![]() ![]() “The crew was continually understaffed and overworked. “ was a poor leader, which led to a lot of animosity and distrust, to put it mildly,” said Taylor. The issues with the third manager have carried over under the successor, Keith Mahler. Taylor,* one of 21 College Street Music Hall stagehands –– pointed to the third production manager’s tenure from 2018 to 2019 as a pivotal period for the stagehands’ frustration. College Street Music Hall has had four different production managers during its time, and several picketers say that conditions at the venue have gradually worsened throughout the years. According to Gardner Friscia, IATSE Local 74 president, they will return to picket in a few weeks, and keep doing so until the College Street stagehands get their contract.Ĭollege Street Music Hall opened up in 2015, 13 years after the closure of the same facility that once operated as the Palace Theater under different management. Multiple members of IATSE Local 74 –– the southern Connecticut division of a labor union that represents, trains, employs and protects performance venue employees –– emphasized that they mainly hoped to “get the word out” and gain public support through the picket. The pandemic exacerbated the risks of no health insurance in particular, and has left stagehands almost entirely without work. For the last nine months, the union has been in a stalled negotiation with College Street Music Hall management, which continues to refuse to negotiate a contract that would allow its employees to access benefits from the union. On March 11, 2020, frustrated by the lack of health benefits, retirement benefits, overtime, hourly wage system and overall substandard conditions and support, stagehands at College Street Music Hall joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 74. They stood in small circles, chatting with an energy that did not match the fatigue they said they felt standing there all day. I noticed them as I walked home in their last hour of picketing in the late Friday afternoon sun. to 5 p.m., they stood, intercepted every so often by curious pedestrians and very often by honks of supportive drivers. A group of roughly a dozen stagehands picketed along the rainbow sidewalk in front of the building, with signs draped over their bodies that read “NO HEALTH CARE NO RETIREMENT NO FUTURE.” Monday to Friday last week, from 9 a.m. This small point of contrast between the two theaters’ exteriors makes some sense given that College Street Music Hall is not taking care of its stagehands in the way that its neighbor and many other Connecticut venues do. But looking across the street, you notice parallel the COVID-19 signage at the Shubert Theater –– two glass-encased, glossy posters that say “The Show Must Go On! But for now, we will take a brief intermission…” Maybe, it seems, the College Street Music Hall is struggling to follow its own message. It exudes a carelessness we might expect from an establishment neglected by the public as live performance gatherings are incompatible with public health. As a passerby, the discombobulation of the well-meaning message is sort of funny, and sort of sad. To keep the beauty of the theatres architecture, they have become something of an art form in themselves.“S TA YSAFE & H EALTHY / SE EY OUS O ON” read the black letters (with some effort) arrayed on the white strip that overhangs the entrance to College Street Music Hall. The Theatre Royal of Drury Lane was the first to feature an iron safety curtain in 1794, and following a fire in a theatre in Exeter in 1887 that killed 200 people, their use became wide spread. Regardless of construction, in the UK, they must lower within 30 seconds. In fact, many are designed to look like cloth. Once asbestos was a common material, but no longer used, for obvious reasons, they don’t appear to be made from heavy materials. ![]() Made from fibre glass or iron and located behind the proscenium arch, it lowers as the lights go up. The arrival of the interval in the theatre is always indicated by a feature of the stage – the lowering of the safety curtain (or fire curtain). ![]() Opera Glasses were a must for fashion as well as viewing privately owned ones could be ornate, while those provided by the theatre needed a few pence to operate them. By the mid 19th Century, Opera glasses were common, replacing the telescopic variety used in the previous century with the addition of a focusing wheel. ![]()
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