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[0:00] Michael Fatica: Hi! You're listening to the shows we need from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Michael Fatica. Today, we are taking a detour and not talking about a show that we need. In order for those shows to come back, we need a clear, safe, and realistic plan for our industry to move forward. Tim Hughes, an ensemblist of multiple Broadway shows and currently a cast member of Hadestown, wrote a letter to Actors' Equity demanding transparency and a seat at the table for union members to be heard when discussing how we go about getting back to work. Here's our conversation.

[1:28] Michael Fatica: Hi there! Will you please introduce yourself, including your pronouns?

[1:32] Timothy Hughes: Hey there, I'm Timothy Hughes. I prefer he, him, and I'm calling from New York City.

[1:38] Michael Fatica: Tim, you've written a letter to Actors' Equity Association that has flamed the fire for some. Can you tell me who this letter was intended to reach?

[1:46] Timothy Hughes: Sure. The letter is directed specifically to Mary McCall and the president of our council at Actors' Equity, Kate Shindle, two leaders of our union, asking a series of questions and basically an overarching idea of we as members need and deserve an opportunity to actually be heard concerning the current protocols and procedures that were recently updated as of March 3rd from our union that caused a lot of concern. And after a year of problematic communication, in my opinion, and I think a lot of people's experience, the time had come when we really needed the opportunity to be heard. So we requested a town hall. We have received a response that we will be granted that town hall, but we haven't received a specific date or time, and the specifics of how that is going to go down are still to be determined.

[2:46] Michael Fatica: Okay, that's a step forward. They've agreed to the town hall. You mentioned that some of the protocols that were announced by Actors' Equity were concerning. Can you think of any of those that feel implausible when Broadway attempts to reopen?

[2:56] Timothy Hughes: I think the catalyst for me writing a letter was the fact that I did not hear about updated protocols and procedures from our own union after basically a year of this shutdown. And I heard about these March 3rd updates in the news, and the news, certain articles were saying that these are outrageously expensive and seemingly impossible for a lot of producers and regional theaters and theaters across the country to ever meet. And I started doing my own digging to find out what was actually in these protocols and procedures. And they are not easily accessible, again, in my opinion. They're difficult to find in our own website, and there was no communication that there had been any updates. So the fact that they've been updated so recently, I found out maybe five or six days after they had been updated, it was surprising that we hadn't heard that from leadership.

You would think that that would be an accomplishment as far as the evolution of working to get us back to work would be concerned, but not hearing from them seemed questionable. I discovered a lot of these are major roadblocks and actual impossibilities, impossible standards to be met to actually get members eventually back to work. Now, my whole argument is I'm not looking for us to go back to work today. I think we're seeing the evolution of how this is playing out in a lot of different fields and in other unions, and we're seeing progress being made. We haven't seen much progress in our union, in the changes of what has been happening for theater. It has been very difficult the entire year.

And I understand that we are a unique industry, considering that we have an audience as a huge element and piece of the puzzle. But my concerns with these specific protocols and procedures don't even relate to the audience. We don't even get to that point. One of the ones that glaringly stands out for me is the requirement of private transportation, the refusal to use mass transit. That's a non-starter for most producers. And it says something about you can't use a car share. So this isn't about being reimbursed for a lift to and from rehearsal or to and from theater. This is a private car for each individual, each member. It's just a non-starter. I mean, it's just an impossibility to be met.

The other things that stood out to me were the intense HVAC requirements. HVAC is the air ventilation systems. And then not only were the demands or guidelines saying that they needed to be put into the theater spaces, which I think is the most understandable, but also any common space that is shared, which would include all rehearsal spaces and for regional theaters, any housing or common housing facilities, which for anybody who's worked at a summer stock theater or any regional house, there are most of the time, a lot of the time, there are multiple housing units. That in itself would be impossible for these producers and theaters to take on as a financial burden any year, but especially in a year after they've had no money come in.

There have been no shows for them to make money this past year. And now we're requiring intense financial investment before we can even consider getting back to work. Again, it's a non-starter. There's just a lot of rumors, a lot of embellishments of truth spreading through the theater community about what's actually out there from Equity and what isn't. You mentioned in the letter that our sister union SAG-AFTRA or the Screen Actors Guild has created successful protocols. What are some of the things that SAG has been implementing that actually has worked in getting folks back to their lives?

[6:42] Timothy Hughes: I know that there is a divide about whether these are fair comparisons, but I think specifically when talking about the transportation issue, SAG-AFTRA put into place a 22-page white paper as of early June 2020, laying out a series of protocols and procedures to reopen their industry. And those procedures and protocols were written with what I would consider a more solution-based mindset, a more practical approach to protocols and procedures. And instead of saying using language like mass transit must be avoided, they were saying when possible, whenever possible, private transportation should be used or safe transportation should be used if that is realistic. And it really shifts it from being a hard-set rule of impossibility to being a contract of we're going to do our best.

We are going to take the necessary precautions that we can and that seem reasonable to keep people safe while we try to strike this balance of bringing our livelihoods back. So yeah, in general, the protocols for SAG-AFTRA have a lot of language that deals with whenever possible. And that leaves room for different considerations that just are right now not possible at all in what AEA has posted. Now, I know that they will also say, leadership will also say that they're dealing with each theater, each approved production on an individual basis, and it's an individual negotiation. And if communication were smoother coming from the staff at our union, then I think these things could be realistically addressed in a one-on-one setting like that.

