In summer 2023, theatres around the country were still reeling in the aftermath of the Covid shutdowns of the previous few years. When New York City’s Public Theater laid off nearly 20 percent of its employees, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) responded by holding a town hall for Off-Broadway workers. As Liv Rigdon, who works as a costume supervisor at the Atlantic Theater Company, looked around and saw how many of her colleagues from that theatre had come to check it out, she thought to herself, “I guess we’re ready. I guess we’re going to do this.”
“This,” in the case of Rigdon and her Atlantic comrades, meant not only unionizing, which Atlantic crews did almost exactly a year ago, but ultimately calling a strike, which began on Jan. 12 and has thus far shut down the Atlantic’s season. (Two shows then in previews, Grief Camp and I Assume You Know David Greenspan, were cancelled, and there is no word on the progress of upcoming productions, including Ethan Coen’s Let’s Love!, Abby Rosebrock’s Lowcountry, and NSangou Njikam’s A Freeky Introduction.)
“We hoped we wouldn’t have to do this,” explained Rigdon, who serves on IATSE’s bargaining committee with the Atlantic. “But it was inevitable, because they put us in a position where we have no choice.”
Rigdon said that after stagehands at the Atlantic began organizing, the union tried reaching out to the company’s leadership—which then hired Littler Mendelson, a law firm known for representing Amazon and Starbucks in their anti-union efforts. Management called for a vote in an effort to cut short the organizing, but IATSE’s unionization effort won 129-1, with 73 percent turnout, Rigdon said. After months of negotiations made no progress, the workers voted to strike. Added Rigdon, “We’re being advised by the union, but the workers are at the helm of the ship and it took very little convincing.”
Rigdon says the union’s biggest issues are about fair pay, benefits, and healthcare, but adds that while the Atlantic has accused the union of making unreasonable demands talks have broken down over “nuances and mechanical things” required for a first contract. “We haven’t even talked about our key demands yet,” she said. “I’d love to say, ‘We’re striking for benefits,’ but we’re striking because they’ve locked us out of the table over five things where they said, ‘If you don’t take these verbatim, then that’s it.’”
According to a union spokesperson, those ultimatums included questions about recognition of the union, the jurisdiction of the agreement, management’s rights, no-strike/no-lockout language, an unusual gag clause, and an unusual most favored nations clause. All these issues, said the union rep, must be discussed, not unilaterally decided; IATSE’s counterproposal has still not received a response from the Atlantic. As Rigdon put it, “Their non-negotiable demands stalled the bargaining process. Regardless of what they claim to have proposed, we can’t finalize economics until they come back to the table.”
The Atlantic did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this article. In an official statement on their website, the theatre restates its commitment to “equity on our stage” and claims that its offers to the union include “nearly a 20 percent increase in wages and other benefits,” while warning that any agreement must be “financially sustainable for everyone or we will not be around to offer any work to anyone.”
The Atlantic strike has garnered the headlines. But over the last two years labor organizing has quietly been gaining steam in the theatre industry, not only Off-Broadway but at nonprofit theatres around the country as well. IATSE helped form unions for the freelance and staff stage crews at the Atlantic, Public, and the Vineyard as well as for the commercial Off-Broadway productions Titanique and Little Shop of Horrors. The union includes people who work as stagehands, as well as in audio and video and lighting, hair and makeup, wardrobe, props, and carpentry. The Public is currently in negotiations with the union, while the Vineyard has not yet started. Industry observers expect workers at other Off-Broadway companies to follow suit.
Meanwhile, crew, costume, scenic, hair, and makeup staff have unionized at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut, and front-of-house staff members have been unionizing at renowned regional theatres like Steppenwolf Theatre and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. (Last fall both onstage performers and backstage workers also unionized at Casa Bonita, a restaurant in Denver that offers live performances.) In a recent breakthrough, the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis reached a collective bargaining agreement with its public-facing staff, who unionized in 2023 with IATSE Local 13.
Dan Little, a labor organizer with IATSE, understands that the stakes are high for those sitting across the table from his union’s negotiators. Most theatres are still struggling, losing money, moving locations, and staging fewer and smaller productions. While theatre has routinely been pronounced dead for centuries, a new sense of crisis already felt palpable (and that was even before the recent actions of the new regime in Washington, D.C., have thrown the economy and culture into grave uncertainty).
“The American theatre industry is at a crossroads, and it probably has been since the pandemic,” Little said. “Theatres are facing declining subscribers and patrons have lots of options for how to spend their entertainment dollars and time. And there have been notable shifts in donor and philanthropic priorities.”
But he says those in power sometimes seem to have forgotten that their theatres can’t operate without the people his union is representing—or at least forgotten that their needs and ideas matter.
“Theatres are having meaningful conversations with themselves, but unfortunately a lot of those conversations seem to happen with the folks at the top of the organizations, talking about it with their boards of directors and trustees,” Little said. “It can take hundreds of people to produce a play: the actors, the musicians, the production employees, but also the ticket sellers and the ushers and everyone who contributes. They’ve often been left out of the conversation and are simply told what’s going to happen. But they want to be part of that conversation too.”
