Author Topic: How did you get your card?  (Read 19176 times)

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MarcieA

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #15 on: Aug 08, 2009, 03:00 pm »
Just signed my Off-Bway contract for my card!

Congrats to you Missliz! What's the show?
Companions whom I loved and still love, tell them my song.

missliz

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #16 on: Aug 10, 2009, 09:48 am »
Just signed my Off-Bway contract for my card!

Congrats to you Missliz! What's the show?


Thank you! Lizzie Borden: The Show. New kickass rock opera, opening in Sept.

www.lizziebordentheshow.com
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least. -Ionesco

MatthewShiner

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #17 on: Nov 30, 2013, 07:06 pm »
(Oh my, did I just wake a sleeping thread)

I was looking up this topic, and realized I didn't answer this, but maybe we can get a few more answers and update this.

I was offered my card for my second season at La Jolla Playhouse.

I was a PA on Jane Eyre - the musical (pre-Broadway run), and start the EMC program at that point (the theatre nicely paid the fee for me).  I then did another PA on Sweet Bird of Youth, where I ran the deck, while the two AEA SMs took turns calling the show.

Four months later, I was often an entire season as AEA ASM, so I only made it to 18 weeks on the EMC program before I was offered my contract.  So, I graduated grad school is March, 2000 - and I was an AEA SM by April, 2000. 

AEA Member for over 13 years now.   (SM for 25 years . . . )

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Anything posted here as in my own personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer - whomever they be at a given moment in time.

RuthNY

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #18 on: Dec 01, 2013, 09:21 am »
My, oh my--I didn't answer this thread either, when it was new. I got my card at age 27, on a NYC Mini-Contract show, that we performed at one of the now torn down Theatre Row houses on W. 42nd St. It was called "From Brooks With Love," about the lives of the people who worked at Brooks Brothers. It was not a great show or a good experience, but I've been a proud AEA Member for 30 years!
"Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they're fair with you."
--Alan Alda

Jessie_K

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #19 on: Dec 02, 2013, 10:51 am »
I got my AEA card the summer of 2001 when I took a season contract as PSM for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre.
I got my AGMA card when I worked at the Joffrey Ballet starting in 2007.

nick_tochelli

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #20 on: Dec 02, 2013, 12:19 pm »
I can't believe I didn't answer here either!

I received my card in a bathroom at Bethesda Fountain in Central park. At this point of the story, I usually go onto a tangent explaining elicit events and and clandestine meetings....and then say "Oh sorry, I was confusing the show with reality."

I worked on a show called "Ladies and Gents" which was a site specific production meant to take place in public restrooms. We did this in March when the bathrooms were still frigid. We called the show blind taking our own cues (I was running sound, the SM was running lights). Both shows run in real time with each other so timing is extremely important since characters from the Men's room travel to the women's room and visa versa. We had the Men's room coming through headphones in our left ear, and the Ladies room coming through in our right ear. Show was called from the utility closet in the women's room. I still actually sometimes have to stop myself from going into the Ladies room there since I did it for 3 weeks straight.

I look back on it fondly, but then I remember being sick for 2 weeks after the show.

Maribeth

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #21 on: Dec 02, 2013, 12:43 pm »
Got my AEA card on a co-pro with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the University of MD- The Distance From Here. I was 24 and so, so excited to finally have health insurance again. (Which of course I had to work for another 6 months or so to qualify for.) I had already signed a contract to be the non-AEA ASM on another show at a different theatre, and mid-way through the run, the SM had to leave for a family emergency and I took over the run. I had most of my EMC weeks from my apprenticeship the year before but I don't think I reached 50.

I took my AGMA card for Madame Butterfly at Michigan Opera Theatre.

DeeCap

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #22 on: Dec 02, 2013, 01:57 pm »
I didn't answer this either.

I got my card in May 1999. I was supposed to be the Equity ASM, but then the SM got a Broadway show, so I was bumped up. (On the first day of rehearsals no less)

lsears

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #23 on: Dec 02, 2013, 02:13 pm »
I joined the EMC program doing a summer internship at The Old Globe in San Diego in 2004.

I got my AGMA card from Boston Lyric Opera to be their full season ASM my senior year of college, 2005 - a long year of balancing morning classes and full day rehearsals.  The shows were Lucie de Lammermoor, La traviata and Thais.

I worked strictly opera for a little while, then got my AEA card in 2008 for How Shakespeare Won The West but joined through the 4A sister union agreement, rather than through EMC.

VSM

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #24 on: Dec 04, 2013, 09:34 pm »
I got my AEA card as an actor in BRIGADOON in 1983.
Yes, I know, many of you weren't even born yet...
My first SM job was in 1999, calling SWEENEY TODD.
Ordo ab chao

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #25 on: Jan 25, 2014, 06:04 pm »
I received my IATSE card in May of 2013 after our company negotiated an agreement with IATSE Local 21.
It's been a life changing experience.
Philip LaDue
IATSE Local #21 Newark, NJ

BayAreaSM

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #26 on: Jan 27, 2014, 01:16 am »
I wasn't aware of the EMC program when I interned at A.C.T. in San Francisco, but my next job - as a PA with CalShakes - my SM was kind enough to explain the program to me. She called a friend at Membership in LA, I paid my starting fee, got A.C.T. to sign my forms and I started my 2 year task of earning my weeks. By closing of All's Well That Ends Well at CalShakes in 2004, I had earned my weeks and got my card that November.

My first AEA gig was in March 2005 for Magic Theatre's A Reckoning, and I began my 4-season AEA SM track at CalShakes later that summer.


Bwoodbury

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #27 on: Jan 27, 2014, 04:53 pm »
I got my AEA card on a contract without any EMC weeks on a production called "Breast in Show." It was a musical that was supposed to be "the vagina monologues for breast cancer." It wasn't.

My schedule was such that the next thing I did was a full season at Lyric Opera Baltimore, which required me to sign an AGMA contract.

So I ended up getting both cards in one, expensive month. Thanks, 4As!

dance stage manager

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Re: How did you get your card?
« Reply #28 on: Jan 27, 2014, 05:21 pm »
I got my CAEA (Canadian Actors' Equity Association) card in July 1993, "bought" by Theatre Smith-Gilmour, for a tour of their production of "To Cry is Not So" to LSPU Hall in St. John's, Newfoundland and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.  Had been working full-time as a stage manager for a modern dance company for several years, but as CAEA didn't cover much dance at the time, I had no apprenticeship credits.

 

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