How much do you make? It’s a simple question that remains a taboo, not least in theatre. “There’s a myth about the starving artist, that you have to do it for love,” says playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton. “That’s a dangerous myth!”
It’s a myth with real-life consequences, in terms of the low pay artists and theatre workers are often forced, or are willing, to take. There’s also a certain shame about it: Most of the artists who spoke for this story asked to remain anonymous. But there’s also a hard reality to it: None of our sources romanticized their poverty. “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but money does buy the absence of pressure, the absence of pain,” an anonymous director told me.
It is common knowledge that theatre practitioners make very little money. But how much, exactly, is very little? And how many theatre jobs do freelancers have to take to piece together a living wage? If you worked at three large nonprofit institutions in a year, say, would that be enough?
I reached out to five full-time freelance theatre artists, and one administrator, from around the U.S. to talk in detail about their income and expenses for one year. I compared the living costs where they live (for a single individual; figures courtesy of the Living Wage Calculator, created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Then I asked them to describe the realities of what they’ve had to do, and not do, to work in the theatre as their full-time profession. Finally, I asked them how they think the field could or should change to become a place that can sustain and retain talented people. Their answers depict a field that relies—perhaps over-relies—on its workers’ resourcefulness and determination to keep at it, almost no matter the odds.
STAGE MANAGER, NEW YORK CITY
Living Wage: $28,882
Income in 2014
Stage Managing: 2 productions, 4 limited engagements, and 3 readings……………………………………………………………. $30,000 ($25,000 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2014
Rent…………………………………………………………………… $12,000
Health care………………………………………………………. $0 (on parents’ insurance)
Student loans…………………………………………………… $3,600
MetroCard……………………………………………………….. $1,344
Total…………………………………………………………………… $16,944
YEARS ACTIVE IN FIELD: 6
CAREER TRAJECTORY: This anonymous stage manager graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and theatre directing. While in school, instead of working on university productions, she took unpaid internships, up to 40 hours a week, with commercial productions, including Sleep No More. After graduating, she was an intern at Barrington Stage Company ($90/week, plus free housing), and was then hired as a stage manager for one of their productions ($650/week). She was a freelance stage manager for two years, during which she earned her Actors’ Equity Association card (the budget above is from her freelance years). Currently a resident director at a long-running Off-Broadway show, she earns $67,600 (pre-tax) annually—a nice salary, but she hasn’t worked on any new projects in almost two years. The truth, she says, is that she would “probably advance more in the professional world if I went back to freelancing.”
CAREER ADVICE: The Off-Broadway rate of $650 a week is “tight, but it’s doable,” she says. But “a gig that’s paying $300 for six weeks of work—that’s the stuff I have to turn down, because I can’t pay my rent.” One trick is that unlike designers, even occasionally directors, “you can’t stage-manage multiple projects at once…You have to be all in.” Her advice for those starting out is “to decide what your skills are worth, and to turn down anything that does not match that, unless there’s an extreme personal reward for you.” She said she still does “the occasional free contract for something that’s very personally rewarding,” but that doesn’t negate her advice not to sell yourself short. “I think it’s so easy to be, ‘This is kind of enough, I guess I’ll just do this.’ You get trapped, and then you get stuck in that network. The second that you tell yourself, ‘If you’re not earning what you need to be earning, don’t take that contract,’ you sort of raise the echelon of opportunities you get offered. And you start being more selective and broadening your circle.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: “It’s important that more unions are formed, and the unions are less exclusive,” she says. “I don’t understand why anyone who intends to do theatre for a living, especially acting and stage management, can’t just join Actors’ Equity. Actors’ Equity is a big catch-22 of an admissions thing: You have to be Equity to submit for Equity contracts, but you can’t get Equity contracts unless you’re Equity. When I was early on, I was so mystified by this. I was sure this is what I wanted to do for a living. And I wanted to pay union dues. I wanted unions to represent me. And they don’t often.”
“Theatre needs to be more sustainable for everyone, not just people in admin at theatres, but the artists and production teams and actors.”
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT, NEW YORK CITY
Living Wage: $28,882
Income in 2016
Theatre salary…………………………………………………….. $36,000
House & pet sitting………………………………………………….. $400
Misc. jobs Off-Broadway
(play reader, front of house)…………………………………… $520
Egg donation……………………………………………………….. $8,000
(“You’re injecting yourself with hormones. I don’t want to do it again”)
Total…………………………………………………………………$44,920 ($31,140 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2016
Rent…………………………………………………………………….. $8,700
Monthly MetroCard………………………………………………. $1,398
Student loans……………………………………………………….. $2,400
Therapy……………………………………………………………….. $1,300
(health insurance paid by employer)
Band dues……………………………………………………………. $2,880
Internet/cable………………………………………………. $198 (on parents’ cell phone plan)
Credit cards………………………………………………………….. $540
Total………………………………………………………………… $17,416
YEARS ACTIVE IN FIELD: 6
CAREER TRAJECTORY: This anonymous theatre administrator graduated in 2011 with a bachelor’s in acting, and performed for a year and a half before receiving a paid internship at a small Off-Broadway theatre ($50 a week) while waiting tables (“I’d work there ’til like 2 or 4 in the morning”). She then became an executive assistant at the same organization, and eventually landed her current job as a development assistant at a large Off-Broadway theatre, though she admits she made better money as a server.
