How Can You Turn Awareness into Action?

A Roadmap Toward Economic Justice for Theatre Folk






Protest against unemployment in the US. 













Students working around a table

OK, But What Can I Do?
Here are some tangible steps you can take:

  • Invite your colleagues with you to these events.

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In theory, I agree with the idea that we all deserve to be making more money. But in practice, I can't avoid low-paying/ unpaid work. There are relatively no writers or actors who have climbed the latter of artistic financial sustainability who didn't spent years doing free work. Virtually no one is paid at one of the major comedy theatres in Chicago...but to not perform there would cut me out of the community. Not worth it. Additionally, this theatre would sink if if had to pay all the performers. It simply isn't that profitable. So I want a stable life...but is it possible there's not enough demand from the public? If the price of an hour long improv show goes from 12 to 25 dollars to pay one would come.

"A single fighter jet costs as much as the NEA’s entire annual budget."

As someone who has been saying things like this in the comments of Howlround articles (as well as those on other sites) for years, I was so glad when I saw this quote!

In fact, as the main character in the play that I'm just finishing (which explores these themes) says, "You can't live in a bomb... or eat it."

Alas, the article soon devolves into the usual diatribes, including the all-purpose generic (but seldom defined) "capitalist" boogy-man. (Although I give further high marks to the author for acknowledging that simply passing a law requiring theater people to be paid more could actually cause more harm than good, given that many theaters couldn't afford it.)


The fundamental problem is not (conveniently unnamed and unseen) "capitalists", but all those jet-plane (and other weapons) manufactures and workers coast to coast that vote to keep the war-mongerers in office, rather than (heaven forbid!) ensure jobs for themselves and their neighbors by buying American instead of cheap foreign products.

For, despite what we have all been told our whole lives in government-run schools and by the government-licensed mainstream media, every war from World War 1 to all the recent ones in the middle east has actually done more harm than good. (Except, of course, from the point of view of the weapons manufactures, who have profited immensely. As have [through massive campaign contributions] the politicians who are in their pockets .)

Yes, theater and other artists may get a billion dollars (or whatever it is these days) from the National Endowment for the Arts. But step back and realize that so long as we live in a world where the government can force people to give us a billion dollars, that power will be used to give hundreds of billions of dollars a year to the merchants of death... meaning that people have hundreds of billions less to spend on the arts (and other necessities).

Or, to put it another way: We have been so brainwashed to be thankful for the crutches the government gives us that we can't see that it is the government that keeps breaking our legs in the first place.

Lynn Nottage's play "Sweat" is a fine example of how powerful it can be to tell the stories of working people. I live in an economically depressed city in Pennsylvania which is quite similar to Reading PA. I made a special trip to New York City to see this play. Now that it has finished its Broadway run, it will be interesting to see if regional theaters in Pennsylvania will dare to include this play in their main stage productions. I suspect they won't because some of the issues it raises like union busting are extremely controversial in my community, which is Trump country. From my perspective, this was a really bold, provocative, and revolutionary play. I'm kinda surprised it even got produced and became so high profile as to appear on Broadway.