Mixed Feelings on New LORT Contract; Simon Callow to Stage New Machado Work

A strike by the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers against 67 members of the League of Resident Theaters (LORT) was averted Tuesday when the society signed a new four-year contract with the league.

Locally, LORT theaters include the Mark Taper Forum and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

So is everybody happy?

Yes, but no. David Rosenak, the executive director of the society, stated in an official release Tuesday that the terms of the new contract “fall short of the union’s stated goals.” So why did its 25-member executive board vote to accept the league’s final offer and recommend its approval to the 1,033 members?

Absence of clout.

According to Stephen J. Albert, managing director of the Taper, had the vote called for a strike, artistic and staff directors in resident theaters across the country (between 150 and 200 people) would have had to decide where their allegiance lay: to their union or their theaters. Many, he said, were prepared to exercise their court-sanctioned right of financial core status in their union (a right-to-work provision unions regard as deadly) in order to maintain their obligations to their boards of trustees. And the society knew this.

“That was the reality,” Rosenak said in New York. “We knew that all but one (artistic director), who was undecided, would have taken financial core (which exempts union members from strike discipline as long as they continue to pay dues and give up voting privileges and active participation). We’re not pleased by that. I wish these directors had shown more solidarity so that we could have gotten a better deal. But we were in communication with our members around the country. They wanted a contract.

“We simply felt that any kind of a job action would not have gotten us a better deal at this time and that our members felt the same way. I do think, however, that while some of us here feel we may have lost this battle, we’ve increased the awareness of LORT in the plight of the individual director.”

Rosenak still believes that salaries don’t constitute what he calls “a decent living wage.” At a theater like the Taper, the top directing fee under the new contract will be $10,800 and the lowest $2,750. This can be spread over five weeks of rehearsal and five weeks of preproduction.

“That pretty much limits work to a maximum of five plays per year,” Rosenak said. “We found out that average earnings came to about $30,000 a year for the most active directors in LORT. That’s what we’d like to change. It obviously will take us more time.”

He pointed out that an article in the Aug. 7 U.S. News and World Report places the salaries of directors of prominent cultural institutions at close to $100,000.

“We don’t begrudge arts administrators their salaries,” he said. “All we’re saying is that if there’s a commitment to the institutions, there must also be one to the artists working in those institutions.”

Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson, considered a high earner, agreed about the commitment.

“It’s been a difficult period,” he said in a phone call from London. “I was fearful it would hurt or break the union because artistic and associate directors would have had to resign and take financial core participation. I’m glad we didn’t have to. There’s great concern about free-lance directors. I pledge myself and I think other artistic directors pledge themselves, during these four years, to work hard to have the union better understand the role of artistic directors and all work together to help the funding situation so that artists can get a better wage--not only directors, but everyone on the creative side, all of whom are underpaid.”

A date for a membership ratification vote has not been set. “When we took the vote eight weeks ago (a rejection of an earlier proposal),” Rosenak explained, “we did something new. We took it for the first time at locations outside New York City. It’s a rather complicated procedure. We’ll have to set up meetings in eight cities.”

The new contract is retroactive to April 15, 1989, and goes to April 14, 1993. Except for some percentage increases, details of the new agreement were not made public.

WIN ONE, LOSE ONE: Enter Simon. Exit Eimuntas.

Simon Callow (“Jacques and His Master”) is coming back to the Los Angeles Theatre Center early next year to stage a new play that Eduardo Machado (“A Burning Beach”) is still writing.

Not to worry. Machado doesn’t.

His new piece, “Stevie Wants to Play the Blues,” is being written for three actresses: Amy Madigan, Jonelle Allen and Deirdre O’Connell. It is “inspired” by the story of Billy Tipton, the jazz musician who died in Seattle last year and was posthumously discovered to have been a woman.

“I wanted to write about how people take on roles, play the roles that society dictates,” Machado said from New York. Another “M. Butterfly” gender-bender?

“ ‘M. Butterfly’ is about someone finding their sexuality,” Machado said. “This is about someone denying their sexuality. And about the people who are talented but not exceptional and can’t find a niche. It’s also about black people and white people--differences in color, in sex. And about the parent in yourself: your own self-image, about how you should be. It’s a real process. Interesting to write a play that’s going to be done. A first for me. A lot of pressure, but exciting, too. I’m in the middle of the second act, so I can’t tell you how it ends.”

We’ll wait. London designer Bruno Santini will design the show. Rehearsals start Jan. 2, previews Feb. 3 and the show opens Feb. 17.

As for the elusive Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrosius, who was invited to direct first “Ivanov” then “The Cherry Orchard” in the summer or fall of 1990, his arrival at LATC has been postponed indefinitely. He’s deep into a highly personal staging of “King Lear” in his home town of Vilnius that may take him months more to complete. It is expected to eventually travel to Chicago. And Los Angeles? Stay tuned.