Musical to Strike Up a Band Without Union Members

When a touring production of “The Music Man” opens Tuesday at Orange County Performing Arts Center, the music men and women in the orchestra pit won’t be union musicians. So members of American Federation of Musicians Local 7 plan to stand outside the theater, distributing leaflets in protest.

The 38 actors in the show aren’t union members, either. Actors’ Equity, the union for professional stage actors, is not planning to demonstrate outside the theater--even though 12 of the previous opening nights for this tour were beset by Equity protesters.

Whether the union status of the performers matters to the audience is in dispute. The unions say their members--generally more seasoned performers--would make a qualitative difference to audiences. The producer disagrees.

But this particular production matters to the unions because it is the first national tour of the recent Broadway revival of “The Music Man.” First national tours of Broadway productions, as opposed to some of the subsequent tours, traditionally operate with union contracts.

Although Equity plans no demonstration in Costa Mesa, Equity officials estimated that their protest on the opening night of the Chicago engagement for the tour last month attracted 500 demonstrators. The tour’s producer, Dan Sher, acknowledged that there were “a lot of people.” The tour is making money, he said, but he believes the attention drawn to the union issues by the media--more than the protests themselves--have slowed business at the box office during the day or two prior to each city’s opening night.

Equity officials decided to forgo a protest in Costa Mesa after meeting with members of the cast in an attempt to persuade them to sign cards requesting a National Labor Relations Board vote on union representation.

“We have an indication we might be able to organize this cast,” John Holly, Equity’s western regional director, said last week. “We don’t want to do anything that might tip the scales against us.”

Although Holly declined to be specific about the progress of that campaign, he said Tuesday that “we are very positive that we can achieve something with this cast.”

Sher declined to specify how much he pays his talent, though he said that the cast receives “a very wide range” of salaries, from about $25,000 to “six figures” on an annual basis. But he doesn’t dispute reports that he generally pays his talent about half as much as union members would receive according to contractual minimums, which are $1,285 a week for the actors and $1,400 for the musicians.

Besides the economic issues, the unions also have a history of objecting to non-union productions that are presented within the “Broadway” series on the grounds of protecting theatergoers from misleading marketing. For example, the Orange County series that includes “The Music Man” is called the “Bank of America Broadway Series,” although its performers wouldn’t be able to work on Broadway unless they joined the unions.

However, tickets for “The Music Man” cost $20 to $55--less than those for any other production in the series and considerably less than Broadway tickets. The price reflects the fact that the $225,000 paid by the center to the producer is about half the fee charged by a typical unionized show. So the unions aren’t emphasizing that argument this time around.

Dodger Productions, which mounted the Broadway “Music Man,” decided that a unionized tour of that production would be too costly for presenters and too financially risky for producers, said Michael David, one of the Dodger partners. “With much disappointment, [we] reluctantly released the touring rights back to the estate of Meredith Willson”--the show’s creator.

Sher’s Big League Theatricals, also based in New York, then acquired the rights. Big League has produced at least 20 shows over 13 years, without using Equity contracts, Sher said. He saw no reason to break with that policy. Sher said his “The Music Man” uses union stagehands and a director and choreographer who are union members. “If a contract feels affordable in the future” with the left-out unions, he said, “it’s not out of the question.”

If Equity succeeds in organizing Sher’s current cast, the future may arrive sooner than Sher expects. Although Sher said that “there would be a long legal process with both sides,” he also said the tour is now booked through May 2003, leaving more than a year in which to reach some agreement.

One change on behalf of the touring talent was already made. As of Jan. 1, they’ve received health benefits, which weren’t part of their original contracts.

Frank Amoss, president of Musicians Local 7, is not impressed. He referred to the producer as “minor league, not big league.”