Under Review
After a vacation in the north lasting a week, we are all back in FL again.
Our time in Elmira was well spent dodging some very nice people who were quite talkative. These included the hotel staff, who were completely attentive and well trained Country Inn employees. Also a bartendress who was sure that margaritas are tangier when made with half and half lime juice and lemonade, with a splash of tequila for flavor. The waitresses had nowhere else to go it seemed, night after night. Then there was the cell phone seller who spotted me immediately by the catcalls coming from the groups of pretty boys walking through the mall and urged me to bring a group of boys to a bar after the show that night. Everyone was really nice out there. Not at the bar, of course.
This brings me to a great surprise me and a boon for some: there are gay bars in all of these places we’ve been, often catering to large groups including prominent members of the upper class. There has been a connection already to the family behind the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing line and to the ownership of a major railroad.
After that we went to Hartford, CT for the first of hopefully not many awkward experiences with IATSE and AEA. These are unions that staff the well-known theaters across the country. Our company does not operate under union contracts and this is because the tour that did operate under these rules ceased to be profitable and so closed. Is this because the bosses were greedy? Maybe, but probably within what is their due as all of the tours are huge financial risks for the investors. The tour definitely closed because fewer people were buying tickets and the payroll was too high and the houses too large to pay the bills. So what are you going to do.
Having your various locals alienate the companies who literally roll up to their door to work alongside them and earn everybody a weekend’s pay is not good organizing practice. They would have done much better to hit their pillows Thursday night until they got all the bad feelings out and chin up Friday morning to show us the paradise of working backstage in Hartford. This was an opportunity missed for them, because how often do 55 non-union people wander in for the weekend? How did they let their presenter hire us, a company of migrant losers to play their? We can’t be the first, but if we are, why aren’t we contacted weekly in a professional manner by the unions?
To be clear, we are very well treated every day and our crew is very well treated, and we all aspire to be working under union contracts because those are the best jobs. Everybody understands how they can help protect our trades. We also imagine that there is room at the bottom for our type of job. Why was this the first stop that didn’t feed us between shows? Wouldn’t this have been a good move by the locals to take up the slack and say “hey, here’s dinner on us, why don’t you stop being such a bunch of scabby bastards?” And where was AFM this weekend? Why wasn’t I heckled? Of note; two of the very few concessions the local gave us was for our touring props dept to operate the Radio Control Rats and the CO2 Confetti guns. Rat Operators and CO2 Gun Specialists local #1 of Myskeara, South Dakota; you are on your own for health insurance!
Our time in Elmira was well spent dodging some very nice people who were quite talkative. These included the hotel staff, who were completely attentive and well trained Country Inn employees. Also a bartendress who was sure that margaritas are tangier when made with half and half lime juice and lemonade, with a splash of tequila for flavor. The waitresses had nowhere else to go it seemed, night after night. Then there was the cell phone seller who spotted me immediately by the catcalls coming from the groups of pretty boys walking through the mall and urged me to bring a group of boys to a bar after the show that night. Everyone was really nice out there. Not at the bar, of course.
This brings me to a great surprise me and a boon for some: there are gay bars in all of these places we’ve been, often catering to large groups including prominent members of the upper class. There has been a connection already to the family behind the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing line and to the ownership of a major railroad.
After that we went to Hartford, CT for the first of hopefully not many awkward experiences with IATSE and AEA. These are unions that staff the well-known theaters across the country. Our company does not operate under union contracts and this is because the tour that did operate under these rules ceased to be profitable and so closed. Is this because the bosses were greedy? Maybe, but probably within what is their due as all of the tours are huge financial risks for the investors. The tour definitely closed because fewer people were buying tickets and the payroll was too high and the houses too large to pay the bills. So what are you going to do.
Having your various locals alienate the companies who literally roll up to their door to work alongside them and earn everybody a weekend’s pay is not good organizing practice. They would have done much better to hit their pillows Thursday night until they got all the bad feelings out and chin up Friday morning to show us the paradise of working backstage in Hartford. This was an opportunity missed for them, because how often do 55 non-union people wander in for the weekend? How did they let their presenter hire us, a company of migrant losers to play their? We can’t be the first, but if we are, why aren’t we contacted weekly in a professional manner by the unions?
To be clear, we are very well treated every day and our crew is very well treated, and we all aspire to be working under union contracts because those are the best jobs. Everybody understands how they can help protect our trades. We also imagine that there is room at the bottom for our type of job. Why was this the first stop that didn’t feed us between shows? Wouldn’t this have been a good move by the locals to take up the slack and say “hey, here’s dinner on us, why don’t you stop being such a bunch of scabby bastards?” And where was AFM this weekend? Why wasn’t I heckled? Of note; two of the very few concessions the local gave us was for our touring props dept to operate the Radio Control Rats and the CO2 Confetti guns. Rat Operators and CO2 Gun Specialists local #1 of Myskeara, South Dakota; you are on your own for health insurance!
posted by Michael Flanagan at 10:43 PM
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