The Stage

Wage wars

Published Wednesday 25 August 2010 at 17:04

Does enforcing a minimum wage in the arts open up the profession to a wider variety of talent or limit the quantity and quality of productions making it to the stage, asks Kieron Barry

Arts Council England’s suspension of all adverts for unpaid opportunities on its Arts Jobs website last week has reopened the debate on whether the minimum wage should be enforced in the arts.

The debate has been largely conducted on grounds of principle - is it right or wrong for workers to be paid adequately? But the reality in which that principle is to be applied is so complex and varied that a single rule may not prove helpful in every case.

When a Hollywood studio makes its latest $200 million blockbuster, it uses unpaid interns for many minor production roles. Most people would agree that this represents a rather cynical exploitation of eager young professionals hoping to gain a career foothold. Aside from the moral dimension of this policy, it has the practical consequence of limiting industry access to the affluent. It’s easy to imagine that if the studio weren’t so greedy then those interns could be paid and the film would still get produced.

But when, say, a group of entrepreneurial but impoverished actors get together to produce a fringe play themselves and, finding themselves two actors short, advertise to complete their company for expenses only, are we really serving the arts by penalising (or even criminalising) these individuals?

The novelist must work unpaid on their book for years with what they must know are slim odds of it being published, let alone of it making money for them. For the time they are working on it they are both employer and employee. They have weighed up what the project will cost them (time, money, missed opportunities to work on other things) and they have proceeded on the chance that the enterprise will prove worthwhile. It’s important to note that they have the right to make that choice.

Both the joy and the tyranny of theatre, however, is that it is a collaborative medium. Actors, directors or producers cannot work in solitude, they must link hands with others before they can start any project, and by definition this requires some contract - in the loosest sense - to exist between them. They’re undertaking the same evaluation as the novelist - will this project be of benefit to me? - but they must arrive at a consensus with others.

The question is whether the state has a useful role in deciding the terms of that contract.

If it’s felt that coercion or exploitation may take place without the state or a union acting on behalf of the weaker party, then it’s reasonable to encourage an outside representative to intercede. It’s not axiomatic, though, that the actor is the weaker party. The Screen Actors Guild in the US, for example, is an effective counter to the excesses of the larger producers, but it sometimes causes a degree of harm when forcing its terms on small-scale producers. One effect of this is actors (and directors under the Directors Guild) often being forced by their union to turn down pro bono charity work which they themselves want to do.

Almost every large and medium-sized theatre company today is struggling to make ends meet, and the occasional use of unpaid labour by these organisations forms the grey area upon which most arguments focus. But on the fringe there is almost no grey at all - the regrettable truth is that generally the choice isn’t between paying the actors and not paying them, it’s between not paying the actors and not having the production take place.

It may be that, given this choice, it is indeed better for the production not to proceed. But it’s not clear whether parties outside the transaction have the right to decide this. If an actor has total freedom to accept or reject any offer, it must follow that a producer has an equal freedom to make any offer. One cannot protect the rights of one group and not do so for another group. Therefore, if a minimum wage is put in place, there can be no moral objection to a maximum wage, and it seems unfair to impose limits on the salaries of artists who find their talents in demand.

On the fringe, it’s a little difficult to believe that countless producers are laughing all the way to the bank with huge sums gained from the exploitation of actors. Human nature dictates that there is probably the same proportion of crooks and misers working in the theatre as in any other profession (although quite why anyone would choose to work in theatre if money was their motive is not clear), yet a quick head count at most fringe shows would suggest that for much of the time the question is not who receives the profit, but who must bear the loss.

The obvious solution is to increase revenue. But how? Raising ticket prices would have the sorry effects of both reducing houses and creating the kind of demographic imbalance in audiences which many feel the absence of a minimum wage is causing among actors - the undue prevalence of the wealthy. Increasing the audience size would appear to be the other option, but, of course, no one so far has worked out how to do this.

Yet unless box office revenues increase, the economic reality is enforcing a minimum wage must result in fewer productions. And this can only result in fewer theatres. I wonder if this is what we want?

Kieron Barry’s most recent play, Stockwell, ran at the Tricycle Theatre in London last year