Williamstown Theatre Festival Sound Crew Walks Off

Tim, I love to see this! Even as a student, I was seriously bummed at how my university completed acted like the commercial aspect of "show business" did not exist. "Oh, hey go to this audition. Go to the U/RTA interviews. I mean I know we're 20 miles from Hollywood, but no....we don't talk about- even a little bit- how to put food on the table with your art let alone avoid exploitation."

I was very fortunate to have a required Business of Design class in Grad School. The entire course was focused on operating yourself as a business. As a technician, designer, consultant we budgeted, marketed, invoiced, bid we did everything about the business of the work we would do and the only "art" was designing marketing materials such as websites, business cards and letterheads. We learned how to brand ourselves, what it took to brand ourselves and how to budget for doing what we love while being able to pay to remodel the kitchen. Still to this day the singular best course I have ever taken. It also led me to these two pieces of advice from one of my best mentors and now friends...

1. "Go Home" ... I was an ALD and when things weren't going right or I was making mistakes my designer would say "Go Home" which didn't make sense to me because if we weren't on the road we were "at home"... what he meant was. Stop working. Watch TV. Go for a walk. Make a sandwich, eat some ice cream, sit on the porch with the dog... even if it was 30 minutes I could come back refreshed, energized and almost every time do what I couldn't do better and faster. GO. HOME.

2. We were working a summer stock show at a theater that had it's fault, the director was notoriously a pain, it was a lot of work without a lot of "fun" and I looked at my designer and said why do we come here? Without missing a beat he looked at me and said "you've been to my house... do you like the new landscaping?" "Of course it's very nice" "That's why we're here" .... You work the fun jobs because it's what we love to do... you work the jobs that aren't the best so you can afford the jobs you and so you can enjoy GOING HOME.

These two pieces of advice might have been the keys for the success of my career. Hearing that anyone on the job has to stand up for their basic rights to function as an adult breaks my heart. Here's hoping for change and success so that we can continue to do what we love and more so for future generations to as well.
 
You're 100% right, but it's not isolated to theater. My job is in full on panic right now because of some issues that have been percolating for a while that are finally coming home to bite us, a lot of which are because a manager didn't address them. She was a dev who got promoted and had zero training, mentoring, or coaching on managing people and processes - absolutely brilliant developer and a wonderful person. But I see it a lot in IT now, and back when I was doing social work - someone who is really good at their job gets promoted to management and the thinking seems to be that they will just be good at the managing job too. Management of people and management of work is a SKILL that needs to be taught but usually isn't.
There's a name for this and strong literature - check out The Peter Principle. I was a flaming example of it myself for a while ...
 
Wait, wasn't that the book that said that people rise to their own level of incompetence?
 
Wait, wasn't that the book that said that people rise to their own level of incompetence?
John, I could be wrong, but that sounds like the Dilbert principle. Not entirely sure.
 
No, he’s right. It says that within a hierarchical organization competent people will keep getting promoted until they reach a position in which they are incompetent.

Now I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I have seen companies do other moves.
Some seem adverse to promoting anyone from within, and will perform long, drawn out job searching when the ideal candidate is often right under there nose.
Others promote based not on competence, but on compliance. This often means that a company yes-man moves up because there is less risk of them leaving. They’ve already accepted company culture and will do nothing to challenge it. All this can happen while very competent people remain stuck in their lower positions while constantly getting more and more responsibility added to their plates simply because they are competent.
 
Something that grinds my gears is the administration's comment that the pay raise (from $13.50 to $15.00/hr) was a 9% raise -- as though that justifies limiting the amount the crew gets paid.

Yes, it's nearly 10% more -- but, it's also only a buck-fifty more, and that's the more important figure to consider.

FWIW, the extreme low-end in Boston is $17/hr, with most companies now paying $20 - 25/hr, which is still lower than the prevailing rate.
 
Now I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I have seen companies do other moves.
Some seem adverse to promoting anyone from within, and will perform long, drawn out job searching when the ideal candidate is often right under there nose.
Others promote based not on competence, but on compliance. This often means that a company yes-man moves up because there is less risk of them leaving. They’ve already accepted company culture and will do nothing to challenge it. All this can happen while very competent people remain stuck in their lower positions while constantly getting more and more responsibility added to their plates simply because they are competent.
This is exactly what has happened to my mom at her job. The parent company recently closed their branch, so now they are a skeletal staff and my mom because she has been there 20ish years got a lot of tasks dumped on her when others were let go. I believe she negotiated a raise, but they probably didn't give her enough to justify doing the jobs of at least 2 other people.
 
I was very fortunate to have a required Business of Design class in Grad School. The entire course was focused on operating yourself as a business. As a technician, designer, consultant we budgeted, marketed, invoiced, bid we did everything about the business of the work we would do and the only "art" was designing marketing materials such as websites, business cards and letterheads. We learned how to brand ourselves, what it took to brand ourselves and how to budget for doing what we love while being able to pay to remodel the kitchen. Still to this day the singular best course I have ever taken. It also led me to these two pieces of advice from one of my best mentors and now friends...
I was also very luck to have a course titled "Professional Theater" (as an undergrad actor, yes I'm one of those). One of the most useful courses I took, even/especially as I transferred to production side.
The broad strokes of contracts, and what to look out for (mostly based on AEA but broadly applicable). How to file your taxes and take deductions. The difference between being an employee, IC, or DBA corp.
That stuff absolutely needs to be drilled into at the undergrad level- at least the basics so that young workers can advocate for themselves.
Too much of the industry runs on people who love just being involved, and either don't know how or don't want to be the squeaky wheel in advocating for better conditions.
 

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