"It's about getting money into people's hands"

As the shutdown drags on, three off-Bway companies look to send artists a check

By early April, Ralph B. Peña knew the theater shutdown was a matter of years, not months.

“Looking at the trajectory of the pandemic, and having seen what SARS did in Asia ten years ago - I knew this was not going away quickly,” he said.

While many theaters were delaying productions to the fall, Peña quickly began Ma-Yi Theater Company’s pivot to digital. Not out of any artistic imperative - the concern was getting money into theater workers’ pockets. 

“I knew that we wouldn't have any jobs,” said Peña, Ma-Yi’s producing artistic director. “I knew that artists, especially freelancers and those that are in the gig economy, would be unemployed for quite a while. My goal was: How are we going to give work to these folks?”

In recent months, three off-Broadway companies have presented online work with a specific eye towards sending out of work artists a check. Ma-Yi, Mint Theater Company and Transport Group paid artists full wages for streamed productions, and are finding ways to keep money flowing in the long term. 

Of course, in regards paying for streaming, the companies don’t have much choice. Equity’s current contract for recorded productions stipulates that artists receive weekly wages matching the company’s most recent Equity contract. In other words, artists are paid as though they were in the theater, working that show right now. 

For the Mint this meant a Summer Stock Streaming Festival of three past productions, placed online for two weeks, cost roughly $50,000 in salaries to actors, directors and stage managers. 

The Mint streamed Hazel Ellis’ Women Without Men (above), Harold Chapin’s The New Morality, & George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness (photo: Richard Termine)

“So it’s not cheap,” said Jonathan Bank, artistic director at the Mint. “We paid weekly wages to 30 people for those three shows, six stage managers and 24 actors, based on our letter of agreement for 2020.” That letter also stipulated a two-week contract minimum, which now extends to a two-week streaming minimum. 

Bank paid for the festival with a Payment Protection Plan loan. He admits he was unsure, when he applied, how the loan would be utilized if granted, since theater artists can’t be “put back to work” in a traditional sense. Streaming salaries offered a path. 

“I really felt uncertain about how valuable the streaming would be [for audiences],” Bank admitted. “But I knew that hiring actors was a good thing.”

Despite Bank’s doubts, viewers from 45 different countries tuned in, and hundreds of viewers watched the plays from start to finish. A low-key appeal for donations, which played only at the end of the videos, solicited $15,000 in contributions. Bank plans to repeat the same model again with different shows, this time paying artists with either donations or an admission fee. 

Danyel Fulton in Broadbend, Arkansas (photo: Carol Rosegg)

For Jack Cummings III, co-founder and artistic director at Transport Group, the impetus for streaming Broadbend, Arkansas also came from its relevance to the moment. Staged in fall 2019 in association with The Public Theater, the musical traces two generations of a southern Black family grappling with oppression and police violence. It is available through August 16. 

“The story the show is telling definitely made it a more pressing candidate to stream at this moment,” said Cummings. The stream is free, but viewers are encouraged to donate to Black Theatre Network. As the theater industry faces its own moment of reckoning around racial justice, Cummings viewed “supporting that movement” as a primary goal. 

A former board member funded the four-week stream, paying salaries to two actors, two stage managers, six musicians and four designers. Additional stipends also went to non-union artists, including the assistant director, production managers, casting director and company manager. Negotiations were complicated - streaming contracts are new to all involved, and Local 802, which represents musicians, follows detailed formulas for musicians who also serve as orchestrator or music copyist. 

“Everyone is trying to figure this new world out,” said Cummings. From the decision to stream the show, to gathering information across multiple unions, through to finalizing deals, the process took roughly two months, for a final price tag of roughly $68,000.

Going forward, Transport Group is giving out multiple commissions and running the weekly essay series “While We’re Home,” which offers authors a small stipend. Cummings has refused offers from writers who asked to simply donate it back.  

“It was important to us, to the degree that we can, just to try to pay people,” said Cummings. Still, he added: “I don’t want to appear to be patting ourselves on the back. Everyone is struggling, and everyone is trying to figure this out the best that they can.”

Ralph B. Peña unveils Ma-Yi Studios (photo: courtesy of Ma-Yi Theater Company)

Peña is also giving out as many commissions as he can - though the results will be seen much sooner. Ma-Yi has converted its midtown rehearsal space into a broadcast studio, employing electricians and carpenters in the process. Following social distancing guidelines, the space offers equipment for digital capture or live-stream events. 

Ma-Yi Studios opened today with its first offering: Sophocles in Staten Island, about a Filipino-American family staging Antigone and Oedipus Rex as a homeschooling project. 

Ma-Yi’s entire 2020-21 season will be digital and hosted on the platform. The Studio’s future projects include multiple commissioned plays, including one written and performed in ASL by Deaf artists; and a documentary, shot in Wisconsin and supervised remotely, about putting on a distanced play with four actors supervised remotely. 

“We don’t know if it’s going to be any good,” said Peña. “To me it doesn’t matter. We’re not trying to replicate theater. This is an economic proposition right now. And we’re asking all of our audiences to support this in whatever way they can.”

To fund the work, Ma-Yi’s board freed up money from the company’s endowment. “We’re bleeding money,” Peña granted, but his view is: “Give [the artists] the work, give them the money, and figure out how to get it to audiences. And then later we’ll try to figure out if we can make money.”

Though smaller non-profits like the Mint, Transport Group and Ma-Yi have only ever tended to lose money, sending it out the door in this moment of crisis is a scary proposition. Yet as the shutdown drags on, artists need support, and these theaters need to keep their work alive.

So now is not a moment to wait and see, Peña argued, but to redirect. 

“I'm not stopping,” he said. “This is gonna be two year, three years I think. So we have to do things we've never done before.”