There are (finally) important conversations happening around pay and labor inequities in the business. There are a couple of grassroots efforts demanding transparency and reflecting on hiring practices and expectations.
I love what I do. And feel very lucky to be able to do it with the support that I have. The needle must move industry-wide, however.
For a concrete view of pay scale and expectations, look at this growing spreadsheet.
Elizabeth Flauto posted this on facebook Jan 16, 2020. I don't know her personally, but she does a very good job of describing "the hustle." I do not share it with the intention of attacking any one person or company, at all. I think we all inherited a system that is simply unsustainable in a country that does not universally value the performing arts.
"COSTUME DESIGN RELATED. Long/rant warning.
OK, I’m out of the business. I only do crafts and millinery now because of everything below. But I’m going to get up in this conversation, because I’ve done this work and I can’t not. And because I’d like to add my voice and my experience in support of the BEAUTIFUL RIOT that is happening here in Chicago and here on the internet. And because if anybody wants to call me bitter or difficult or demanding, they can go ahead, because I’m not now and never have been.
Before we can even begin to have a conversation about pay equity among theatre designers, we need to have a talk about LABOR equity. Say you pay all the designers the same. Great work producers, that’s fair. But let's break down the hours.
You have a small modern-dress shopped show with no specialty/built pieces or wigs or makeup or blood (5 people, 2 costumes each), on a storefront budget (easy, right? also, a unicorn). All the designers are making $500, or even $1000 to be generous, with a $1000 budget.
For that money here’s what a costume designer does. - You read the play twice and have some ideas. You go to an initial production meeting. - You do research and presentation boards, color palettes, no sketches, because why. - You go to more meetings and a design presentation. - You do admin: budget breakdown and costume breakdown paperwork. - You go to first rehearsal and do a coherent and erudite costume presentation. - You take measurements (ideally all at the same time, but not necessarily.) - You pull costumes from whatever stock is available because it’s free (Probably minimal, disorganized, badly lit and dirty. Possibly dangerous, difficult to access, moldy, vermin-infested.) - You start a pulled costume rack where there may be no space, no rack, no hangers, no rack tags, no ditty bags. You will find, procure, borrow, rent or buy these items. This may be in your apartment or in your car. - You do a sweep of all viable thrift stores in search of possibilities. This is your cheapest option if they work, and your most expensive if they don’t, because you can’t return. But on sale days you can’t say no to chinos for 2.99. This may encompass 6-12 stores all over town. - If show is period, next you go vintage. Another 5-10 stores of varying price levels with varying success. - Retail is next, the easiest option because you know where to go to find what you need. Everything can be returned, so you won’t lose money, but the prices are high. Your $1000 budget is dwindling. - Last is discount - Walmart even though you don’t believe in it because your show is equity and you’re not a monster, so all your actors get clean undershirts and socks for every performance, but there’s no head of wardrobe and it’s a 6-show week and they only wash on Mondays. So you need 30 pairs of socks and 30 t-shirts, which costs a minimum of $100. - It’s time for fittings. This may or may not involve loading everything you’ve bought in and out of a rehearsal space where you may or may not do fittings in a hallway or bathroom. - Fittings take a day or two or three depending on how many people are called and/or available to be released from rehearsal time. They may be released late or not at all depending on what is happening in rehearsal. - If you’re lucky you don’t need a second round of shopping/fittings and you can go straight into doing alterations and/or dyeing/distressing. You use thread, snaps, tools, buttons, velcro, sewing machines, irons, and space out of your personal studio/kit. You have paid for all of it. - You probably do the alterations yourself because if you you hire someone to do it, they will cost at least $12 an hour even at the dry cleaner, which adds up really fast. If you do it yourself it’s free (note this. it is significant.) Each alteration takes an hour. There are 30 of them. - You do the dyeing/distressing in your apartment. It is not toxic if you are really careful. You buy dye and sandpaper and tools, but you don’t charge it to the show, because you will keep it and use it later and you don’t want to blow your whole budget. - You update all your paperwork, make pieces lists, dressing lists, quick change instructions, and do your receipts to see if there is any money left at all. There isn’t. - You load in to tech out of your car. You tidy the dressing room and label mirrors and racks. You organize, hang, label, steam, iron, and rig everything yourself. You polish shoes and replace shoelaces in used shoes. - Actors arrive. You show them everything and explain what it is and how to wear it and when. You