Equity Centennial Book
on the Way

By Jack Goldstein
Director of Governance Policy and Support

AEA's Centennial celebrations are on schedule with the manuscript and design of its illustrated history nearing completion.

Entitled, Performance of the Century, 100 Years of Actors' Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater, the coffee table book is being written by well-known theatre journalist Robert Simonson and will be published for national release in the fall of 2012 by Applause Books. Richard Rothschild of Print Matters Inc., and the President of the National Association of Book Packagers, has been engaged to oversee the project under the direction of the Centennial Committee's book subcommittee. While the book will be available through major book stores, Playbill Inc., one of the primary media partners for the Centennial, has agreed to handle on-line sales with discounts for Equity members.

The book is targeting a broad popular and educational audience. It will be fact-filled enough to attract students and devoted theatregoers and be entertaining enough to open a window on professional theatre for thousands of potential theatregoers. The book compares the intensely demanding craft of the theatre in the words of Actors and Stage Managers with the glamour and lore that so fascinates the public and examines Equity's professional and moral choices that have had a lasting impact. It will also tell the story of Equity's role in making American theatre a worldwide phenomenon. Special care is being taken to balance text with visual excitement to ensure wide audience appeal.

The book will launch coincidentally during a national election cycle in which union-bashing may become even more familiar political rhetoric. If so, Performance of the Century will serve an ambassadorial role as well, not to hostile politicians, but to average American citizens who may be curious and admiring of a labor union made up of the improbable creatures who inhabit the stage. If theatre is the mirror of human experience, then perhaps readers will recognize themselves in the pages of Performance of the Century as well.