Touring Salaries: Actors and others

[derekleffew]

Equity contracts for touring actors, from Book of Mormon to Peter Pan - Chicago Tribune

Do any tours have a similar system for paying technicians (IATSE or not) a cut of the door? Since an actor has very little if any direct influence over ticket sales, I think it's a raw deal. Pay the advertising and marketing people a commission based on ticket sales, not the performers.

 

[porkchop]

As long as the model is based around additional money for those weeks that make the company lots of money and not paying the actors less on weeks with minimal sales I don't see this as a bad idea. Public relations events often happen at very incontinent hours, commonly occur on "days off," and can drag on for several hours at a time. They are also one of the best ways to promote a show and this is a reward for that often unpaid extra time.
I feel it's safe to assume that these are professionals that don't need a monetary incentive to continually perform to their fullest throughout the tour (although that is something that came to mind), but I'm pretty sure that I know some performers that would like this model because it actually gives some reward to the cast for their hard work during PRs.

 

[josh88]

My understanding from the article though is that they start off making far less and even the person they were quoting said that even on the big selling days when they make the most "extra" they are still a little shy of what the salaries would be making.


Via tapatalk

 

[kmccoy]

As long as the model is based around additional money for those weeks that make the company lots of money and not paying the actors less on weeks with minimal sales I don't see this as a bad idea.

Sure, except that this profit-sharing scheme was implemented as a way to make the cutbacks in the standard salary seem more palatable. So it's not like the salaries are the same as the contracts without the profit-sharing and then this is a bonus, it was just all part of the negotiation process for the contracts.

Kevin McCoy

 

[techieman33]

As we've learned from the film industry it's easy to make anything look like it's not showing a profit. That's what would worry me.