12n-5p & 6p-9p (an 8 out of 9), you really have to call it either a 11a-9p span of day or a 12n-10p span of day, and make sure they get the proper 12 hour turnaround based on one of those spans.

Or is scheduling an 8 out of 9 rehearsal day fine, because it does not "exceed" an 8 our of 10? And if so, again, why include the "7 out of 9" option in the rule?

Is the rule just saying you can't schedule 7 hours of rehearsal spread across a 10 hour span of day (that is, without officially crediting the actor for 8 hours worked for the day, even if one hour was part of an unusually long meal break.) And does that mean as soon as an actor's span of day is longer than 9 hours, they must be credited as having worked 8 hours that day?

The more I think about the rule, the more my head spins about what the spirit of it is, and what it's trying to say we shouldn't be doing.

Does anyone have a simple explanation?

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I was recently in a situation where I was hired as a non-union Production Assistant for a show that was going to be staffed by one Equity SM and one PA. However, Equity then ruled that the show needed to have an Equity ASM as well. The theatre asked me if I would like to be the ASM.

Previously I assumed that accepting an equity contract as ASM meant that I would be required to join the union (and would thus prevent me from working as a PA at many theatres in the future), but apparently this is not the case.

After sifting through some rumors, I called Equity and they told me that you may sign an Equity contract and include a letter stating your intent NOT to become a member, and you may do this as many times as you like.

Am I the only one who assumed membership was required? Maybe this situation just doesn't come up very often because theatres see union membership as a sign of experience. I personally have never worked with anyone who was on an Equity Contract who was not a member before.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of arrangement? I just always thought it couldn't be done and was very surprised to learn otherwise!

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Hi all!

I'm currently working on my second four-person stage management team, and I am noticing how the division of duties in rehearsal makes such a big difference in how I think about the job. I was wondering if anyone had any favorite ways to dividing the duties in rehearsal, or particularly interesting ways they've encountered, or even horror stories about ways that haven't worked for them.

My first four-person team was 1 equity PSM, 1 equity ASM, and 2 interns (I was one), and we were working on a season of big musicals in the round.
PSM: took blocking, wrote cues in her book, called the breaks, timed the scenes, wrote the report, scheduled rehearsal for the next day.
ASM: gathering and shuffling actors, created the run book, make sure the furniture and set pieces in the room were in the right place.
Intern #1: props tracking, costume tracking, entrance/exit plot, doubles on distributing paperwork
Intern #2: on book, lines notes, tracked script changes, help with the presets and shifts when needed, doubles on distributing paperwork
(Company Management would handle coffee etc in the break area)

My current four-person team splits it up like this:
SM: Blocking, Cues, Calling Breaks, Report Notes, Scheduling
ASM: Run Book, Scene-by-scene breakdown, doubles on Props, preset things in the room
Non-Eq PA: On book, Line notes, Costume tracking, Entrance/Exit plot, Character-Scene Breakdown, help preset when needed
Intern: doubles on Props with ASM, help preset things in the room, gathering actors, making coffee, distributing paperwork
(Assistant Director tracks script changes)


Any other interesting ways of splitting things up? Or additional duties you've seen given to a member of the team that really worked well?

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Employment / Re: North Shore Music Theatre
« on: Mar 03, 2008, 07:04 pm »
I worked there for two seasons, as a PA and as a SM Intern, and it was a great experience. Their internships are especially worthwhile - you get a lot of responsibility and you get paid overtime - I never once felt as if I was being taken advantage of for cheap labor.

Also, the general attitude of everyone at the company was wonderful. I've worked at some companies since then that seem to have a high-stress way of dealing with things. Everyone at NSMT just seemed to have a healthy perspective.

With the major staff turnover and restructuring of departments that seems to be going on, I'd expect things to be in a state of flux for a little while. On the good side, it seemed like the restructuring was aimed at better handling their show overlaps (I believe they wanted to have 2 fulltime SMs instead of 1 Resident PSM, along with 2 Wardrobe Supervisors, effectively creating 2 teams who would work every other show).  I hope the plan works, though in my humble opinion we did a pretty good job with show overlaps with what we had before.  8)

And yes, I'm a big fan of their ASM!

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Employment / Re: Going to NYC?
« on: Dec 07, 2007, 10:56 pm »
I recommend Chicago. I just spent almost a year there and Stage Management jobs are easy to come by. However, you cannot expect much money to start out with. There are tons of storefront theatres that need stage managers, but they have no money and you will pretty much be tossed into the fire with no support. It's a great opportunity if you can keep your head in those situations, but be careful about joining a sinking ship and getting blamed for its failure! News about the performance of new stage managers travels fast in the community, and unfortunately I have seen SMs get blamed for situations that were out of control from no fault of their own.

After college, I looked for internships at large regional theatres near where I lived. I made it clear to the theatres that I was into Stage Management, but I was open to secondary intrests like run crew, carpentry, props, electrics...  If you can get an internship at a big theatre you can learn a lot and make good contacts who can give you advice on your next job, and hopefully act as good references. That helps you avoid getting stuck with rejection for too long.

