The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 236

CALENDAR STAGE Giving the Actor a Piece of the Action By DAN SULLIVAN How to Run a Small Theater Two Views EQUITY'S 99-SEAT PLAN 1. Rehearsal time: 8 weeks limitation. 2. Rehearsal honorarium: none. 3.

Show may run up to 12 weeks if presented in a 99-seat house. Longer if presented in a smaller house, but eventually all shows must convert to an appropriate Equity contract or close. 4. Performance from $5 to $14 a performance, depending on the seating capacity of the house. 5.

Equity reserves the right to change this plan at any time. 6. Goes into effect Oct. 3. PRODUCERS' 99-SEAT PLAN 1.

Rehearsal time: unlimited. 2. Rehearsal honorarium: depending on the number of performers in the cast. 3. No limit on allowed run.

4. Performance from 6 to 14 of the gross, to be shared equally among cast members and accruing the longer a show runs. 5. Provides for a 6-month trial period, after which the plan will be in effect for three years. 6.

Goes into effect Sept. 12. A New Ballgame Equity contract. In the years that followed, this didn't happen as often as was hoped. But it happened more often than one would gather from Equity's current position paper on Waiver.

For example: "Nuts" went from the Beverly Hills Playhouse to the mid-sized Las Palmas Theatre, to a Barbra Streisand movie. "A Woman of Independent Means" went from the Back Alley to Broadway, to the Doolittle Theatre. "'Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" went from the Cast to the mid-sized Hollywood Center Theatre. "Tracers" went from the Odyssey to the Public Theatre in New York and a national tour. "The Common Pursuit" went from the Matrix to a year's run Off Broadway.

"Checkmates" went from the Inner City Cultural Center to the Westwood Playhouse to Broadway. Perhaps the most famous example was Catalina "The Hasty Heart," starring Gregory Harrison. It was picked up by the Ahmanson after its first production at the Cast-at-the Circle. A TV deal followed. But "The Hasty Heart" also started people to wondering about the Waiver.

Catalina was a filmTV company in the first place. Couldn't it have afforded to do "The Hasty Heart" on a regular Equity contract from the beginning? Another hope back in '72 was that theater organizations would graduate from the Waiver sector into the mainstream. Here there was a conspicuous success story: the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Actor Ralph Waite had started it in '75 as the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre, a casual little operation near Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Ten years later, under Bill Bushnell, LATC had become a major downtown house, employing more Equity members per night than the Music Center.

But there was a disappointment here too. Ron Sossi's Odyssey Theatre hadn't managed to make its long-promised leap to the major leagues, although its budget in '87 Have you heard the one about the actor who was rehearsing a small theater production of "Hamlet" out in the Valley? His Pinto threw a rod on the Ventura Freeway, so he needed an engine job. He hated the fabric samples for his costumes, so he chipped in for some real velvet. He had postcards printed to send out to industry people about the opening. He had new photos made.

And. of course, he had to look great at the cast party. All in all. the gig set him back S1.300. "But isn't it wonderful?" he told his girl friend.

"I'm working." I can't vouch for the details but the gist of the story is true. The dirty little secret of Los Angeles small theater could be put on a bumper sticker: LA ACTORS DO IT FOR NOTHING. Not at the larger houses the Ahmanson. the Taper, the L.A. Theatre Center, the Shubert, the Pasadena Playhouse, etc.

There, the players receive a paycheck every week. But in the small houses, where the bulk of Los Angeles theater gets presented and, as we were saying last week, where some of the most interesting work gets done a fine actor can star in a play for six months and have nothing to show for it but the reviews. That's because since 1972 the actors' union. Actors' Equity, has allowed its members to perform without pay in theaters seating 99 people or fewer. This created an entity or, as Actors Equity now sees it, a Frankenstein's Monster known as Equity Waiver theater.

It is about to be overhauled. Both the union and the small-theater producers agree that it's time to put some money in the actor's pocket. But they disagree as to how to do it. Equity insists that each actor be paid a flat fee. The producers (some of them Equity members: in part, this is a civil war) propose that the actors share a portion of the gate.

The reader can see the difference. Under the Equity plan, the actors get the same fee. whether there are nine people or 99 in the audience. Under the producers' plan, the smaller the audience, the less the actors need be paid-leaving more money for the producer to pay the light bill. And there are nights in Equity Waiver when the audience is very small indeed.

The major points of disagreement are summarized above. Not only do the producers fear that Equity's plan will put them out of business, they resent the way the union got its plan approved by its members: By sending out a mail ballot that the producers say distorted their position. The producers say they're angry enough to sue. If they do, Equity could be temporarily enjoined from putting its plan into effect. This might send both sides back to the meeting table.

In any case, the local theater community is starting to feel the strain of all this. Are our smaller houses about to become more professional, as Equity hopes? Or are they about to become less professional? Are we going back to the bad old days when Los Angeles actors indeed got paid to act in small theater and slipped the check right back to the producer under the table? This much is clear. "Equity Waiver theater" as we know it is history. On Oct. 3 barring a court order Equity will stop looking the other way when its members want to perform in the smaller theaters.

It will stop waiving its right to regulate their pay and their working conditions. This had seemed a sensible idea in 1972. (See Ray Loynd's article on Page 42 for the conditions up to then.) It relieved the union of having to police a tangled theater-workshop scene. It relieved it from seeming to play the bully against a dedicated small-theater collective like the Company Theatre (now disbanded). Above all, it recognized the fact that Los Angeles actors will act, with or without union permission.

Under Waiver, the reasoning went, the actor could do so without getting ripped off too badly. If the cast didn't stand to make any money in a 99-seat show, neither did the producer. But if the show proved a hit, it might move to a larger house and a regular J2I (1975 "The Hasty Heart' (1982) Waiver productions that became hits. Are You Now PAGE 40SUNDAY. SEPTEMBER 4.

1988 CALENDARLOS ANGELES TIMES.