But communication has been problematic between the union and membership and between the union and most producers this past year. So it really leaves no real room for adjustments to be made when there's not even a direct line of communication being established. I think that equity has an assumption that we shouldn't be going back to work until the risk is zero. And the reality is the risk is never going to be down to zero for COVID. And that reality doesn't feel like it's reflected in the current.

[9:09] Timothy Hughes: One of the asks in the letter is for members to be able to voice their opinions directly to Actors' Equity leadership. There are people in this world who would go back tomorrow because they don't believe that COVID is even real or a risk. We can't pretend that none of those people are in the theatre industry. What challenges do you expect to come up by opening those floodgates?

[10:04] Timothy Hughes: I think the point of opening up to everybody's input is the invitation for people to voice their concerns so that we'd have a broader understanding of how this may look different in different regions, in different size houses, with different contracts. For the Town Hall specifically, we have been trying to do some work to address what we think would be the overarching concerns and questions. And we have asked that, are given the priority to speak first for the first 45 minutes of the Town Hall to try to properly address what we have highlighted from people that have already been voicing their concerns and questions to me specifically, and to now a group of people that I've been working with and collaborating with to try to create some sort of schedule for what we would like to address.

And we've allowed for time if we don't do a thorough enough job of hitting all of those points of concern. And it's really difficult because at this point in the governance process at Equity, there's really no opportunity for members to be heard in front of the Council, in front of the leadership. But yeah, it's impossible. We're not going to be able to address or even hear from all that we should. I think that is an issue that Equity should be aware of, is that there clearly needs to be more opportunities than one Town Hall after a year of no work to hear from membership.

[11:35] Timothy Hughes: You're in a specific position that you're in a show that is slated to come back to Broadway after all of this. Whereas for most of the industry, coming back to work is a bit of an abstract idea in a world where it's going to be even harder to get a job in theater than it already was. Have you already set in place a set of protocols that you, Tim Hughes, would need in order to feel safe going back to work?

[11:59] Timothy Hughes: The thing about being an actor in New York City at this point is we are living every day calculating those little risks. Do we ride the subway? Do we go to a restaurant that is now at 50% capacity? Are we feeling safe going back to work out of the gym with our mask on? I would say that I've had to find that balance over and over again this past year as things continue to change. I feel lucky that I have stayed healthy and safe and have trusted that the leadership of our government and people that are controlling these protocols and procedures for all of these other industries have done their due diligence. And I think right now it feels like a majority of those are on a different path than what our union seems to be on.

So it feels like, yeah, I've had to strike that balance in every other aspect of my life. Give me the opportunity to try to start finding a new balance within my livelihood. It feels like it's time to consider what that's going to look like, to see a realistic depiction of what that's going to be yet. And I think that's a failure. I think the time is now to be actually preparing for that reality.

[13:28] Timothy Hughes: We have known about the vaccine since the beginning of December. We have known that the vaccine rollout has been prioritized by this new administration. We know that our president is now saying that we'll be able to be, hopefully, with our families spending the 4th of July together. If that's the goal for our country, we have to take that into consideration because you also have to start selling tickets and you also have to do advertisement and you also would have to do all this preparatory work to get an industry back up and running. And that's going to take time. So we have to be proactively putting things in place to allow for that so that we can provide an answer, yes, without having all the answers in place, but implement procedures and protocols that have an element of being able to evolve according to the everyday evolving science on this matter.

If we look at the 4th of July as a date that's been given by our president and that means three months prior to that is April 4th. That's right around the corner. We don't have anything in place that looks plausible to return to right now as far as a structure that will be in place that will actually allow for a reopening of an industry.

[14:39] Timothy Hughes: Yeah, over 2,500 current and future members. Somebody asked me, do you know how many of them are actually paid members? And I was like, no, this is an informal grassroots effort. I have no, like, this is not an official petition that needs to be signed by only members. This was a call to action to exemplify a growing swell of frustration and concern from our union members. And I think it's accomplished that, but I encourage people to continue to sign it. I think up into the town hall, we should continue to engage people in this conversation, make people aware of these protocols and procedures, allow them to evaluate them and read them for themselves and make their own decisions. It's more about increasing engagement into this conversation and engagement in our union.

[15:35] Timothy Hughes: We have a large percentage of people who are unemployed who are willing and wanting to help. And in general, that's what this letter, what I hope they will eventually be able to take up from this letter, which I know is a difficult thing considering the complicated emotions behind all of it and frustrations, but we want to help. That's what we're attempting to do. We still believe in this union. We're still union members, but we don't all feel heard and we want to be kept in the loop. We want to feel, you know, a part of this union again.

[16:16] Timothy Hughes: We're what's happening, we're what's happening. Don't you know we're the movers and we're the shapers. We're the names in tomorrow's papers. Up to us men to show up.

[16:35] Timothy Hughes: Here's specifically what the letter asks. One, will new protocols look the same for every contract and every theater? Two, will equity follow the core principles established by Dr. Michaels and prioritize collaboration in establishing detailed protocols? Three, when will equity welcome the input of members? Four, will the guidelines established by other unions that have members back to work be used as a guiding resource when relevant? Five, specifically how will the increasing rollout of the vaccine change and affect protocols? As we round a corner in this pandemic, hopefully, tensions are high. Some need that hope to stay positive and others need answers. Let's hope that some more of those come out of this and we can forge ahead with a plan to bring back those shows we need.

[17:40] Michael Fatica: Special thanks to Tim Hughes for sharing his story with us. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Michael Fatica, Jackson Klein, and Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can help The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. The other is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of the Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.