“You wait, at home, to feel like you’re valuable”
The theater workers who kept the shows running are now playing a waiting game — or have been forced to move on
When the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) sent a letter to President Biden Monday offering the assistance of its members in building vaccination sites, the proposal reflected a sentiment that has floated among theater people for months: Hire theater workers to run your shit, they will do it better.
And they need the work.
Thousands of skilled and experienced theatrical workers saw their jobs disappear overnight after the March shutdown — among them stage managers, company managers, house managers, box office treasurers, ushers and many more. Though some were more visible than others, these workers kept the trains running backstage, and may well be among the last to return when theaters reopen. I spoke to a few of those workers about how they are getting by, and whether they will be able to eventually go back to the industry.
Terri K. Kohler, Stage Manager
Terri K. Kohler was on the road with the national tour of What the Constitution Means To Me when the shutdown hit. Constitution had performed just a week and half of its Chicago leg before suspending performances on March 12.
For Kohler, it was an abrupt halt to a career-defining two-year run. After stage managing Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning hit Fairview at Soho Rep in 2018, she had gone right into Heidi Schreck’s Constitution, a runaway hit that she followed all the way to Broadway.
The show was Kohler’s Broadway debut. “And I’m 40, so — I didn’t think I was gonna get there,” she laughed. “There was a period in the middle of the shutdown where I thought: “Listen, going out on Constitution — I feel pretty good about that.””
Kohler stayed in Chicago briefly until the length of the shutdown became clear, then headed home to New York. A period of “panic depression” followed.
“What it laid bare was how much I get out of the social interaction and caretaking parts of my job,” Kohler said. “I don’t get that in the digital universe.” She did take on some virtual work, managing with The Civilians’ virtual gala and a Signature Theatre reading, but soon looked elsewhere. Kohler started part-time Covid compliance work in September and is now a full-time safety manager at the CBS broadcast center.
“It doesn’t fill the need in the same way,” Kohler said. “But it’s nice to have human contact every day.” It certainly pays better than her work off-Broadway, where Kohler spent years jumping from one show to the next while never topping $50,000 annually.
That isn’t to say Kohler won’t return to theater as soon as she can — though she worries what the field will look like.
“Some people will find it challenging to come back even if they want to,” she said. “We won’t know the full effect of who we’ve lost for a while.”
Michelle Fraioli, House Manager
Fraioli’s path to the Barrymore Theatre had taken several years. Seeking some fresh blood in their manager pool, the Shubert Organization sponsored Fraioli as a Broadway house manager in 2015, plucking her from New World Stages. She worked as an assistant manager at multiple houses before joining the union in 2017, then continued to bounce around until finally landing at the Barrymore.
Taking over as The Inheritance began its run in September 2019, Fraioli was thrilled about her new home theater. “The Barrymore is constantly booked, it’s a nice size, it has a great location — and I just love it,” she said. Though The Inheritance was closing early on March 15, another show (never officially announced) had been expected to load in shortly after.
Instead, Inheritance played its final performance on March 11. Theater staff began a hasty load-out, until the Shuberts told them to just pack everything up safely and head home. Fraioli’s expected break of two weeks became over a year.
Fraioli and her husband had just bought a new house and were planning to hire renovators. Instead they moved in immediately and set to painting and flooring themselves. “So that at least kept me busy,” she laughed. Fraioli’s husband is a box office treasurer, so both saw their incomes disappear overnight. In her case, that meant going from an over $100,000 annual salary to unemployment benefits. (IATSE continues to cover her health insurance from the union’s reserves.)
Shubert’s theater operations department has remained in touch and has provided updates when they can. House manager contracts were renewed in September as a sign of good faith. Zoom check-ins that started out as monthly have grown more infrequent, both as the industry waits and the operations department was itself hit by cuts.
“There are people in my family who don’t understand — we literally do this for a living,” said Fraioli, who is prepared to wait this thing out. “I have a pension and make good money working in theater. I don’t want another job — this is what I’ve done my entire life, and I love it.” Most of her fellow house managers feel the same, she added, though one did elect to retire.