FUTURE PLANS: “I’m not sure that I want to stay in theatre,” she confesses. “I think there are ways that you can still be involved in storytelling that can pay you a lot more. Right now, I feel like I’m in a corporate job, and if I’m gonna feel like that, I’d rather make more money.” Not that there aren’t theatre jobs that might pay more, but, as she puts it, “I would have a really hard time working for a theatre I didn’t care about, so that limits my options a lot. The kind of work I care about is from the theatres that have no money.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: “I think theatre needs to be more sustainable for everyone, not just people in admin at theatres, but the artists and production teams and actors,” she says. “I think the more they can pay everyone fairly, the better it will be. I know that’s easier said than done, because a lot of these theatres don’t have that money to begin with.” She notes that in her experience, “A lot of money is spent on hospitality. You probably should pay those artists more instead of spending it on drinks and dinners. That money can go into someone’s salary.”
DIRECTOR, SEATTLE
Living Wage: $25,365
Income in 2016
Directing at 5 theatres, including 3 LORTs…………… $45,000
Teaching 1 class as an adjunct professor…………….. $3,000
Awards & grants…………………………………………………. $50,000
Misc. workshops and readings……………………………….. $700
AirBnB…………………………………………………………………. $22,000
(she rents out her house when she’s out of town)
Total…………………………………………………………………. $120,700 ($86,904 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2016
Mortgage……………………………………………………………. $20,000
(her mom “fronted the down payment”)
Utilities…………………………………………………………………. $3,200
Health insurance………………………………………………….. $2,300
AirBnB cleaning/upkeep……………………………………….. $3,000
Non-comped theatre travel……………………………………. $5,700
Misc.…………………………………………………………………… $1,800
(union dues, membership fees, grant application fees)
Car payments……………………………………………………….. $4,800
Savings/retirement……………………………………………… $18,500
Total…………………………………………………………………… $59,300
YEARS ACTIVE: 11
CAREER TRAJECTORY: After getting a bachelor’s in dramatic arts in 2001, this anonymous director took “a break” from theatre for two years. She then worked as a “fringe” director, holding down a day job as a graphic designer (“I self-taught when I was in undergrad”). After attending an MFA directing program from 2006 to ’09, she continued freelance web-designing while directing nationally. She became a full-time director in 2013, working around the country. If she stayed in Seattle, she says, “I would not be working as much.”
HOW TO WORK FOR FREE: She had some cushions early on, she admits: zero student loans, parental support, and for a number of years “a partner who was able to cover a good chunk of my living expenses because he was working in the tech industry.” That all helped, because, as she acidly notes, “Theatres for some reason demand that you work for fucking free in your 20s. I didn’t have the crippling sense of, ‘Oh my God, I have to work two jobs and find time to do shit for free in the theatre.’” Financial support “enabled me to take assisting gigs that don’t pay anything.”
CAREER TIP: “In my third year of grad school, I just went application crazy with internships and fellowships,” she says. “I applied to the Drama League, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Women’s Project, Oregon Shakespeare Festival—if there was a directing program, I applied for it. I got the Drama League fellowship and then the OSF fellowship. What people don’t understand is that just because you don’t get in doesn’t mean you don’t get seen. I applied for the Drama League three times. Panelists from the previous seasons remember you. People I didn’t know were seeing my name, and these are the folks who run regional theatres in, like, Cleveland and Connecticut. Just by sending my stuff out of my local area, I was already unknowingly creating a network.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: “We keep talking about diversity and inclusion, and bringing more artists of color into the field, and emerging artists and fellowships, and you can’t really do that until you have an honest conversation about financial ability.” The school where she teaches, she says, has been interested in diversifying their student body despite high tuition, “so they actually spend a lot of money on scholarships. I know that every regional theatre is trying to diversify. But you can’t look around and expect us to be there when you didn’t plant the seeds 10 years ago. Plant the seeds now and then you’ll see it.”
