L.A. Actors’ Equity Gripes Now Go to N.Y.

The battle lines in the dispute over Actors’ Equity’s new 99-Seat Theatre Plan now move to New York, after an inconclusive Equity membership meeting Friday at the Doolittle Theatre.

Dissidents who are opposed to the plan, which will impose more stringent regulations on smaller theater productions as of Oct. 3, had hoped for a turnout Friday of at least 750 members. As they read Equity rules, a two-thirds vote, at a meeting attended by at least 750, could overturn the referendum of last spring that instituted the plan.

Attendance at Friday’s meeting reached a high mark of only 633.

Nevertheless, all of the substantive motions proposed by the dissidents passed. Most notably, by a vote of 341 to 138, the members recommended to Equity’s national council that it reverse the decision of the union’s Western Advisory Board to reject a resolution (passed at the April meeting) that would have overturned the plan.

Furthermore, the same motion requested a “workable” plan in a manner that adheres to 1986 resolutions that mandated ongoing meetings with producers prior to any referendum and including “opposing viewpoints” with the ballots.

Members also approved a request to Equity’s executive secretary, Alan Eisenberg of New York, to set up a 15-member committee that would investigate the issues and propose a plan that could serve as an alternative to the one adopted in the referendum.

The national council is scheduled to meet July 26 in New York. In addition to coping with the resolutions passed Friday, the council has separately been asked to appoint a committee to hear charges against the advisory board filed by 11 Los Angeles Equity members who contend that the referendum violated federal law as well as Equity regulations and resolutions.

“I’m convinced they’re determined to go to court and sue us,” said Equity’s Western regional director, Edward Weston, after Friday’s meeting. He was referring to the 11 actors’ stated intention to go to court if intra-union procedures don’t satisfy them. “This (the activity at Friday’s meeting) was all cosmetic, so they can say they’ve exhausted all internal remedies.”

Not so, rebutted Scanlon Gail, a vocal leader of the dissidents at Friday’s meeting. “Many of the people in those 341 (who voted Friday to overturn the referendum) don’t even know that those charges have been filed (by the 11 actors). Except for being on the same side, I have nothing to do with those 11. . . . I wish the thing would get resolved short of that (legal action), because it would just take money out of the union’s coffers.”

Janice Arkatov also contributed to this article.