Fraioli knows that even once a reopening begins, it may be gradual. “I’m mentally preparing for myself that even once we get the greenlight, I’m probably not going to be the first one to be back on the scene,” she said. “But just having the hope that some shows will be reopening is the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bria Woodyard, Company Manager
As 2020 began, Bria Woodyard had closed out her first off-Broadway production as company manager, Dr. Ride’s American Beach House at Ars Nova. While completing an internship at a Broadway general management company and sending out applications, Woodyard was hopeful for a year that might kick-start a career in company management.
“I was really excited, because things were starting to shape up,” she recalled. “And then the world collapsed on itself.”
Woodyard completed the internship remotely. She found bits and pieces of part-time work at other theaters. While she was home for the summer in Virginia, family members asked what the new plan was.
“I really love this community and this industry,” she said. “I genuinely didn’t know what else I would want to do that I would be happy at.”
For now, Woodyard has also moved into Covid compliance work, as a safety officer on the set of a New York-filmed show. “This show has a lot of incredible theater folks come through it, so it feels a little like [working] the stage door sometimes.”
Ahead of the industry’s return, Woodyard is also cutting her teeth as a producer with Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an artist-led group formed in 2016 to combat racism and police brutality. She is cautiously optimistic about a more just and equitable future ahead for theater.
“I’m not holding my breath for things to be radically different the moment we get back,” she said. “I just hope [the industry] can recognize the work that Broadway Advocacy Coalition and Broadway for Racial Justice have been doing, so they can tap into them and utilize those resources to be better.”
Burton Frey, Audience Services
Frey started as an usher at Barrow Street Theatre (now Greenwich House Theater), getting paid $20 in cash under the table. It was just meant as a part-time gig while he attended the New School, but introduced Frey to a world he came to love.
“I learned so much about the traditions and the routines, the unspoken rules of how things work,” recalled Frey, who rose through Barrow Street’s small operation to become house manager.
Later, as operations manager at Ars Nova, Frey got his first chance to shape a welcoming theater space from the ground-up. “I implemented a culture that I felt was befitting the organization,” he recalled. Frey then moved to Signature, rising to director of audience services by the time of his first furlough last April.
When the shutdown hit, Frey’s 60-person part time staff sawa month’s work (or much more, as later became clear) disappear overnight. Signature was able to compensate their part-timers for some of the work lost, but communication was minimal.
“Nobody knew [what the future held] — but it was difficult to explain the concept of, ‘These folks are a part of the community, and we need to speak to them in some way,’” Frey recalled.
Frey was first furloughed in April. Signature later brought its staff back with a PPP loan for four months, then furloughed many again in September. Frey will return in February ahead of tentative plans to host a sound and video installation by Lynn Nottage in Signature’s lobby.
The harsh shift from running Signature day-to-day into furloughed life was challenging. “I continue to have waves of confusion, sadness, anger, frustration and at times profound boredom,” Frey said. “You are no longer the guy who tries to create an atmosphere for people to experience art — you wait, at home, to feel like you’re valuable.”
Frey has volunteered with local mutual aid efforts and was active in the summer protests. He also got a dog.
It has been “a lot of introspection and looking at the systems of Signature and of theater and the arts in America, and all the inherent violence and hypocrisy of it,” said Frey, who is concerned that when the industry returns to even harsher economic conditions than it left behind, his part-time staff might bear the brunt.
“Even pre-pandemic the conversation was: ‘What is the minimum number of people you need to get the job done?’” he said. “And that’s a very oppressive way of staffing any organization.”
As with most theaters, Signature has committed to an equity, diversity, inclusion and access review, and has made commitments to hold itself accountable. As one of the staffers “on the ground,” Frey has found it tough to not be part of that dialogue.
“The real work is from 6 p.m. to midnight, when 700 people are attending theater,” he said. “That’s where the rubber meets the road. [But] folks in my department are not part of the planning process, and don’t know if they’re going to work at Signature again.
“I don’t have solutions — but I hope there is an acknowledgment of missteps and lack of empathy at certain moments. What’s difficult is when institutions are laid bare to say: ‘I know you take pride in your job, and the audience saw much more of you than they ever did of us, but we’re gonna need you to go away for a while.’”