How Industrialization Upstaged America's Actors and How They Can Re- Take Center Stage Jay H
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The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fogler Library 2003 In the Wings without a Cue: How Industrialization Upstaged America's Actors and How They Can Re- take Center Stage Jay H. Skriletz Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd Part of the Acting Commons, Social History Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Skriletz, Jay H., "In the Wings without a Cue: How Industrialization Upstaged America's Actors and How They aC n Re-take Center Stage" (2003). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 684. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/684 This Open-Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. IN THE WINGS WITHOUT A CUE: HOW INDUSTRIALIZATION UPSTAGED AMERICA'S ACTORS AND HOW THEY CAN RE-TAKE CENTER STAGE BY Jay H. Skriletz B.A. University of Maine, 1984 A THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in Theatre) The Graduate School The University of Maine May, 2003 Advisory Committee: Jane Snider, Associate Professor of Theatre, Advisor Dr. Sandra Hardy, Associate Professor of Theatre Dr. Thomas Duchesneau, Professor of Econon~ics Dr. Nathan Godfried, Professor of History IN THE WINGS WITHOUT A CUE: HOW INDUSTRIALIZATION UPSTAGED AMERICA'S ACTORS AND HOW THEY CAN RE-TAKE CENTER STAGE By Jay H. Skriletz Thesis Advisor: Associate Professor Jane Snider An Abstract of the Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in Theatre) May, 2003 The social, political, and economic forces of industrialization have transformed the actors' art, especially the relationship between the performer and the audience. When the consolidation of theatre ownership superceded the centuries old tradition of actor- management, the transmutation of actors into commodities commenced. With the ascendancy of film as the dominant mode of theatrical production this transformation has accelerated until the creative interaction of living performers and audience is not merely an anomalous curiosity: it is nearly extinct. Industrialization has reduced the status of actors and their influence upon the workplace. Employment equilibrium has been distorted by the "star system" of production preferred by Hollywood: the rate of professional employment for actors is 15% on a weekly basis and 59% measured annually. Widely disparate rates of compensation where the industry-wide average annual salary is less than $10,000 while some individual performers with "clout" may earn more than $20 million per film are acceptable. In search of the widest possible market, "industrialized" performing arts purposefully lower audiences' expectations by relying upon formulaic dramatic texts and the over-use of spectacular effects. In the twenty-first century, the consequence of industrialization to the performer will be doubly dangerous and pernicious. The capitalist system of economic organization is now global and seeks to minimize national differences and regional cultural individuality in an effort to create the broadest commodity markets. Technology is on the verge of digitally creating emotionally believable cinematic performances that threaten to widen the gulf between performers and audiences to a degree that challenges the very existence of live performing art. The financial rewards of the actors' obsolescence may become too great for producers to ignore. Many involved in the performing arts consider the situation dire, yet actors, whose ignorance of the labor history of the actors' art in America has been deepened by the national prejudice against progressive unionism encouraged by the system, are generally not aware of how they came to suffer the status quo. The deteriorating economic situation of journeyman actors and moribund relationship with the audience is not accidental: it results fiom the business practiced by the owners of multi-national media conglomerates abetted by the stars who benefit so greatly fiom their dominance. This cultural study shall reveal, through general research of American theatre history, that the Depression-era Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project presents an alternative production model that provides livelihood for actors and inspiration for audiences. It shall reveal, by examining the economic scale and financial structures of the performing arts, especially movies, that there are adequate resources to find such an alternative today. It shall examine how technology threatens the deep relationship between actors and their audiences, a relationship that, for now, continues to require actors. These resources, currently concentrated in movie distributors' fees, are traditionally negotiable as profit-participation for individual talent. This study shall propose that artists in the performing arts move beyond the business craft unionism encouraged by the conglomerate owners and embrace the unifying conceptions of progressive industrial unionism. Only then will performers gain the bargaining power to unlock these resources to build a new actors' theatre by negotiating industry-wide profit participation through a consortium of industry guilds and unions. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................iv Chapter 1. THEATRE ART OR ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS: AN OVERVIEW .........1 Introduction.......................................................................... 1 How the Business Model Shapes Audience Expectations..................... 4 How the Business Model Limits Performers' Opportunity................... 6 Technology's Impact on the Art/Profit/Audience Matrix ......................8 Technology's Impact on Performance .......................................... 16 What Is At Stake................................................................... 18 2 . HISTORY PLAYS: THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF ACTORS' LABOR ......20 Acting In a Commodity Market: Stars and Widgets ..........................21 When Actors Managed: The Origins of Mass Production and Markets in the Performing Arts ...................................................25 The Rule of the Syndicates: Market Consolidation ............................28 The Actors Respond: Union Organization..................................... 31 Strike and Settlement: The Basic Agreement and Standard Minimum Contract .....................................................33 Who's Left Out: What the Basic Agreement Doesn't Guarantee........... 38 3 . WHEN THE FAT LADY SANG: THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT ......41 The Federal Response to Economic Calamity .................................41 The Real Issue: Distribution of Wealth ........................................46 Who's Left Out: What the Market Won't Provide ...........................SO Symbiosis Restored-Temporarily ............................................. 55 4 . TRAGICOMIC ECONOMICS: FINANCIAL STRUCTURES IN THE PERFORMING ARTS ...................................................................-59 The Financial Portrait of Actors ................................................60 The Financial Structure of the Entertainment Business ...................... 62 The Distribution of Profits and Performers' Compensation ..................64 The Future: Promise or Peril ......................................................67 5. THE PRODUCERS: ACTOR-MANAGEMENT REDUX ...........................70 Walking the Walk: Contemporary Union Militancy and Solidarity........ 70 Talking the Talk: Redefining Union Along Progressive Models ...........74 Finding Focus: Making a Future Requires a Past ..............................78 Taking Stage: An Actors' Theatre for Tomorrow-Today ..................80 WORKS CITED ...................................................................................-91 BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR ...............................................................97 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Film industry sources of revenue estimated, 1980 and 1995; major filmed entertainment companies in the US.;total not exact due to rounding.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. -63 Table 2.2 Revenues and costs for a major theatrical release, circa 1992.. .. ..66 Chapter 1 THEATRE ART OR ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS: AN OVERVIEW Business, like theatre, is a creative endeavor in its own right. It, also like theatre, is a social construct, one that is motivated by human impulses. Those impulses that drive business, however they may differ from those that inspire the theatre, are ascendant in our time and not to be discounted. And while we may wish that the human impulses of theatrical art survive and even thrive, it is pointless to wish the business model away. It is equally pointless to hope for a return to the historical moment when the United States federal government financed a national theatre in the 1930's or pine for that somewhat less exciting effort in the 1960's when the federal and state governments together established, though hardly endowed, the National Endowment for the Arts and various state arts councils. Seeking to re-invent the relationships between artists and audiences, and between artists and business folk is, however, much to the point. Introduction In order to evaluate the perfomer/audience relationship in the twenty-first century, it is necessary to examine the economic structures of the acting