That's Entertainment! Or it will be, maybe, soon, if ...

Just in case you've been hiding under a rock (or, like me, you don't watch the TV):

The TV and movie writers are on strike! (And another blog here.) Let me tell you, I have never been so disappointed in Ellen. (Though the article does point out this, It was not clear why the WGA East singled out DeGeneres rather than her syndicated TV peers, including Oprah Winfrey, kitchen guru Rachael Ray or psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Good point!)

However. This is mostly a theater blog, so what concerns me just as much is that the stagehands in New York are on strike — for the first time in their 121 year history.

OMG, if these strikes go on, people might have to start reading books. Crazy times, eh? (Luckily, we're putting out our "Winter Reading" special issue in a couple of weeks ... )

Here's The NY Times' primer on the strike issues on Broadway.
Here's IATSE Local One's website.
Here's the League of American Theaters and Producers' website.

Here are some good blogs about the Broadway stagehands strike:
The Humble Nailbanger
One NYC Stagehand
Steve on Broadway
Full Force Theater Musings

And for kicks, I'm going to paste in my entire article from last January's BRAVO about the stagehands' union in Eugene/Springfield, IATSE Local 675. Those people work freakin' hard, and they work almost every day of the year (when they can — the Hult Center has been a bit underutilized since 9/11, weirdly).

And you know what? This is dangerous work. Sad that the Broadway producers, who are making record profits, want take-backs in the contract.

Read more after the jump.

1/4/07
Smooth Sailing
How IATSE members hold the Hult together

On Christmas Eve afternoon, as the last production of the Eugene Ballet Company's The Nutcracker ends at the Hult Center, stagehands swing into motion. They know the set well; they've worked on it for the past eight years, but still — someone has to get the small ship off the box for the balloon; someone has to pack up the comforter and pillows from Clara's bed; someone must take apart the clock and store it correctly.

As other people run around preparing parties, exchanging gifts or spending quality time with new Wiis, the members of IATSE Local 675 work into the evening to tear down the set. And they're coming back the next day.

"We haven't had to work on Christmas Day in a while," Virginia Sands comments, mid-afternoon on Dec. 25. She's wielding her adjustable wrench to unscrew one of many C-clamped lights on a long metal pipe (a bar) which has been lowered to the deck (aka "stage floor," for nontheatrical types). She checks a piece of paper on a music stand so she can move lights according to the Eugene Opera's "plot," the lighting design for The Pirates of Penzance.

Near Sands, Ruth Atcherson and Janelle Lesan move quickly and securely along other pipes, taking off and setting down the various light boxes with ease. Stage right, in what an audience would see as the left wing if an audience were ever able to see the world of backstage, audio engineer Jason Wells bawls out, "Right truss coming down!" The truss is extra storage for lights, and more "meat racks" of lights stand at the ready upstage, near a storage area with a taped IATSE logo.

Technically, it's the IATSE, according to the union's website, and that stands for (deep breath) the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada. Just in case that's not clear: "We are costumers, hair and makeup artists, set builders, painters, propmakers, lighting technicians, sound engineers, riggers and flyrail operators," says business agent Mike Carpenter.

Everything that's done backstage at the Hult, in other words. For instance, The Nutcracker was on tour across Idaho until just before it played at the Hult, and the touring version, with a smaller set, had to join its larger sister set in Eugene. When the EBC's truck arrived, IATSE workers were ready to haul in the Christmas tree, costumes, props for the dancers and other important bits. And they made sure the stage was safe for performers. Longtime IATSE member Jim Rusby noticed a frayed bit of rope on the balloon and wrapped electrical tape around it so no costumes would catch, no hands get rope burn. "We make sure things are tied up and taped down," he said, as other stagehands fed weighted metal pipes through the bottom of the backdrops. "There's a tendency for the backdrops to blow towards the house," John Loomis explained. He winked and said, "We call that the suck." And no dancer wants to be caught in the suck.

