The wind woke me up during the night and it continues this morning. We’ve had at least three gray days in a row, lots of rain (which we do not need at this point – it seems the ground is always saturated) and fronts moving in and out.
January and February are the hardest for me. March is better because I know “green” will soon be on the horizon. But now? A stark and barren horizon, the excitement of the holidays gone…it gets tougher the older I get.
I’m sitting at my desk at the moment. Don needed to have something printed out, so I came up here to my trusty travel printer, printed it, and stayed to write my post. He has an audition today.
I had another professional problem crop up last night. One of the shows I’ve been working on – I’m currently doing a bit of work on three shows – threw a spanner in the works. It’s a smallish budget dialect show that’s going to start previewing at the end of this week. I’ve been in to work with each of the actors one-on-one and the next thing to do would have been to go to a run-through or preview performance to give the actors some feedback on their dialects. If the show was a bigger budget show, I would have gone to a couple of run-throughs as well as a couple of preview performances. Anyway, I get the daily rehearsal calls via email and there were four, count ’em, four run-throughs last week and I wasn’t called in for any of them. Then I got an email asking me if I wanted to attend a tech rehearsal or a preview and I responded with a yes, suggesting an early preview performance. I heard nothing. So, I contacted them again with the intention of firming up the date so I could also schedule work on the other shows. The response from the stage manager (who was only the messenger) was that they had been informed that the budget for the dialect coach had been used up and therefore they couldn’t use me. Keep in mind, I’ve only been there three times.
I was not happy. And I told them so. No coach would ever not see a run-through or an early performance. I had not been informed that there was a limit to my work, though I knew it would probably be 4 or 5 days of work. I had promised the actors that I would be back. My response to the powers-that-be was to the point: my reputation depends on the quality of my work. I don’t abandon the actors. Thinking that the actors would think I didn’t care, that I simply stopped coming, troubled me. So I asked that they tell the actors in no uncertain terms that none of this was me, that all of it was due to budget. And they are going to do that. The director, actors, and stage management are lovely people, thoroughly professional – this is not on them.
It took me a long time to get here, but I stopped being a people-pleaser several years ago and took ownership of my professional work and career. I don’t have an agent protecting me like Don does. I don’t have a manager. It’s me and only me. So I demand my fee and if they can’t pay it, I decline the work. And I won’t tolerate crap like what happened last night. I was angry, but I was also very calm. I wasted no time in responding and I cc’d my response to two other people so that the facts would be clear.
Voice coaches (except for my Shakespeare work with Darko) are bottom of the budget in most theaters. They have lots of money for sets and costumes and music and everything else. Yet, they choose to do a dialect show and only budget a small amount – if anything – for a coach. I’m over it. And luckily, I’m at the age where I’m able to turn things down if necessary. It’s a lot harder to do when you’re dependent on freelance jobs to cobble together an income.
But for a time recently, I was working on Broadway and off-Broadway at the same time. That was sort of wonderful.
I know I mentioned this before, but Darko’s last year as Artistic Director of Hartford Stage is this year. He’ll be done in June. I will no longer have work there and, though I won’t miss being away from home for five weeks, I will miss the enormous pleasure and honor of working with Darko and the rather nice fee I got for that work. No longer having that to count on makes a difference in our income here. But Darko was there for seven years and that’s a long time for that kind of intense commitment. He deserves to move on and I’m truly happy for him. He has been a loyal friend and colleague.
So things are definitely changing as to my work and income.
And if you’re thinking that they’ll still use me, they won’t. New Artistic Directors bring in their own people. That’s the way it is and the way it should be. Hartford Stage has been dealing with budget cuts as well (like every regional theater) so paying me what they did for Shakespeare work is no longer happening. I wasn’t called in for this season’s Shakespeare. They actually had to do Shakespeare without a voice and text coach. (Darko wasn’t the director, by the way.)
I’m actually fine about this transition. I’m just filling you in on the changes ahead.
This has ended up being longer than I had planned!
Anyway, I am going to Hartford on Thursday and Friday to see the show that Darko is currently directing and to do a little work with one of the actors. It may well be my swan song!
Okay. Have to go.
Happy Wednesday.
