TBOT_S01E18 - Donkeys and Unicorns

Today on the podcast, we talk about “Donkey Salaries” and the never-ending search for organizational “Unicorns”.

WORKING TITLE:

- THE BEST DAY EVER

REJECTED TITLES:

Your salary could have funded several small companies.

Unicorns and Butterflies Everywhere

Squidward taps, SpongeBob Slaps

• PAID INTERNS?

Two years on, several of these programs remain in limbo, suggesting that systemic change is easier dreamed than done. But other artistic directors are tackling the big questions head on and introducing new programs, offering glimpses into what might be. In conversation with these artistic directors, one trend seems abundantly clear: more equitable access to better opportunities for fewer people.

The Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, N.Y.’s had a fellowship program for actors that was tuition-based. Now the theatre pays participants; whereas the tuition-based model saw a cohort of around 22 young people each summer, the salaried model will accommodate about 15.

Meanwhile, at New York Stage and Film (a partner of Vassar’s Powerhouse Theatre), artistic director Chris Burney, has made dramatic changes after he witnessed the company’s pre-pandemic work culture. “I was shocked,” said Burney, who began at the job in spring 2019. “People were working seven days a week for two months straight. It’s not right, even if it’s fun. It’s not right.” Burney brought all positions at the festival into compliance with state minimum wage laws, which drastically raised intern stipends, and paid for overtime while discouraging workweeks that necessitated it. The company now employs about half of the interns it used to (though not all of the other half disappeared into the ether—some have been moved into staff positions).

And Williamstown Theatre Festival, which as recently as 2019 paid its artistic director more than a quarter of a million dollars a year while employing several dozen unpaid interns and low-paid staff members, has entirely pivoted its operational model. It suspended its internship program and replaced it with smaller, more focused opportunities: in 2021, the Early Career BIPOC Theatre Makers Program, and in 2022, a similar program open to pre-professional theatre artists. Both programs pay stipends and offer room and board, and this years’ program emphasizes a well-rounded theatre education: It will operate “within various departments so participants get a more holistic sense of how theatre is made,” offered interim artistic director Jenny Gersten. Gersten seems genuinely interested in providing hands-on experiences that are of primary benefit to the intern; the new program, she said, “doesn’t require their labor but does allow them to get hands-on experience. And the program combines time in an experiential setting as well as classroom time.”

These companies are leading the charge and walking the walk. But faced with the financial precarity inherent in the industry and exacerbated by the pandemic, it seems unlikely that most other theatre companies that put tuition-based, unpaid, or underpaid entry-level programs on hold will reopen their doors to new crops of well-paid young people. And many of those companies whose programs do revamp and reopen, like WTF and Hangar, plan to sustain their new models with smaller cohorts. All of this adds up to fewer entry-level opportunities in the theatre industry.

• DONKEY SALARIES

The unicorn employee: someone with all the skills across a multitude of platforms, isn’t limited by job titles, and efficiently completes tasks at an awe-inspiring pace. They are willing, and even prefer, to wear different hats, inspire colleagues, and never lose empathy.

Unicorns can make the difference between surviving and thriving and perhaps unsurprisingly, they are hard to catch even when you have the right bait.

And this is why it never ceases to surprise me when I come across a job description from a nonprofit arts and culture org that is clearly looking for a unicorn but offering a donkey budget.

Following the pandemic, this has become a bit more common, and I get it; staffs were gutted and the funds to rehire at previous levels doesn’t exist. All of this makes the temptation to offer a little more for unicorn level duties and responsibilities is strong.

All of this is the latest byproduct of a system that has underpaid staffers for decades while expanding the pay gap between entry/middle management and executives at exponential rates. As such, I can’t say any of it is a surprise and while I wish there was a simple solution here, don’t expect much to change until the field begins to make pay equality a priority.

In the meantime, you’ll be more likely to attract the best candidates possible by conducting an honest unicorn to donkey review before posting your next job

• OSKAR EUSTIS IS NONPROFIT THEATER’S PANDEMIC PAY CHAMP

https://mailchi.mp/bwayjournal/sprecher-loses-rights-to-rebecca-15042585?e=c0d6480bcc

EXCLUSIVE:

In 2020, a year in which theaters were dark for nine and a half months, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis earned $1.15 million in pay and benefits, more than any other nonprofit theater leader in New York.

Eustis’ 10 percent jump in overall compensation — disclosed in the Public’s 2020-21 tax return filed with the New York Attorney General — runs counter to the company’s messaging about pandemic pay. In an April 2020 New York Times story about the cancellation of Shakespeare in the Park and planned staff furloughs, Michael Paulson reported that much of the remaining staff “will take up to a 25 percent pay cut. Eustis will take a 40 percent pay cut.”

The tax return, which details compensation for calendar year 2020, tells a different story. Eustis, one of the highest-profile figures in nonprofit theater since assuming leadership of the storied organization in 2005, was paid $901,000, up from $807,000 in 2019. Benefits and deferred pay were valued at an additional $255,000.

Who is the most valuable in a nonprofit?

When should the leader transition to allow for new leaders?

How do you prep your artistic bench?

Interns call your lapsed subscribers…

Why does any of your staff matter?

Every theater artist needs a ghost light!

How do we catch a unicorn?

If you don’t recruit diversity, you will not have diversity in your organization.

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