Actors stage theater protest

NEW YORK -- Hundreds of Broadway actors huddled under the rain in Times Square Wednesday, blasting producers who take shows like "Miss Saigon" on the road while paying performers lower, nonunion wages.\n"They're left-brained money men!" actress Sandy Duncan said into a microphone set up just behind the TKTS discount ticket booth. "And you're being held ransom for doing what you desperately want to do!"\n"The producers are charging almost the same ticket prices, but the actors are getting only one-third the money," said Flora Stamatiades, Equity's national director of labor organizing.\n"Miss Saigon" employed union members while the musical played on Broadway, but as a new non-Equity tour travels to major cities, its actors are earning about 450 dollars a week instead of the more than 1,300 dollar wages under the Actors' Equity production contract, said Maria Somma, spokeswoman for the protest's road campaign.\n"Non-Equity shows used to go to smaller markets. But 'Saigon' is hitting major cities; that's a change," Somma said.\nNext week, the New York-based Big League Theatricals is taking "Miss Saigon" to Newark's New Jersey Performing Arts Center, after stints in Boston and Philadelphia. Big League also took a nonunion "Music Man" on the road.\nBig League's executive producer, Dan Sher, said the weekly non-Equity salaries in "Miss Saigon" are more than 450 dollars but he refused to name a figure, saying only: "We pay many of our actors more per week than a lot of Equity minimum contracts do across the country."\nBesides, he said, taking this show on the road is expensive, and includes costs for rights to the production, stage crews and transportation costs. "We pay actors what we can afford to pay based on the budget," Sher said.\nAnd ticket prices, he said, are set by respective theaters, not by the production company.\nStamatiades said her union is not demanding ironclad wages, especially if a producer is facing an economic crunch. Equity has forged dozens of what she calls "deals" for salaries that allow a show to survive.\nShe said that of the 45,000 Equity members nationwide, most support the protest action against nonunion productions.\nDuring Wednesday's protest, Equity members presented "The Jobless Chronicles," a one-act musical showcasing unemployment stories, and the fictionalized story of a "Miss Saigon" cast member who runs away from the production.