Off Broadway, Labor Tension Heats Up

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about the push to unionize backstage crews Off Broadway. We’ll also get details on the Trump administration’s seizure of $80 million that was supposed to cover some of the city’s expenses for housing migrants.

For more than a month, striking stage crews have idled the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company, where the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “Kimberly Akimbo” ran before they moved to Broadway and won Tony Awards. The strike is part of a unionization push that could change the economics of Off Broadway, which was hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and has yet to recover. I asked Michael Paulson, The New York Times’s theater reporter, to explain where things stand.

You write that unionization will change the economics of theaters in New York. Will unionization drive nonprofit theater companies out of business? Can nonprofit theater companies afford to pay what unions demand?

Those are all questions that different people have different answers to. This unionization effort is taking place at for-profit and nonprofit entities, but nonprofits are having a particularly hard time right now. They’re doing fewer shows. The number of shows eligible for the Lucille Lortel Awards this season is roughly half what it was five years ago. Costs have gone up since the pandemic and, if labor costs rise, that will be another financial challenge.

But the people who work backstage say the salaries they are being paid are not enough to live on. They say that just as theaters face financial challenges, so do workers, and the system needs to figure out how to pay living wages.

Who’s looking to unionize?

It’s people who work backstage, including the people we usually think of as stagehands — people who move scenery around — and also people who work in hair, makeup, audio, video, lighting and props.

Crews at five Off Broadway entities have voted to unionize over the last year.

Two of the five entities where crews voted to unionize are commercial musicals. The crew of “Titaníque,” which spoofs the film “Titanic,” approved a contract last October, and the crew at “Little Shop of Horrors,” a revival of the sci-fi musical comedy, followed in January. The other three entities are nonprofits: the Public Theater, a large nonprofit; the Atlantic, which is a midsize operation; and the Vineyard, which is smaller.

What about the actors?

The crews are among the only workers at Off Broadway theaters who are not unionized — the actors unionized decades ago — and the crews are unionizing shop by shop.

“Titaníque” and “Little Shop” began before the pandemic and are running indefinitely, so they’re established operations. It would be difficult to organize a musical that has a five-week run — by the time you could take the vote, everything would be over. But everyone involved believes this is the beginning of an effort to organize as many of the established Off Broadway entities as possible — the institutional companies and the long-running shows.

What are the crews’ particular concerns? Working conditions? Health insurance?

The concerns that I hear mostly are compensation, health care and retirement benefits. But there will be other issues on the table, including work rules, which concern overtime and staffing practices.

Off Broadway has historically been scrappier and more experimental than the commercial Broadway world. That often meant that Off Broadway employed people who were at the earliest stages of their careers, and often did not pay them particularly well, with the understanding that they were in a training ground. I think there was a time when people thought that because the work was noble and important they were willing to suffer for the work. One of the realities of the current climate is that fewer people now think that way. The prevailing idea is that work is work and should be compensated appropriately.

Off Broadway has matured over time. In its origins, the production values were low, the finances were anemic, and the sector identified as if everything was being made by groups of hungry young artists creating together in basements and other found spaces.

That is no longer the case for a significant portion of Off Broadway. That kind of work still happens. But we’re also talking about mature institutions with multimillion-dollar budgets and development offices and sophisticated production values. The Off Broadway sector has changed over time, and these workers are asking for the way they are treated to change, too.

What about the Atlantic?

The Atlantic is an important theater that has birthed a lot of shows that have gone on to great success, but like many other nonprofits, it is facing financial challenges because of rising costs postpandemic. Negotiations there broke down in mid-January.

There were two plays in previews at that time. The productions have now been canceled. And it’s not clear what’s going to happen to the Atlantic’s spring season.

For both sides, this is existential. The company says it’s worried that labor costs will go so high it won’t be able to continue to exist. And the workers worry that compensation is so low they can’t continue to do theater as a career.

How much was the push to unionize a reaction to the pandemic? How does this fit with efforts to unionize at Amazon and Starbucks?

I think the labor movement emerged from the pandemic energized. We’re seeing, all across the country in a variety of different industries, workers in companies that had not been unionized asking whether unionization might help them. People who work on Off Broadway crews know what’s happening at Amazon or Starbucks — and know unionized workers in other jobs in the theater world — and think, Wow, would my work conditions be better if I did that? Some of them are answering yes.

Weather

Expect rain and clouds in the morning leading to sunny conditions in the afternoon, with a high in the mid-40s. In the evening, there will be clear skies and moderate winds with a low around 30 degrees.

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Suspended for snow cleaning.

The latest New York news

The Trump administration took back $80 million that the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid New York City last week. The money, seized from New York City accounts, was supposed to cover some of the city’s expenses for housing migrants.

The office of the city comptroller, Brad Lander, noticed on Wednesday that the $80 million had disappeared from the bank accounts. The move by the Department of Homeland Security, of which FEMA is a part, was a significant escalation of President Trump’s attempts to freeze or reverse funding that had previously been appropriated by Congress.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, asserted on X that the city was using FEMA funding to finance the use of the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan as a migrant shelter. She claimed that the hotel had served as a “base of operations” for the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams, said that City Hall had communicated with the White House and had requested an emergency meeting with FEMA to “try and resolve the matter as quickly as possible.” She added that City Hall was conducting an “internal investigation into how this occurred,” and that the city’s Law Department was “already exploring various litigation options.”

On Monday Elon Musk said on X that his cost-cutting team had identified a $59 million payment from FEMA to pay for housing migrants at hotels in New York City. City officials said that the $59 million was part of the $80 million payment from FEMA last week.

The fallout from Musk’s post led to the firing on Tuesday of four employees of FEMA, including its chief financial officer, who was accused of undermining the agency’s leadership by disbursing the $80 million.