Thank you to Allison Sampson, Melinda Valente and the team at the Emerson College Los Angeles Campus for providing the platform for an important conversation last night about the new business of acting. It was a wonderful, packed gathering of former students, current students and alum I met for the first time.
I love this community and am so grateful for the tremendous round of support and for the very insightful discussion.
Among the many challenges in the new landscape we explored is the new "actor economy" and the struggle for even "working actors" to earn a living from their craft in an ever-increasing Ultra Low Budget (union) contract climate.
One of the people in attendance was Gregory Crafts, a former Emerson Business of Acting class student and my definition of a Hollywood "hyphenate" -- he is a published playwright, director, producer and actor who played a significant role in the Actors Equity 99-Seat movement in Los Angeles a few years ago. If you are unfamiliar with what took place then, it is worth getting informed.
Change can only begin to happen when enough people start asking the right questions. I am not at all suggesting that this needs to be a legal matter; it does not. But it would be great step in the right direction to start a conversation about the union's intention in introducing and implementing these below-standard-scale contracts with the facts of how these low pay-for-work rates and the costs actors incur in maintaining and growing their careers often raise the key question, "At what price a career?"BL
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