Ready, SET, Tour!

The Equity News reported in their October/November 2008 issue that Actors’ Equity Association and The Broadway League were in negotiations for a new Touring Contract. Tours not on a high tier in size and scope, and that tend to tour only smaller markets as split weeks and one-nighters, have been forced to use Production Contract tiers designed for more expensive shows that typically do full weeks in larger markets, making it very challenging for these smaller commercial shows to go out as Equity tours. As a result, many shows that fall within this category have elected to go out non-Equity.

According to this edition of The Equity News, it was the Union’s belief that a new contract with lower tiers would “increase work weeks and create more job opportunities from employment that has traditionally gone to non-union shows. Negotiating a separate contract allows for language that best suits the smaller tours in the current environment. Equity and The Broadway League mutually determined that a contract focused solely on these lower categories is the best first step in recapturing the road.”

Kristin Caskey, who co-heads Fox Theatricals and serves as Chair of Marketing at The Broadway League, and Alecia Parker of NAMCO, announced last week at The Spring Road Conference that an agreement for more flexible tiers of the Production Contract had, in fact, finally been reached.

In very broad strokes, the new Short Engagement Touring Agreement, or SET Agreement, provides musical tours that have Guarantees between $160,000 and $277,000 and a maximum of 10% NAGBOR more accessible minimum weekly salaries for actors and stage managers. There are more moving parts to the SET Agreement than I will go into here, but the details of the agreement were designed by both The Broadway League and AEA to protect the interests of their members, while at the same time offer viable options that ideally will incentivize producers of less-expensive commercial shows to send their shows out as Equity tours.

It will be interesting to see over the next few touring seasons how often the SET Agreement is taken advantage of, what its impact will be on AEA employment, and what effect this in turn has on The Road from a financial standpoint, if any.