The internships I got were at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, CT, and later at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, MA. Both places pay interns reasonably and are excellent places to learn.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Creating Paperwork
« on: Jun 29, 2007, 05:11 am »
At my last job working in a COST theatre we had a 4 person SM team (PSM, ASM, 2 interns). The PSM generated "boilerplate documents" - templates to establish the format for all documents that would be generated by stage management. Then - the PSM would normally be updating the entrance/exit plot and lights/sound/deck cues during rehearsal. The ASM would be working on shift plots for the crew. One intern would handle script updates, and the other intern would handle props tracking. Each of these were hefty jobs because it was in-the-round with typically at least 8 directions for actors and props to enter/exit, as well as many places for the crew to be, and a good deal of stage mechanics to look out for.

The entrance/exit plot would be given to the costume department, and they would handle generating the costume plot.

Lights and Sound would also generate their own detailed cue sheets which would be decided upon by respective designers.

This system worked pretty well! Occasionally, when rehearsals were split into different rooms, we would have to be aware of who was out of the main room and cover any notes that came up in their area. Really, we were tag-teaming the "information gathering" part of the job - and then each individual had the responsibility of sitting at the computer and entering the info into the actual document.

I did something similar in college when I had 2 ASMs. I made one ASM in charge of line notes/prompting. The other was in charge of props. The props ASM was  in charge of generating the preset and tracking paperwork. Line notes was a large part of that particular show, so the prompting ASM had their hands plenty full.

I like the "areas-of-responsibility" system. Helps keep people's brains on-track. =)

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Employment / Re: Updating a Production mid-run
« on: Jun 20, 2007, 05:38 am »
Here's what happened:

I basically caved in and asked a fellow SM at this theatre how one would reorganize the cue list in the lightboard. It ended up not being all that difficult. SO, I ended up doing a lot of extra lighting work for this theatre and not getting paid for it. However, I should have made it clear to them that I would not be executing an entire hang/focus/lighting design for the festival version of the show without getting paid a designer's fee. Once I did that, I set a bad precedent.

This particular theatre has no production staff and has a history of preying on the generosity of others - I've seen Directors organize all their own marketing and fundraising, costumers pay for their costumes out of pocket and never get reimbursed, actors never paid for their final week of performances, composers given fraudulent ticket sales breakdowns and cheated in royalties, health inspectors lied to, audience members bleeding in the lobby with no house staff on duty, loads of bounced checks or checks with double or triple tax withholding for no apparent reason, dangerous working conditions, and the list just goes on.

Needless to say, I think I'll be more careful about sticking to my employment agreements from now on, and refusing to do favors. And I would not ever work for this company again, nor would I recommend it to anyone.

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Employment / Updating a Production mid-run
« on: May 25, 2007, 01:39 am »
Hi everyone! I'm new to this forum. I'm a relatively new stage manager in my third year out of college, and I just started working in Chicago as a freelance SM.

So here's the question: I am the SM of a musical revue/sketch comedy show in an open-ended run at a non equity repertory theatre. We've been going for about 2 months. As part of my job it was understood that I would SM a separate version of the show to travel to a festival in another country for one week in May, after which we would return and continue running the show for about a month until my contract ran out and a new SM would take over. The festival version of the show has a lot of the same material, but it is in a different order with some segments cut and about 6 new songs/scenes.

We had a lighting designer during tech that did all our electrics work and design, and I have been making small repairs to the lights since then. For the festival version of the show we didn't really know what we'd be dealing with, so I ended up hanging a light plot and designing the lights from scratch for that week of shows - that was not something I expected to be doing but we were in another country performing in a theatre none of us had seen before so it just had to be done. Thankfully it worked wonderfully, but that was my first time doing an entire electrics job on my own.

We have now returned home and the director mentioned to me that he would like to perform the festival version of the show one time here in order to make an archival video tape - he wanted to know if that would be technically possible. I told him that it would take some work on my end to deal with the lighting problems. I took an afternoon to write new light cues in for the new segments of the show and I stored them on our light board at the end of the cue list (we run in rep and the old lightboard has a bit of a shady disk drive so we keep all the shows stored together in separate cue ranges). I know it's not the best way, but I was looking to make it work for one night. It requires me to jump around the cue list a lot, back and forth between scenes in order to patch it all together in the right order.

The director has just told me that he would like to permanently change the show to run the festival version from now on.

My question is - I feel like I've gone far beyond my job description dealing with lighting needs already. I don't want to have to jump around the cue list every night, and I definitely don't want my replacement to have to deal with it. I feel it is not my job to add new lighting into the show, and I don't particularly know how to reorganize our cues in the lightboard to run the new version of the show without jumping around.

Would it be too much to suggest they hire a lighting designer to handle these issues? Would it be too extreme if I refuse to keep running the show if they do not hire a lighting designer to streamline the cues?

I've just never really had to deal with a production revamp this late into the run. If only our director was not IN the show, I could escape his constant changes!!

-Jeremiah


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