The bad news: POEM FOR THE SMALLEST BOY, which was slated to hit the Neptune Theatre Studio Stage on November 15th and 16th has been postponed.
The good news: ACCORDING TO PLAN, will go up in it’s place, featuring myself, Jessica Barry (who was also in POEM FOR THE SMALLEST BOY), Kristin Slaney (who wrote POEM), and Griffin McInnes.
The run down: Without boring you with the tedious he said, she said details, here is a coles notes version of what went down. Two of the members of our team, Sherry Smith and Mauralea Austin, are members of Equity (the theatre performer’s union), and in order to have them work on POEM, we had to go through Equity to engage them.
Unfortunately for us, Equity was, for reasons unknown, not prepared to offer us the concessions that they generally tend to offer to companies our size (see: small), and as a result of their unwillingness to engage in reasonable negotiations, two of their members are now out of work, and three young potential Equity members are now soured on the idea of joining their union.
To be clear, I am a proud, literally card-carrying member of ACTRA, the screen actors union, so this is in no way an anti-union declaration. However, in this specific case, the union failed everyone involved.
This is damn heartbreaking. Up until about a week ago, we still thought we would be premiering this beautiful script on the 15th of November. Instead, we’re pissed off, pulling up our socks, and determined to put on a great show for the city that we love. SO:
Come on out to the Neptune Studio Theatre on November 15th or 16th to see four short plays by Kristin Slaney featuring myself, Jessica Barry, Kristin Slaney and Griffin McInnes!
PS. I’ll be adding the FB Event link in a day or two, so check back for that. Thanks.
Source: http://glenjm.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/poem-postponed/