When some of the pipes ran too long for the backdrop, Loomis and Carpenter and Doug Beebe sighed and backed them out; random pieces of metal sticking out in the dark backstage area would be a disaster. Of course, they've seen their share of disasters: Ripped pants in the middle of a performance, fog machines gone crazy and all kinds of other, er, experiences. Not that the audiences would know that. "We tread lightly and make a show flow seamlessly so that you don't notice anything but what a wonderful performing arts experience you're having," wrote Atcherson last September in a handout for the IATSE booth at the Eugene Celebration.

The Nutcracker comes off without mishap. There's always backstage drama, of course. Caroline Barnes has to sew an ear back on the dragon in the time between the kids' rehearsal, which takes place during intermission, and the time the dragon had to be back onstage about 20 minutes later. Working with a flashlight and "trying not to mess with the flow of what happens behind the scenes," she says, she manages to get it fixed in time. Indeed, the watching children and families never know a thing about it. "That can be sort of exhilarating!" she says.

Barnes remembers her trial by fire at the Hult: After creating costumes for two of the Hult's "user groups," she got her first call in 1992 when what she diplomatically will only describe as "a rock band" was playing. While loading in their equipment, the band's roadies ripped a hole in a huge black backdrop. "I remember being in the corridor with this industrial sewing machine and being under the gun, like, they needed it hung yesterday," she says. She kept pushing what seemed like endless material through the massive machine. And when it was finally finished, she wondered if work would be like that all of the time.

Answer? No, it's not all adrenaline. A lot of IATSE work involves preparation and careful following of protocol; those things above your head onstage are heavy. Most stagehands have degrees in theater and spend three years apprenticing at the Hult to get to know the facility better. John Loomis ("the original stagehand," the others call him) knows just about everything there is to know about the Hult after helping to rig the rope system on the flyrail, which, Atcherson writes, has 93 different linesets.

Why call it a flyrail? In the lore told around the backstage, 19th century stagehands only worked theater in their free time. "We were all sailors," Carpenter says. "The theater could only run during the winter, and that's when sailors had their off-season." Sailors knew how to tie knots, carry heavy equipment, deal with ropes and large pieces of canvas and climb around in high, cramped spaces. "That's why we call it rigging," Carpenter says as he watches Beebe turn into "the fly guy," hauling ropes to bring various pieces of, well, large canvas down from high above the stage.

Eugene's IATSE chapter began in 1929, during the era of silent film, and since then, members have worked at the McDonald and Rex movie theaters, on drive-in movies and at the old Heilig Theatre, not to mention on films like Stand by Me.

On Christmas Day, Sands calls up, "Drop me a box and a line!" Lesan and Atcherson walk along the deck next to their battens (sailor talk for pipes). There's desultory talk about what the kids got for the holidays, what people did in the few free hours between The Nutcracker breakdown and their call today. Up on the flyrail, Bruce Hartnell of Los Mex Pistols del Norte prepares to send Sands the electrical power she needs. Wells and Barnes pore over the plot, laid out on a table off stage right, and Beebe hauls on ropes to bring down more pipes.

It's 4:45 pm now, and, along with movie ticket takers and restaurant workers, the stagehands will be active into the night. "You have to really love theater," says Barnes. "When everyone else is having a party on Friday nights, you can guarantee you're going to be working." The work is paid hourly; it's not a regular paycheck, and of course the bookings are not planned in a regular fashion, so the less active union members rely on a variety of other jobs to balance the irregular hours of working shows at the Hult, OSU, the UO and Lane County Fairgrounds. "Trying to find child care for those hours can be a challenge," Barnes says. But "you make it work with your other jobs."

In her description of IATSE, Atcherson wrote that the stagehands have a love for the Hult Center, which they run as "a large, intricate machine." And, Barnes says, most stagehands can count on one thing: "We have Wednesday mornings off!"