Arts & Entertainment
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Currie Paul Vonderiage/Daily Nebraskan
Former actor supports theater union
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Editor
Fergus “Tad” Currie, area rep
resentative for Actor’s Equity
Association, was in Lincoln last
week initiating negotiations to
make UNL’s summer repertory
theater an Equity member. He also
spent time in Omaha troubleshoot
ing for Omaha’s financially troub
led Equity theater, the Firehouse.
Currie said he became inter
ested in the labor side of the theater
business when he was doing local
television ads in Atlanta, Georgia,
in the mid-1950s.
“The climate for performers
was very bad and we’d get S50 for
doing a commercial that might run
for the rest of our lives,” Currie
said.
“I didn’t set out to do labor work
in theater,” Currie said. “But while
I had one commercial running in
Atlanta, no one would let me do
another commercial until that one
stopped running. But yet the TV
station and the advertiser contin
ued to make money off that com
mercial.”
“It was a limited market, and I
couldn't tell someone to bank one
place and then the next week tell
h;m to bank somewhere else,” he
said. “But yet I’ve still only made
S50 off that commercial.”
Currie said Actor’s Equity deals
with these problems.
“We try to open up a pool of
talent to theaters that would nor
mally be closed to them,” Currie
said. “Theaters no longer have to
get 20-year-olds to play 50-year
olds — there’s a pool of 36,000
professional actors in Equity.”
Currie said actors seldom work
for anyone a long lime, and Equity
tries to make that transient lifestyle
as healthy, safe and monetarily
rewarding as possible.
“Should the actor wind up
working for a failing company, we
are a safety net, making sure the
actor is paid,” he said. “Most of all,
we have a desire for identification'
of professionals, like the weather
people and their meteorological
association. Being an Equity actor
means someone was willing to hire
you under a certain set of profes
sional standards.”
Currie came into the labor end
of theater after a long career as
actor, producer, director, stage
manager, artistic director, techni
cal director, scriptwriter, theater
and speech magazine editor,
teacher and theater manager. He
has been in numerous films, more
than 200 national, regional and
local TV commercials, and more
theater productions than “he cares
to remember.” He was Walter
Matthau’s stand-in for George
Saks’ film production of the Neil
Simon piay, “The Odd Couple.”
“Walter had just had a heart
attack, and I had to do all the run
ning scenes for him,” Currie said.
“Pius George had a strange sense of
humor, and pul Walter and I in a lot
of scenes together — I’m in a gro
cer)' store line with him and several
other scenes.”
If the UNL summer repertory
theater becomes a part of the
Actor’s Equity “famd it will
engage a small number of profes
sional actors to be corps members
of the company along with the
students.
“It’s notour intention to bring in
leads, but instead to bring in actors
who will provide a balance and
expertise,” Currie said. “When
students work hand in hand with
professionals, it makes the transi
tion from the educational stages to
the professional stage more mean
ingful. When I ran the university
theater in Emory, I found I didn’t
have to do as much coaching if
there were professionals and stu
dents acting together.”
Currie said university theaters
are a “closed environment” where
each actor becomes overly familiar
with other actors, the theater build
ing itself and the whole academic
ambience.
“This gives a false impression
of what the theater business is
like,” Currie said. “Most theaters
have a constantly changing cast
from show to show and actors,
directors, etc., have to work with a
variety of people—people without
egos, with egos, total strangers.
“If the student actor has an
opportunity to work with profes
sionals, they won’t be as threat
ened by that in the competitive
world outside the academic com
munity.”
If the UNL summer repertory
theater agrees to become an
Actor’s Equity theater, students
will be invited to be a part of a
candidate program, Currie said.
They would be able to work within
an Equity framework for 50 weeks
and then would have an option to
join Actor’s Equity any time in the
next five years. During that five
years, they could go to any Equity
auditions. The cost to join the pro
gram is S50.
Currie said this is a greatly re
duced rate for Equity membership.
“Normally there is a $500 initia
tion fee for an actor and then an
other $52 a year in dues, with work
dues of 2 percent on all salary
earned,”Currie said. "This is fairly
standard.”
The cost is high, Currie ex
plained, because thecost of serving
members is high.
“Also, we don’t want people
joining just for the sake of joining,”
Currie said. “We want commit
ment.”
Actor’s Equity gives extensive
information on auditions around
the country through an Equity hot
line, Currie said, but at any given
time 75 to 80 percent of its actors
See CURRIE on 10
Lincoln-born director returns
to UNL from ‘off-Broadway’
By Scotl Harrah
Senior Hditor
Shakespeare's plays are inter
preted differently each time they are
performed, said Robert Hall, a New
York theater rr Sessional who will bo
a guest director and instructor at the
University Oi Ncbraska-Lirfcoln next
semester. *
H ill, a Lincoln native who has
worked in the New York theater
world for several years, will direct
"As You Like It” for the UNI theater
department.
He said that because most direc
tors add personal touches to
Shakespeare, he isn't quite sure what
his production will look like.
”1 presume that by the tune 1 get it
<>n its feet, it’ll be different from w hat
others have seen, he said.
Hall w ill help teac h advanced act
mg classes and direct “As You l ike
It during the second half ol the
spring semester. He said another di
rector/instruclor, John Pynchon
Holmes, will do the same in the be
ginning of the semester while Hall is
in New York directing ‘‘A Winter’s
Talc.”
‘‘Off-Broadway,” the generic term
for experimental, new plays that ci
ther aren’t ready or suited for “the hig
lime,” is a realm Hall knows well.
One of Hall’s most renowned ef
forts is “The Passion of Dracula,”
which he wrote with David
Richmond. This variation of Brain
Stoker’s classic ran off-Broadway in
New York for two years and also
played in London and Tokyo. The
play is now running in Omaha at the
Firehouse Dinner Theatre.
He said the main difference bc
tween “The Passion of Dracula ’ and
similar plays about the venerable
vampire lies in its witty characters
and intelligent tone.
“It’s not as campy as certain other
stage versions tend to be,” he said.
Hall also is the founder and co
artistic director of The New Rude
Mechanicals, a classical New York
based theater company.
The New Rude Mechanicals pro
duced “The Misanthrope” this sum
mer and will perform “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream" this fall.
Hall and Richmond also have
written a variation on the Franken
stein story, “Frankenstein: The Mod
ern Prometheus,” w hich is playing in
Ohio this fall at The Cine innati Play
house m the Park.
Although most thcspians dream of
producing something on Broadway,
Hall said he’s currently satisfied with
off-Broadway because it nurtures
creativity.
“I wouldn’t say it (Broadway) is
the major goal I’m trying to reach,’’he
said.
He compared modern Broadway
fare to the mainstream productions
Hollywood and the TV networks
produce.
“There’s very seldom an interest
ing new play on Broadway,” he said.
He said Americans tend to “lionize
the British theater," which is why
Broadway now imports farces and
low comedies that already have been
successful on London’s West End.
Hull, who earned his master’s
degree in the 1970s, did much of his
initial theater work here and at the
Lincoln Community Playhouse.
Hall