Stage technicians at the musical Titanique have voted to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). If the National Labor Relations Board certifies the election results, it would be the first victory for IATSE in its roughly year-old campaign to expand its off-Broadway presence, opening the door for better pay and higher production costs.
“It plants a flag for other off-Broadway workers,” said Daniel Little, an IATSE organizer, in an interview.
All six Titanique backstage workers voted to be represented by the union, according to an NLRB filing. The election was held Friday morning in a dressing room at the Union Square-based Daryl Roth Theatre, a commercial venue that’s been Titanique‘s home since November 2022.
On Monday, balloting was completed for Atlantic Theater Co. production workers to determine whether they’ll join IATSE. That’s a higher-stakes election, with 178 workers affiliated with the nonprofit eligible to vote. The NLRB hasn’t yet tallied the results. The powerful union is also organizing at the nonprofit Vineyard Theatre and at the long-running revival of Little Shop of Horrors, a commercial production at the Westside Theatre.
The labor drive coincides with a comeback for commercial off-Broadway. Hot tickets include the plays Oh, Mary!, Job and Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which ended its profitable run last month. Titanique, a campy and pop culture-crazed sendup of the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster movie, opened at a Chelsea comedy venue in June 2022 before transferring to the Daryl Roth. Iceberg Ahead LLC, led by Eva Price (Oklahoma!), produced the jukebox musical for $970,000, a steal by Broadway standards.
Titanique earned operating profits in 17 of the final 20 weeks of 2022, according to a financial statement filed with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. (Recent results weren’t available.) Operating profits ranged from $67 in one week to $38,000 in another, with weekly ticket sales averaging $100,000 to $150,000 at the Daryl Roth.
The producers haven’t announced that Titanique recouped — and have little incentive to do so, given impending contract negotiations with their production workers.
Price and Leslie Papa, a press agent who represents Titanique and Little Shop of Horrors, didn’t return emails. Neither did spokespeople at Boneau/Bryan-Brown, the theatrical press agent that represents the Atlantic.
Atlantic costume shop supervisor Liv Rigdon said that unionizing could improve living standards and ease turnover. “Every single one of my predecessors that I know of has left the industry since working at the Atlantic,” she told colleagues at a Washington Square Park rally last week. The aim of organizing, she said, is to make the Atlantic “a sustainable place to work.”
The Atlantic’s freelance production workers earn about $27 to $30 an hour, and don’t receive health insurance or other benefits. By way of comparison, the Public Theater, the city’s most prominent off-Broadway nonprofit institution, pays $37.13 per hour for its four union stagehand positions, according to its contract with Local One of IATSE, which includes employer contributions to the union health fund.
Campaigning against unionization, Atlantic management highlighted the company’s challenges, noting in particular that ticket sales often account for a small portion of a production’s escalating expenses. In a Jan. 4 email to its workers, Atlantic Artistic Director Neil Pepe, Managing Director Jeffory Lawson, Director of Production Zachary Longstreet and General Manager Pamela Adams wrote: “The financial strains, shifting audiences, and increased competition for funding pose significant hurdles that are not easy to overcome.” The Atlantic and other companies, they added, “are tightening our belts as much as possible to weather this crisis and make it out on the other side.”
The Atlantic already has contracts with Actors’ Equity Association, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and Local 829 of United Scenic Artists. “Unionizing is not going to put anyone out of business and I think it’s fair,” said an off-Broadway general manager who isn’t affiliated with Titanique or the Atlantic and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Health benefits, a priority for nonunion production workers, are currently available for Local One members who earn a minimum $37,500 in a year, according to the union’s health fund.
Sally Plass, the director of the Primary Stages Off-Broadway Oral History Project, expressed ambivalence about the off-Broadway union push. She said that when she started working off-Broadway in the 1970s, she learned on the job. She wouldn’t have had a career as a stage manager and prop designer if the positions had been union, she said.
“I’m all for earning more money,” she wrote in an email to Broadway Journal. “But what would happen to the access for people new with skills or learning them? I would like a compromise to keep access open.”
An IATSE staffer said that if the Atlantic election succeeds, it would be the first off-Broadway nonprofit company to use union production workers “top to bottom.” That’s difficult to verify because IATSE doesn’t publicly disclose all its labor agreements.
