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Love me or kill me, brother!
That sort of stuff.
Some frantic emails over the weekend and phone conversations on Monday didnt put the situation right.
Red Bull rejected those terms.
But it fell apart around 3:30 that day.
I asked whether those had been bargained and if so with whom.
It was supposed to be about creating community, Berger says, ruefully.
According to Bredeson, We hadnt contacted them because we didnt feel it was in their purview.
Our thinking was, simply, we didnt feel we were creating a theatrical production.
We were just asking friends of the company to support the company and to have a community moment.
This is certainly a new, nebulous world.
Is screen-only performance even governable by Equity?
How does SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, factor in?
Is cyberspace a stage?
Our position has been the same since the beginning, says Bredeson.
My colleague Sarah Jones, who reports on labor issues, is a little skeptical on this point.
Work is work, she says.
The union will naturally feel like it has jurisdiction over an event like the one Red Bull had planned.
Shes also curious about the choice not to contact Equity.
It wouldve been a fairly simple thing to do.
And for the amount of time, since there was no rehearsal, it felt reasonable, she says.
We assumed they had squared it with the union.
When Equity announced the reading couldnt proceed, she emailed the union, expressing her disappointment.
But how do we navigate these mistakes that get made?
It has to be with grace and compassion.
The Red Bull situation has sent ripples into the field, which is already turbulent.
Is there no way to have rules that only function during this industrywide crisis?
To have waivers that expire once were able to gather again?
Now the question is about what comes next.
Red Bull is talking to peer nonprofits about their agreements, wary of letting practice make precedent.
Says Berger, Were setting rules in the Wild West in a time of crisis!
Each person I spoke to had the best will in the world.
Now the trick is getting them to agree on what that world will look like.