Abby Bomher, who started the front-of-house union effort at the Goodman and serves as steward there, said their organizing inspired the theatre’s makeup and wardrobe department to unionize, and that employees at other theatres have reached out to ask about the process and experience. “I think the future of unions within the theatre industry is looking quite bright,” she said.
Despite a general sense of solidarity, theatre workers at different theatres are mobilizing around different needs. Rigdon said that her union’s work conditions are decent, and their internal polling shows their top priority is collecting benefits. Bomher said that while wages and benefits are issues at the Goodman, she felt propelled to action by poor communication from management.
And Kristina Newcomb, who until recently worked at Steppenwolf as assistant house manager and then balcony manager, said the main issues there are wages and promotions. Newcomb said that the staff understands the pressures of running a theatre, “but we also felt unsupported as workers.”
Another issue cited by some is non-discrimination protections, especially for the LGBTQ+ community, who seek language that goes beyond the protections of Title VII or the Civil Rights Act. Diversity and accessibility were priorities for the staff at Children’s Theatre Company; another was health and safety precautions in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the rise of concerns about RSV, norovirus, and severe flus.
Rigdon noted the renewed urgency of their efforts, in a nation in which worker protections are currently under intense fire, and there’s even a chance that the new presidential administration will dismantle OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration). If that happens, workers will need to have workplace protections delineated in collectively bargained contracts, Rigdon said. Bottom line, she added, “I think everybody deserves a union, and all workers need to band together.”
Wages and health benefits are usually front and center in union negotiations, said Little, especially since many crew members are freelance and need portable healthcare as they move between theatres and jobs. But some issues are not directly about economics.
“Sometimes the concern is about work-life balance and scheduling,” Little said. “Scheduling is a top-line item for many people who want to ensure the work is sustainable. This industry has a bad habit of churning through and grinding people down. There’s somewhere in the middle there that we can land to make something sustainable.”
Newcomb, who recently left her theatre job for the economic safety of full-time work at an elementary school, said that in the face of workers’ organizing efforts, Steppenwolf initially took several steps the workers viewed as punitive, but negotiations ultimately worked out. “We got higher pay—pay raises in addition to our yearly raises,” Newcomb said. (Most of the staff there got about a $1.50-per-hour raise and an extra hour added to their shifts, while balcony house managers got a $3.80 raise. Everyone also received annual raises of about a dollar an hour, Newcomb said.)
Meanwhile, at the Goodman, Bomher said, leadership was “rather graceful” in handling the unionizing of the front-of-house staff. “Our new COO, John Collins, has been kind and empathetic and has made a concerted effort to listen to us,” she said.
In an interview, Collins pointed out that the Goodman has a quarter-century relationship with IATSE, as well as with other unions, and respects their right to organize. But the relationship goes beyond that, Collins added.
“Listening and understanding the rationale and the meaning behind the union’s requests is a big part of this,” he said. “You have to remember that the people across the table are your colleagues, and these are the same people who eight times a week are down there serving as the front line and face of this organization. And they do a really good job.”
Bomher wishes that the Goodman could serve as a role model for other theatres around the country.
“I know that it can get ugly, but I do believe that theatres are run by people who naturally collaborate and who are naturally empathetic,” she said, adding that nonprofits, despite concerns over rising costs, should by their very nature be less adversarial than corporations like Amazon or Starbucks. “It’s a different environment and a different industry.”
She said that both the workers and IATSE understand the pressures facing theatres since the pandemic. “We love the Goodman and respect the work it does,” she said. “We wanted to create and maintain an inclusive and collaborative environment.”
For his part, Collins doesn’t presume to tell others to follow his lead. But he did say that the Goodman has always made it a point to create a “good environment” and a sense of partnership, while working toward a “sustainable model” even in a time of fiscal uncertainty.
Rigdon said that she and her fellow union members at the Atlantic are also striving for a model built on compromise, and one that can last. “We’re willing to work with them,” she said of Atlantic management. “This can be a positive change for sustainability.”
Little said the state of theatre Off-Broadway and around the country increasingly depends on the willingness of employers to engage with unionized workforces. He tied it to a broad generational change, citing polls that show people under 30 “overwhelmingly favor labor and want the mutual aid and the protection that comes with collective bargaining and collective action.” In an era when so much of the ruling class in America is looking to erase workers’ rights to further line their own pockets, Little said that the unionizing of theatre is part of a larger rebirth for the labor movement. “There will be some real fights coming up,” he said. “People are frustrated by a lack of fairness in the world and are responding to that.”
But Little believes that theatre, which is built on community, can be different. “I feel deeply in my soul that within two years things will be moving in positive directions.”
Stuart Miller (he/him) has written for American Theatre for more than two decades.