post lists on the mirrors. You talk to the crew about quick changes. - You go sit in the house and take notes on all looks that arrive. You wait 6 hours. A quick change happens and it doesn’t work the first time and everyone is grumpy because you have to HOLD FOR COSTUMES. You go backstage and re-choreograph the quick change. - After production meeting you go collect all the notes and either work on them at night or arrive well before the actors call the next day. Equity demands a twelve-hour turnaround, so you know you have at least 6 hours to work and 6 hours to sleep if no transport is necessary. - Repeat. - On day three of tech someone decides they don’t like something so you go come up with something else. - Also, you still have to do understudies. Your money is gone and the understudies are not the same size so you have to either come up with something non-humiliating to you and the actors out of stock or the stuff you can’t return to the thrift store. (Luckily they are not equity so they can have old shirts and pulled socks.) You do this for the entire costume plot. Some of it can be shared (hooray!). - When everything is pretty much under control you start doing returns. You organize everything, wrangle all receipts, and do the same rounds of retail over again, “un-shopping” the show. - You wrap up budget paperwork and submit receipts and go to opening in a fancy vintage outfit with your makeup on and your hair did and you glow. People say “OMG your job sounds so fun! You get to shop all day with other people’s money!”
This process, at it’s simplest, takes a minimum of three full weeks of work. Even if your work week is 40 hours, which it isn’t (more like 60), you make $333.33 a week, or $8/hour. Out of this comes your gas and parking at all the places you go, which is a lot, and at least some food while you’re out and about, which is a lot, because you don’t have a kitchen in your car. You also pay your union dues to 829 (because oh yeah, you’re union) and your own taxes. You take home somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.50 an hour. You don’t count the paper and printer ink, binders, labels, markers, laundry pens, computer, studio space in your house, phone, internet, pre-tech laundry expenses on pulled and thrifted garments, because that stuff is all tax-deductible, right? So it doesn’t count. (it does.) And probably you have no insurance or you have to pay for it so you are shouldering either premiums or chiropractic, therapy, and medical expenses unless you’re lucky enough to be young and stay well. It goes without saying you have no dependents.
This does not even address the emotional labor that is involved in costume design, which is a whole other rant for another day.
I have no beef with set and lighting designers. They have a job to do and it’s creative and time consuming and underpaid and rife with difficulties. But I’d like to see the math. I have known several people who do both sets and costumes, including my father. My dad said he picked set design as a focus because it’s simpler. Set/costume designers, when doing both, tend to farm out as much of the costume work as possible to an assistant or associate, and when they choose, they choose sets. This is not a coincidence.
And here’s the thing about the above model: it changes as you climb the scale of status and budgets and pay, BUT NOT THAT MUCH. I have done Chicago storefront and New York off-off for $300. I have assisted on Broadway on a huge musical with an associate and two assistants. The designer still did almost all these things. Broadway assistants can easily take home more than the designer, and often more per hour, because of union assistant minimums and work week limits that do not apply to the designer, who is on a flat fee basis. It's not just about support or lack thereof, it's about what the actual job of costume design requires. It is not as delegate-able, it's detailed, and personal, and psychological, and emotional. (Insert your own thoughts on gender/sexuality expectations here.)
The other thing about equity is this: say as a costume designer, you make the same $1000 fee as the set and lighting designer. Your job takes you three full weeks, either spread out or condensed. The set designer spends maybe a longer number of days but fewer total hours on their process and can piggyback shows, so they can take more jobs. The lighting designer has a very intense tech process, but can conceivably go from tech to tech. More jobs means more income. I can hardly imagine a costume designer, working at full tilt, doing more than 12 shows a year. A set designer might conceivably do 15. A lighting designer 18. At this pace, we are all dead on our feet. Zombies. And we come into every process excited, creative, passionate, ready to collaborate and problem-solve, give it our all, available physically, intellectually, creatively all the time. Until we don’t and can’t, like me. So you get out, because you’re 40 and you have kids now and you can’t bring it all to work and bring it all home and pay your $16/hr nanny on $2.50 an hour.
But I see you out there. I see you fighting for your jobs, for your work, for your art, for your community, for your families, for your respect, and I love you for it.
Let me know what I can do to help."
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