How Many Stagehands to Screw in a Lightbulb?
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Carpenter Geoff Pender says his situation is typical of the 17 employees the union represents. An art major who worked on a lot of theater sets, Pender, 29, came to Chicago after graduating from Indiana’s Earlham College. He freelanced briefly at storefronts around town before being hired by the Goodman. “Starting pay for a carpenter at the Goodman right now is $11 an hour,” Pender says. “I’ve been here for six years and I earn $12.08. I never thought about this until recently, but I just got engaged. There’s no way I could support a family on what I’m earning.”
Once inside, playgoers are handed the opposition flyer. The strikers want a 91 percent wage hike over 40 months and provisions that would “create work where there is no work,” it says. Their demands would add more than $2 million to the annual budget of $12 million, resulting in higher ticket prices, fewer productions, and less community service. Comparisons to commercial theaters that charge twice as much for tickets and are often dark are inappropriate, since Goodman crews have steady full-time employment. “The stagehand union’s demands would result in Goodman scene shop and stage crew employees earning larger weekly salaries than the actors on stage,” reads management’s argument.
The Goodman will soon have a couple of other positions open. Susan V. Booth, the theater’s head of new-play development and an accomplished freelance director, recently beat out 100 other candidates for the job of artistic director at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre Company. Booth’s appointment was announced this week; she’ll start the $170,000-a-year job July 1, and has signed a four-year contract. Alliance Theatre, with an annual budget of $10 million, is the largest nonprofit theater in the southeast. Booth will succeed Kenny Leon, whose 11-year stint at Alliance included the development of The Last Night of Ballyhoo and Disney’s Aida.
