I guess what I’m driving at here is more of a strategy for overcoming these kinds of perception and motivation conflicts, not a further focusing of what the problems actually are. Given that we arrived at the present status quo through the almost total chaos of a bunch of individuals and individual companies, each one of us is going to have a vastly different take on what the most important problems are.

So we have a host of troubles, like the public perception that non-Equity theater means theater of diminished quality, and no way to crack the egg and address them. What’s more important to me is to develop a strategy that works to lobby the folks we need to influence - first, our entire potential audience, second, organizations like the League of Chicago Theaters, or LORT, or the City of Chicago. I think we spend a lot of energy on convincing people who already pretty much agree with us - the people we know, and have direct contact with. But these other folks have no apparent incentive to change their ways unless it suits them, and our job should be to find out and explain why change is worth investing in.

With any problem, there’s kind of a desperate attempt to express the problem clearly. You’ve done that:

why won’t the public take a chance on non-Equity shows with non-Equity actors, but will take a chance on those same actors once they become Equity?

That’s a good first step. The next step is: identify who has the power to change the situation. Now we’re not talking about the entire public here - we’re talking about people who have the perception that non-equity actors are too much of a risk to spend their money on - either they don’t go to much theater OR more likely they see theater exclusively at the big theaters but not small theaters. Convincing each of those individuals is incredibly complex and difficult for a large group of uncoordinated theaters to do, so let’s go for a much narrower target: the folks who control the dialogue with those big theater subscription pools, or organizations that represent smaller theater companies and have marketing budgets big enough to go directly to the public with a marketing campaign message.

Great. So we have the problem, and we have the people we need to influence. Now we’re stuck with another hurdle - we need to convince these people that it’s in their best interests to help us. Long-term value of supporting the development of non-equity talent is a pretty easy sell, but what about the short term? Why should Steppenwolf spend resources to convince their subscribers to also see non-equity theater? Why should the League spend most of its marketing budget on the segment of its membership that contributes the least to the financial stability of the organization?

Let’s get into their heads for a minute. What are they after? A bigger share of the market? Stability? Quality? Intimacy? A next-generation subscriber base? What can you offer them to also achieve the goal of exposing non-believers to a high-quality non-equity show?

Small storefronts and up-and-coming actors can offer the bigger theaters flexible and cheap solutions to their biggest problems through partnerships. The big theaters in town know that in town actors are cheaper, but not if they lose box office revenue in using them. They want to convince the audience and cultivate the chicago theater landscape just as much as we do, but they have a larger-scale business and artistic strategy in place that tends to steamroll its way through the season, and is much more difficult to redirect. If you had an audience that was more actively clamoring to see Chicago talent, I think the tune would change.

I think the solution lies within programs like the partnership of Silk Road and the Goodman Theater on their upcoming co-production of Yohen. Silk Road identified a need that the Goodman had - the absence of a key demographic within its diverse artistic collective - and offered itself as the perfect short-term solution. Silk Road benefits, and the Goodman benefits with minimum risk (since Yohen will be produced in the Silk Road space), and Goodman subscribers are exposed to what we all hope is a stellar non-equity production, which may help change their minds and build public interest in theaters of all sizes. This is the kind of empathy-led compromise that solves multiple problems in one easy step and theoretically benefits everyone involved.

The problem gets even more specific than that. A few months back, there was a minor firestorm of an argument in the comments section of Mr. Jones’ Theater Loop blog, about the perception of Equity vs. non-Equity actors, and their relative worth as artists. On one side, you had people who were actively disdainful of non-Equity performers, deriding them as “amateurs” incapable of creating quality theater on any sort of par with an Equity performer. On the other side, excuse me for being so dismissive, but on the other side you had logic.

The public sees an Equity performer as professional because they in fact spend all of their time as performers, even drawing paychecks for such work, and must therefore be professionals, and ipso facto they are always going to be better than the actors still struggling with 9-5 temp jobs on top of their theater careers.

However, the fine line between an Equity and non-Equity performer is simply acceptance into Equity, which comes in part by being fortunate enough to be cast in a show by an Equity company. As far as I know, Equity doesn’t require you to have been particularly good in that Equity show you did. There’s no conservatory training you go through to earn that Equity status.

Logic dictates, then, that the excellent Equity actor was likely also an excellent non-Equity actor, and the poor Equity actor (and yes, they exist, and yes, somebody will keep giving them work) was a poor non-Equity actor who was exactly what one Equity show ended up needing.

So the question is, why won’t the public take a chance on non-Equity shows with non-Equity actors, but will take a chance on those same actors once they become Equity?