JENNIFER SWIDERSKI, EQUITY COUNCILOR AND CHAIR OF EQUITY’S MEMBER EDUCATION COMMITTEE: We have a record number of participants today with nearly 2,000 Equity members registered to attend. And many of you have shared questions when you registered, and those questions have shaped our agenda today. We have a very full agenda, so I want to share it with you as we get started. We are going to begin with a discussion with Equity's audition manager, Marisa Valero, about how Equity's guidelines on auditions, including our guidelines about required calls, have adjusted to our current reality. After that we're going to welcome a panel of casting directors from the Casting Society of America for a two-part discussion: first with more process- oriented questions about how self-taped auditions work, and then with a more philosophical discussion on the topic. All of the questions we're asking our panel today come from those you submitted over the past two weeks. We will not be taking live questions during this seminar, but there were a number of questions that came in in a more technical nature about how to create a self tape – what equipment to use, how to reduce files, how to get the video from your phone or your computer to the casting directors – and these questions came in at all levels from very beginner (like me) community to the more advanced. Because we wouldn't be able to cover these sufficiently and have time for the rest of the program we are going to offer a separate webinar just on how to create a self tape, with a more brass-tacks approach, and we'll send the registration link to you tomorrow. So now I'm going to turn the floor back over to David and Marisa to move on with our discussion. DAVID LEVY (EQUITY’S MEMBER EDUCATION MANAGER): Thank you so much, Jen! And just because I didn't get to introduce you properly: Jennifer is the chair of the Member Education Committee for Actors' Equity. She is an Eastern Chorus Councilor, which means that she is a volunteer. She is a working actor just like all of you, and she gives her time to make sure that Equity can work for our members. And so we're very appreciative of the work that Jen and all of our volunteers do to make this union run. All right, thanks, Jen! So first let me just clarify what we're talking about here: self-tape auditions have been around for a while, but until recently they've been supplemental to our required calls. So, Marisa, to start us off, before this pandemic started were there Equity rules about self-taping? MARISA VALERO (EQUITY AUDITIONS MANAGER): Yes there were actually. Previously, during that time, self tapes could only be requested by an employer once they had actually fulfilled their contractual, in-person requirements for auditions. DAVID: So now that they're a necessity, I know that our committees and our Council have been hard work at creating new guidelines about how we can use self tapes to fulfill contractually required calls. So can you tell us a little bit about the new guidelines that we do have? MARISA: For Equity Principal Auditions, employers may solicit video submissions in lieu of holding their required EPAs. There are some provisions so the video submission request will meet their contractual requirements, since we can't do live auditions right now. The requirements would be: a notice requesting those video submissions must be posted to Equity for posting on the member portal. So we should receive a notice to let you know that the theater is requesting submissions. DAVID: And will that show up in the same place that regular EPA notices would appear? MARISA: It's a little bit different. They will not show up under auditions. It'll show up under submissions. So when you go to the member portal, instead of pushing, you know, when you go to look at Casting Call, you're going to look under Submissions instead of Auditions. So these video submissions will only be seen by those with casting authority for that employer. Once those submissions have been viewed and they've started to call back who they want to see those tape submissions will be destroyed. That is the understanding that we have with employers for this. And these video submissions are only to be used for casting purposes and will not be utilized or distributed for any purpose. So they can't – no publicity, no marketing, anything like that. They are only to be used for the purposes of casting. And because of this – so the employers agree that they will call back at least five self- submitted members or one self-submitted member – this should say member, by the way, we wrote "actor" but it is actually – it is Equity members. Five self-submitted members or one self-submitted actor per available role so if you're in a show and it's a two-hander, they're calling back five people, five members. If it's a season and there's 35 rolls available in that season then they need to call back at least 35 members so whichever is greater and these callbacks will be held in person when it is safe to do so. Now please note that these the allowance for video submissions in lieu of these in-person EPAs are being allowed strictly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are not precedent setting going forward. So this is only being allowed in this case. We will return to live auditions, in-person auditions, when it is safe to do so. As far as Equity Chorus Calls (ECCs), as everyone can imagine that's a little bit of a trickier subject when it comes to video submissions, so ACCA is currently in discussions about potential requirements for employers soliciting video submissions in lieu of in-person ECCS. I know that the folks on the ACCA are working very hard to come up with something that works and is fair for everyone, so that's just gonna take a little bit more time. DAVID: For anyone not familiar the ACCA is the Advisory Committee on Chorus Affairs, which is the Equity committee of, again, volunteer members – Councilors and members you know, rank-and-file members we call them, members who are not elected, who come together to debate and make decisions about these things. They vote on them, and that's how rules get made. Okay. So, thank you for that. So my next question I maybe just answered, but how do these new guidelines get made? How do they get decided? Who's involved? MARISA: Sure! So these guidelines were created by members of our Equity Principal Audition or EPA committee, again like David just said, it's made up of councilors and rank-and-file members that all meet to discuss any and all issues and policies regarding Equity principal auditions. DAVID: Okay, and we've said that they're temporary and that they're only for now, they're not going to be a new option to replace in-person auditions when in-person auditions are safe again. Are there limits on how much a member can be asked to put on tape? MARISA: They should be – the amount of the self tape should be for the amount of time specified in the notice. So, many of our agreements have time limits or time requirements on how long enough an audition should be. For example, the LORT agreement says up to three minutes so, if you know a LORT theater's requesting five minutes, you know in our notice – we as audition staff would automatically question that because the agreement says up to three. And so this is the same thing for video submissions that are replacing these EPAs. So again when we review these notices when we receive them, we're making sure that whatever you're being asked to prepare is appropriate. And if you're getting something that is – you feel is outside of that, please contact Equity if you're being asked for something other than that at your first audition. Now callbacks are a little different. Those aren't mandated in the contract. But if it's your first video submission then you're being asked something that's other than what's on the notice or outside of what's in the agreement, please contact Equity and let us know. DAVID: And on the flip side, if someone submits more than what's asked for, I assume that the employer is under no obligation to watch beyond the required minutes. Are there rules – so are there rules around callbacks, or are callbacks at this point strictly when we're allowed to do them in person? MARISA: Right. So yeah, so they are meant to be live, live callbacks when it's safe to do so. There are a few theatres that have requested to do callbacks via like a live video conference like Zoom, like we're doing right now and those are kind of being considered on a case-by-case basis. It's not something that's automatically okay. DAVID: Got it. And are there – is there like an equivalent to what the monitors do in in-person auditions for this kind of audition? MARISA: That's tricky – just ...not really? Our monitors are our paid Equity staff, so they are – you know, they will return when live auditions resume.