Broadway Battles: A Century of Equity-Producer Disputes That Defined the Actor's Job

Broadway Battles historicizes the job of acting—artistic parameters, duties, and rights—in the US commercial theater since the union of stage actors, the Actors’ Equity Association, won their labor strike in 1919, and with it, a standard minimum contract and the right to legally binding arbitration of disputes. Through an examination of Equity’s policies and theatrical production disputes with Broadway producers over the actor’s job, Broadway Battles shows how labor relations have not only regulated acting as work for more than one hundred years but also have codefined and continue to shape it.

Drawing on previously unexamined archived Equity records, legal documents, and media accounts, Folino White brings to light a corpus of production disputes over what is (or is not) part of the actor’s job, dating from the 1920s to the 2020s. These disputes represent moments in which the meaning of key theatrical terms, such as “actor” or “chorus,” as employed in Equity contracts are questioned by the circumstance of production. The cases featured in Broadway Battles are not simply exemplary in terms of their immediate impacts on individuals or performance aesthetics involved in a particular dispute. These conflicts have had lasting ramifications for Equity’s policy development and subsequent iterations of the standard contract. Simultaneously, by virtue of the fact that grievance arbitration cases are argued and decided within the context of plays and musicals in production, Folino White offers novel dramaturgical and performance analyses focused on particular shows’ labor demands to reveal new facets of iconic Broadway productions and new ways of thinking about production historiography itself.