While
the writer's strike has ground all of Hollywood to a halt and rendered all televisions blank and featureless save reruns of
Good Times, another, perhaps less glamorous strike is plaguing the Big Apple some three thousand miles and several levels of national interest away. Brace yourselves:
The stagehands have struck.
They're striked. It’s stricken.
There are no more people in New York City willing to move objects from point A to point B, haul flats from point B to point C, or preset the Grinch’s Mazzila-mazoo. Need that prop moved from that table to that other table, Mr. Director? TOO BAD. There is literally no one who is willing to do this for money.
And judging from the fact that there are currently only eight shows still running on Broadway, they’ve basically got the theatres by the balls. After all, they are one of the industry’s most powerful unions. You know how most unions are called “Local Seven Hundred Eighty-Three?” The stagehands’ union is called Local
One.
That’s right; they are the FIRST UNION, the one union to rule them all. Remove their dental plan at the risk of plunging us all into an era of darkness and orc-warfare.
As the strike wears on, we must face a grim possibility: doing things outside.