PLAYWRIGHT, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Living wage: $30,068*
Income in 2014
Playwright for 3 theatres, 1 dance company, and 1 nonprofit…………………… $10,000
Dramaturg…………………………………………………………….. $8,200
Teaching artist……………………………………………………… $5,848
Diversity consultant……………………………………………… $1,250
Producing……………………………………………………………. $1,500
Panels…………………………………………………………………….. $850
Misc. workshops and readings…………………………….. $1,300
Total……………………………………………………………………….. $28,948 ($24,601 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2014
Rent…………………………………………………………………… $13,620
Student loans……………………………………………………….. $3,000
Cable/Internet……………………………………………………….. $1,068
Cell phone……………………………………………………………… $708
Health care……………………………………………………………… $360
(insurance provided by Medicaid, via Affordable Care Act expansion)
Total…………………………………………………………………… $18,756
YEARS ACTIVE: 12
CAREER TRAJECTORY: Jacqueline E. Lawton graduated with an MFA in playwriting in 2003 and received a paid dramaturgy internship at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.; at the same time, she was working at the box office for Ford’s Theatre. She was then hired as an educational associate at Folger Theatre, then at Arena Stage. After being laid off, she cobbled together a freelance career comprising writing gigs, teaching-artist gigs, dramaturgy, directing, and producing. Then she was an adjunct professor, a visiting professor, then a freelancer again. The above income was from her final year as a freelancer (2014), when she “literally only left my house when I had to,” she recalls. “That year was rough, physically exhausting, and emotionally debilitating.”
Now she’s an assistant professor in the department of dramatic arts at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, making $70,000 (pre-tax), though she still continues to freelance. “I have to make up for years of not making enough money to cover taxes, student loans, and this move to North Carolina put me in debt,” she says.
UNPAID INTERNSHIPS, FRIEND OR FOE? Because Lawton grew up poor, she says, “I didn’t romanticize poverty. I couldn’t do anything for free. And I was very up front about that.” So when she got the Woolly Mammoth internship, she recalls, “The director of new-play development at the time told the organization, ‘We’ve got to give her something.’” While she’s never been able to take work for free, she says, “There have been instances where there has been work done in trade—so, for instance, if I dramaturg a show, I would use the rehearsal space for a workshop I was doing.”
CAREER ADVICE: “I had to be resourceful and use as many skills as possible to bring in income,” Lawton says. “I’m passionate about teaching, so I knew that was one way. I also knew that being a dramaturg would benefit me in a number of ways.” In addition, she learned how to write grants “so that I could pay myself to write, pay actors to work with me, and pay directors. So it was on-the-job training, but being very specific in getting administrative skills, getting marketing skills, grant-writing skills, teaching.”
“Most playwrights I know have teaching gigs or they’re writing in television and film,” Lawton continues. “I have not seen an example of someone making a living as a playwright only. To get what I’m currently making [at UNC], I’d have to have—what, five to six commissions a year? Or three commissions and shows produced in multiple theatres.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: “The young people who you have coming out of college, interns—we have to pay these people. Exposure literally does not pay the bills or put food on the table. I find it completely unethical to ask people to do work that keeps your organization afloat and not pay them. The only way to change it is to change it. If that means you have to produce fewer shows a season, then you produce fewer shows a season.
“That’s why I learned how to write grants—because I couldn’t ask people to do this work for free. We were getting paid $100 to $200, which meant that I was only rehearsing for four hours, so people were making $100 for four hours of work. I’m not going to abuse people.”
“We’re also dependent on artists being willing to sacrifice a lifestyle that includes owning a home and/or raising a family. We actually depend on that in this country in order to produce art.”
ACTOR, MULTIPLE CITIES
Living wage: variable
Income in 2016
Acting in 7 LORT productions…………………………….. $35,467
Unemployment for weeks between jobs…………………. $2,080
2015 tax refund…………………………………………………….. $2,029
(partly due to major travel deductions)
Total…………………………………………………….. $39,576 ($31,101 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2016
Storage unit………………………………………………………….. $1,055
(due to frequent travel; when theatres provided housing, “I downsized into an 8×10 storage unit from an apartment” in Chicago)
Union dues……………………………………………………………… $324
(Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA)
Agent Fees……………………………………………………………… $630
Therapy……………………………………………………………….. $1,320
Car payments……………………………………………………….. $1,207
Cell phone……………………………………………………………… $895
Health care……………………………………………………………… $400
(insurance provided by AEA)
Mail forwarding service…………………………………………… $200
Savings/retirement……………………………………………… $16,500
Total…………………………………………………………………… $22,531
YEARS ACTIVE: 13
CAREER TRAJECTORY: Actor Cassandra Bissell graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in gender studies and joined Equity in 2003. “I have always supplemented my acting with office work,” Bissell says. “Often I temped for $9 to $12 an hour. Between 2006 and 2011, I was a receptionist at a small printing press where I earned $15 an hour and worked 35 to 40 hours a week.” When the press folded in 2011, Bissell collected unemployment until she got a LORT theatre gig in 2012. She’s been a full-time actor ever since, though she wouldn’t call her income extravagant. “Ninety percent of my wardrobe is thrift-store-bought,” she says. “I rarely eat out. I hardly drink.”
