“As a parent of very young children, the rehearsal and tech schedule is the one of the main reasons why I am not pursuing my career at this time.”
“As a parent of very young children, the rehearsal and tech schedule is the one of the main reasons why I am not pursuing my career at this time.”
“As a woman from a low-income family trying to escape generational poverty, and as a
first-generation college student, I was barely able to enter this industry. I took internships in the beginning that didn’t allow me enough money to eat some days. I would spend my last pocket change getting home on the subway, and get home to an empty fridge. I went without health insurance for years while trying to work my way up. The amount of hours required of an intern, of a salaried employee, of an hourly worker – all are discriminatory and made to elevate people who can afford to work these hours.”“At my age (nearly 40), these kinds of hours have caught up with me. I have back problems, I have aches from on- the-job injuries that were entirely preventable if we didn’t have this culture of “do it faster and better” and “prove yourself.” If I had not been relatively healthy and able-bodied at the beginning of my career, I could not have taken the risks that I did back then.”
“I started to keep track of what my hours in the building were through a payroll app. At the end of my second (and last) season, I had documented proof that there were multiple periods during the season where I would go weeks without having days off (I think one stretch was 7 weeks long) with many of those weeks being 60-70 hour weeks. By that second season, I was exhausted and burnt out; I asked the PM (who had also asked me to become the resident designer the next season) to hire a part-time assistant for me so I could get at least ONE day off a week… I was fired the day after I made that request”
“It’s HARD, and I’m very well-aware that, in my 40s, I’ve never been able to find a way to make many/any personal relationships work because I’m exhausted all the time (physically and mentally) and my “day off”; is usually spent sleeping and doing “life errands.””
“I can’t imagine how this is healthy for me… and when you think about how this schedule really is a barrier to so many other people who want to be theater artists. The way tech schedules are set up, you have to sacrifice your outside life in order to cram as much work into as short a process as possible. Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“As a disabled person, I feel like I constantly just have to “suck it up” and deal with my
chronic pain which is always exacerbated by long tech days…I take care of myself (which being scared of having to call out without having someone who knows my track definitely makes me do)…the long days make having a flare up more likely and almost impossible to recover from if I’m not able to get a full nights sleep. I’m only 22 and I imagine this all will only get worse as I age.”
“As a disabled individual, 10/12s and the 6-day work week are an incredible obstacle in my work. Among other things, I am immune-compromised and lack of sleep only makes my already fragile immune-system weaker. I often experience work-induced flare ups of my chronic conditions due to the long days and long work weeks. It makes it harder for me to be present when my body is fighting me and causes me to loose work because I can’t “struggle through” as we are too often expected to do.”
“I take about 7 different medications a day, some multiple times a day, most are time-sensitive and many require a strict eating schedule that the 10/12 or constantly varying work-days do not accommodate. I have to make impossible decisions choosing between taking my medications or eating enough; between work or medical procedures; between loosing work today because of illness/flare up or going and risking hospitalization; between fulfilling the expectations of my job and taking care of my body.”
“It is a grueling schedule that really comes at a cost both creatively and personally…It got to the point where I was missing so much of my kids growing up. I was gone from my wife and kids for 40 weeks out of the year. Even when I was doing a show in town, I wasn’t really ‘home'”
“And there was one night where it was a few minutes to the time we supposed to be released for the day but the director insisted that we run the scene that was just teched before leave. There clearly wasn’t enough time to do this and everyone was dead tired but our stage manager did not stop it. This scene required a transition into another scene where a multi-hundred pound living room set had to be hung maybe 40-50 feet in the air. Now because everyone was rushing to get this done since we were clearly the out of time for that day’s 10/12, the set piece was not hung properly and almost dropped on a cast member who thankfully had moved out of the way in time.”
“A 10/12 or whatever the tech rehearsal length is easily and normally a 14-16 hour day, and it takes a physical and emotional toll. I’ve had off and on tingling on one of my feet for a few months for being on my feet so much over several weeks of putting in a show. I have a permanent knot in my neck now, and during a few weeks of one tech I could not fully turn my head.”
“I mean it’s just a misnomer because it implies you’re only working 10 hours…And it’s exhausting. Not all of us can afford cabs home late at night, trains run even slower and the further out you live because rent, the harder the cycle becomes.”
“We should strive for solutions where no one on the show is asked to work more than a 10/12 on any given day. One path might be to have more tech notes days (e.g. 1 full day of tech notes for every 2-3 days of rehearsal). On the tech notes days, actors would go back to rehearsal room for acting/blocking notes. Another path is to hire more folx and do split shifts. Another might be hourly pay for everyone.”
“A hellish tech week caused an reaction so severe that I had to leave campus and go into intensive outpatient therapy. While there were tons and tons of factors that were involved with my suicide attempt, a hellish day of tech where I was yelled at in front of the entire cast and production team was the cherry on top. College students shouldn’t have 10/12s”
“I was working on a musical during Ramadan. 2 10/12 tech days while fasting. That’s sun up to sun down no eating food or drinking water. Instead of stage management moving the 2 hour dinner break until later in the day, they kept it as is. When the sun eventually went down, we weren’t even given a 10. We had to shove granola bars down and chug water in between lighting cues being set.”