Inequity Waiver?

One fact about Actor’s Equity and Equity Waiver Theater in Los Angeles that wasn’t mentioned by Dan Sullivan in “Big Change for Small Theater” (Sept. 4) is very revealing:

When a Waiver show was a hit and the producers were moving it to a larger theater, Equity required the producers to hold open Equity calls for all roles, whether they were played by Equity members or nonmembers.

If Equity is concerned about its members working for free in Waiver theater, why require small-theater producers moving a show up to look at other Equity actors for the roles that were developed by Equity members working in Waiver?

Certainly Equity has a vested interest in seeing that roles played by non-Equity members be recast, but what purpose is served in jeopardizing the status of Equity members just when they were about to gain recompense for all their hard, unpaid labor?

Isn’t this punishing Equity actors for working in small theater?

NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Los Angeles