Maybe you should
read this, Blue Man Group
By
KATE TAYLOR
Saturday, May 7, 2005 | Page
R6 - Globe and Mail
Blue Man
Group just doesn't get it. Perhaps there's no reason it should,
not being from these parts and all, but it's going to have
to wise up soon because its show is set to open in Toronto
next month and its little public relations problem is becoming
a public relations fiasco.
Blue Man
Group is the New York-based theatrical company whose popular
shows feature three speechless, blue-faced characters playing
plastic plumbing, splattering paint on canvases and spewing
balls from orifices both real and invented. This weird amalgam
of clown, mime and performance art was started in 1991 as
a small off-Broadway show created by Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton
and Chris Wink, but today, with companies also playing in
Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and Berlin, it's a 500-employee
phenomenon.
In all
those years, the company has not signed union contracts with
its performers in the United States and believed it could
operate the same way in Toronto with plans for an open-ended
run at the newly renovated Panasonic Theatre (which used to
be known as the New Yorker) on Yonge Street .
But local
groups representing actors, musicians, stage hands and various
technicians expect their members to play the blue men, staff
the back-up band and set the lights. After all, those are
the kind of jobs they do down the street at the Canon Theatre
and over at the Royal Alex and Princess of Wales. They have
shamed Blue Man Group into talking with them -- or at least
talking about talking with them -- and the company will be
having a further meeting with the unions on Tuesday, but it
seems unlikely to sign up.
That's
wrong, because Toronto's commercial theatre scene has been
built by the members of these associations and if Blue Man
Group doesn't work with them it's freeloading off that history.
However you may weigh the advantages and disadvantages of
unions, the fact is workers aren't going to make steel or
cars for free, but people will act and play music for free.
Such is the lure of the stage, you may even get somebody to
set the lights for free. It is these associations that have,
over the years, insisted the work be decently paid and safely
executed. By establishing a permanent, professional work force,
they have helped build both the commercial theatre scene in
Toronto, and a non-profit scene locally and nationally.
Without
these workers, the landscape would look much as did before
the Second World War, with amateur theatres performing locally
alongside the occasional touring company from the United States
or Britain. And those who have built a theatre scene have
also built the audiences: without this foundation, Blue Man
might be able to drop into town for a week or two, but it
could never possibly renovate a theatre and stay indefinitely.
Blue Man
is reportedly stung by the suggestion it is somehow not professional
and argues it's not trying to exploit anyone, which reveals
its basic misunderstanding of the situation. In the United
States, on the one hand, performers are considered employees
rather than independent contractors so they are protected
by labour law. On the other, the unions are so fragmented
that stage performers alone are represented by three different
groups, with Blue Man's show falling between jurisdictions
-- the largest group, Actors' Equity, has no interest in their
shows because they don't have scripts. Meanwhile, there are
also an increasing number of non-union touring shows in the
United States, usually relying on inexperienced talent.
In Canada,
the situation is clearer: in almost all instances, you aren't
a professional stage show unless your actors belong to Canadian
Actors' Equity Association (which is not technically a union
but rather a professional association). There are a few exceptions
-- Blue Man points out that Cirque du Soleil is not unionized
-- but Equity is the standard measure of professionalism here.
For example, this newspaper, never known for being particularly
pro-union in its editorial stands, generally has a policy
that it doesn't review non-Equity performances. Exceptions
are occasionally made -- and no doubt one will be made when
Blue Man opens -- but that has been the yardstick used for
years to determine the difference between the professional
and the amateur because it reflects the reality of the theatre
scene.
Can audiences
tell the difference? Sure they can. Again, there are exceptions,
but most of the time if you want to see work that you'll feel
was worthy of your $50 or $75 ticket, it is work performed
by members of Equity with members of the Toronto Musicians'
Association in the pit and members of the International Alliance
of Theatrical Stage Employees behind the scenes, because those
are the people for whom this work is a career, not a hobby
or a part-time job. With their cheap sets and painfully young
performers, the non-union touring shows that do occasionally
cross the border and stop in town for a week look like high-school
performances, falling well shy of the standard routinely maintained
by Toronto companies.
It's not
a perfect system -- Equity's overtime requirements have been
accused of militating against longer scripts; under IATSE
regulations, it sometimes seems as though nobody but their
members can touch a light switch in a theatre -- but it is
one on which Canadian theatre depends.
Goldman
of Blue Man has said his motto is not "When in Rome .
. ." but rather "Vive la différence."
Trouble is it's his difference that he wants to impose here.
He says this is no bus-and-truck show breezing into town for
a few days, but a high-quality venture that means to be part
of the scene for months to come. Yet, apparently, he's just
another of those ignorant U.S. producers who fail to notice
they crossed a border at Buffalo.
©
2005 The Globe and Mail
The
original article is located HERE
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