Equity in the News April 2020

Theater leaders are beginning conversations around how to reopen their institutions after they were shuttered by the coronavirus.

The union's model standards could help the film and television industry, as well.

Their goal: restore tax deductions for unreimbursed business expenses, which can be quite large, even for working- and middle-class personnel.

Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA have joined with more than a dozen unions to advocate for a tax deduction for artists in upcoming relief packages.

The union, which will have a say in when and how actors and stage managers return to work, has retained David Michaels to help develop workplace safety standards.

Members of Actors’ Equity will not return to work in the theater until the union deems it safe to do so, Equity announced Friday.

EXCLUSIVE: Actors’ Equity Association has hired the high-profile safety consultant David Michaels, former administrator of OSHA under President Barack Obama, to advise and help the union develop the steps necessary for reopening Broadway and theaters across the country after the COVID-19 shutdown.

The actors and stage managers' union urged members to contact their regional office if asked to work again in less than a month amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Union pension funds — already ailing and facing the possibility of a faster demise in a strained economy — are pushing Congress to use the next round of coronavirus relief legislation to give them the help they need to avoid going belly up.

About 800 Disney World equity actors will also be furloughed without pay starting April 19, its union announced Tuesday as they will join thousands of others at the theme parks losing their paychecks indefinitely during the coronavirus pandemic.