WHY SO MUCH TRAVEL: “From 2004 onward, I never had more than one show a year in Chicago, and for a few of those years, I didn’t have any shows in Chicago,” says Bissell. “Making a living solely from acting work in just one city is not a reality for most theatre actors. There’s just not enough work. There’s only a handful of actors who are truly living and working (as actors) 100 percent of the time in the city they have chosen to make home. I have found the only way I can achieve a consistency of work that constitutes ‘making a living’ is by traveling far and wide. And that is a luxury not available to many.”
HARSH TRUTHS: “I’m 38 years old,” Bissell says. “A lot of my peers right now are really looking to start families. And I’m not. I’m grateful that it is not something I’m interested in or want, because it translates to a level of mobility that broadens my field of work possibilities. A lot of people fall out of the mix when the desire to start a family enters the picture and they have to say, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t have this level of instability. I now have a young dependent for whom I am responsible.’
“I also think I’m in a peak time right now in terms of roles that are available to me as a woman. I can skew both older and younger than my age. I would say in 10 years, it’s going to look a lot grimmer for me. I’m enjoying it while I can.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: “I feel like the big obvious answer is looking at countries whose governments subsidize the arts. We don’t have that here. We’re heavily dependent on capitalism and the private sector. We’re also dependent on artists being willing to sacrifice a lifestyle that includes owning a home and/or raising a family. We actually depend on that in this country in order to produce art. That’s really sad! It speaks to a fundamental lack of recognition of the importance of art to the overall well-being of a society. Governments that subsidize the arts recognize a benefit, and we might do well to take a cue from them.”
SET DESIGNER, TEXAS
Living wage: $21,210
Income in 2016
Set design at 5 theatres………………………………………. $19,050
Set design for 4 university productions……………….. $17,832
Set design for 2 television sets……………………………. $16,187
Misc. set design (webcast, commercial)……………………… $8,300
Speaking engagement………………………………………….. $1,500
Social Security……………………………………………………. $28,512
(for two-person household)
Total……………………………………………………. $91,381 ($75,364 post-tax)
Fixed Expenses in 2016
Mortgage……………………………………………………………. $18,000
Utilities…………………………………………………………………. $5,280
Car payment…………………………………………………………. $4,872
Cell phone…………………………………………………………… $1,800
Cable/Internet……………………………………………………….. $2,232
Total…………………………………………………………………… $32,184
YEARS ACTIVE: 36
CAREER TRAJECTORY: This anonymous set designer, who lives in a Texas city and is the sole provider in a two-adult household, graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975. He had a day job doing architectural renderings and models, allowing him to work from home and take care of his daughter while his wife taught dance. On the side, he designed sets for community theatres. “I have no formal theatre training,” he says. “I learned on the job.”
In 1988, he got a full-time job as a set designer and builder at a professional theatre, working there for five years. He became the sole provider in his household and then worked full-time at various design and build firms. Then for more than 14 years he was the production designer for a PBS children’s show, with the occasional theatre production on the side. By the time he left, he was making $500 a day at PBS. Since then, he’s been a freelance set designer for theatre and television, working locally. Compared to television, in theatre he’s “working four times as hard for a third of the money.”
AVOIDING BURNOUT: “You have to first love what you’re doing,” he says. “I’m sustained because I’m excited about what’s around the corner, from a creative standpoint.” This year, he says, he’s hoping to scale back on the number of jobs he takes, after a year of work that was “all back to back to back, which can be kind of dangerous if things start to slide, because it’s important to maintain a reputation of good work and dependability. I think I’m going to start slowing down some.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FIELD: The fate of artists is tied to the health of theatres, he believes. He defines success as “twofold: the reputation of the product you produce, and being acknowledged for that by people opening up their wallet to come see what you make and what you do. If you have a theatre that’s thriving, with a great board, they will seek out and hire more artists. That’s what it really comes down to—it comes down to the people who know how to sell tickets for the theatre they’re in. That’s what I would say: If the theatre thrives, the artistic team that makes their product will thrive.”
*An earlier version of this story listed playwright Jacqueline Lawton as living in Baltimore in 2014. She actually lived there in 2005 while as an intern at Woolly Mammoth. She then lived in D.C. from 2006 to 2014. We’ve also amended the living wage to reflect the change.
