Are Touring Productions on Broadway Short-Changing Performers?

All over social media in recent weeks have been complaints about the fact that Actors’ Equity members in Mamma Mia! and Beetlejuice are not getting paid Broadway minimum. This started even before the news that Trisha Paytas was stepping into Beetlejuice on Broadway, which further stirred up chatter.

Mamma Mia! and Beetlejuice are far from the first shows to take advantage of touring compensation for a Broadway engagement. Just last season The Wiz was also treated as a tour stopping in New York.

Here is the way it works—once a show hits New York, no matter what tier contract the tour is on, the Broadway engagement is automatically treated like a Tier 1 show. So, for example, actors in Beetlejuice on the road have a minimum compensation of $1077 per week, because the tour is a Tier 5 tour. However, for Broadway, it becomes $2,599 a week, which is the minimum for a Tier 1 tour.

Now, and here is the controversial part, a normal Broadway production contract has a minimum of $2,638 for actors. So that is less obviously. Stage manager salaries are also less—for a musical the tour is $4272, the Broadway minimum is $4,334 for a musical.

But it’s not quite that simple. On the road, producers pay for housing and a per diem. For New York, it is a $66 per diem or single-occupancy housing for the first 4 weeks of the engagement. (This assumes at least three months notice is given—if there is less notice, producers need to pay more.) Now, one way to think of that is, actors are worse off in New York than they are on tour, but because of the bump of tiers in a case where the show is a low tier, they do end up better. But better than Broadway performers? Well, for the first four weeks you could maybe think of it like that because rent for a month is more than the $156 salary difference, but these engagements are longer than four weeks. Though the difference in salary is so small between the Level 1 and Broadway Production contract that, for actors it is only $468 for a 12-week engagement, for stage managers it is $744 for a 12-week engagement, both less than a typical month's rent. 

There is also another caveat however—on the road, members of Equity are entitled to overage, which is a contractual bonus paid to company members, automatically. For the Broadway engagement there is no overage paid.

Now, tours have to requalify for their tier status every 52-week booking season. And, additionally, because notice has to be given of the tour stops in advance, it isn’t that a tour can just permanently sit on Broadway without negotiating with anyone. Plus, these are minimums, and negotiation is a thing that can happen in advance. Several people have negotiated higher salaries. But it’s not completely unreasonable for union members to believe these stops as workarounds to paying Broadway salaries. 

The other way to think of them is that they are bonuses in a way. One ensemble member I spoke to from Beetlejuice said that while he would rather be paid Broadway minimum, he’d rather be in New York than on tour. There is the salary bump and also the opportunity for more industry people to see you perform. Plus, many of the cast have family and friends in the New York area. If you assume that we would not have had another Beetlejuice mounting apart from the tour, a New York stop is nice for many (though not all). That is of course a separate point from whether, while in New York, they should receive the same salaries people in similarly sized theaters with similar expectations do. 

Local 802, the musician’s union, treats these engagements as Broadway engagements.  This means, the musicians of Beetlejuice are treated like their fellow union members up the street, while the cast members of Beetlejuice are not. This also means that if Local 802 strikes, it would impact these touring productions on Broadway, but if Equity alone strikes it would not. (Theoretically of course. There will be strikes in solidarity and the boundaries of those is always up for discussion.) 

That’s the story in a nutshell. After all of this uproar, it is safe to assume that these New York engagements would be high on the list of negotiation topics when the next touring agreement goes into place. However, currently, everyone is focused on the Production Contract for good reason. 

Update: Despite these numbers being approved by an Actors' Equity spokesperson before publication, there was an error in the story regarding minimums. That has now been updated.