Stage Actors Press Campaign to Overturn New Equity Plan

Stage actors opposed to their union’s controversial Actors’ 99-Seat Theater Plan may be gaining some ground in their campaign to roll back the newly voted rule governing productions in Los Angeles’ smaller theaters.

The complicated plan was approved 1,684 to 1,023 in an April 3 referendum of local Actors Equity Assn. members.

But more than 250 actors attending a general Equity membership meeting in Hollywood on Friday passed an advisory motion to declare the referendum null and void.

The new plan, initiated by Actors Equity Assn.’s Western Advisory Board (the union’s West Coast governing body), is a complex restructuring of the 16-year-old Equity Waiver Plan. Opponents say it will restrict and threaten smaller Los Angeles theaters by making it prohibitively expensive to produce plays. Supporters, however, say the new plan, set to take effect Oct. 3, will professionalize local theater and assure that union actors get paid, even in small houses.

With Friday’s membership vote, the motion to invalidate the referendum now goes to the Western Advisory Board, which may accept or reject the membership’s motion or send it to Equity Council in New York for a ruling.

In case either governing board rejects the motion, the union members also voted to schedule a July membership meeting in a venue that can hold at least 750 people. (According to the Equity constitution, a rejection of the motion could be overruled by a two-thirds majority at any meeting attended by a minimum of 750 members.)

Edward Weston, Equity’s western regional director, was not available for comment Monday.

Another motion passed at Friday’s meeting called for a debate before June 30 between two members of the Western Advisory Board and two Equity members opposed to the new plan.

Actors opposed to the new plan also submitted a slate of write-in candidates for positions on the union’s board. The candidates include Gary Imhoff, Sunja Svensen, Michael Arabian and Kristoffer Tabori. A fifth candidate, Marcia Rodd, was added Monday to the write-in slate. The ballots, with five incumbents officially listed, go out no later than April 29 and must be returned by May 13.

Write-in candidate platforms advocate “honest and open representation” within the union; a “workable, progressive 99-seat theater plan” (as opposed to the one that was voted in and is deemed unworkable by its opponents) and a “realistic and predictable path upward to contract situations in larger houses.”

Newly elected officers (who constitute one-third of the 15-member board) will begin their terms in June.