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Lights dim on Broadway
10/11/2007 21:37 - (SA)
New York - The powerhouse US entertainment industry was rocked by a pair of labour crises on Saturday, with the fabled lights of Broadway dimmed here by a stagehands' walkout on the heels of a separate film and television writers strike.
The stagehands' strike plunged Broadway into the dark on Saturday as the backstage workers pushed for a pay raise, producers and theatre owners said.
Due to the strike, "there will be no performances today at many Broadway theatres", the League of Theatres and Producers said in a statement.
The league and the union have been negotiating since June but have not reached a contract deal. Broadway ticket sales were up 8.9% in the 2006-2007 season.
All Broadway shows were to be shuttered except eight: Cymbeline, Mary Poppins, Mauritius, Pygmalion, The Ritz, Young Frankenstein, Xanadu and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, according to owners' league, because those shows are in theatres which have a separate union contract.
Saturday's trouble marked the second work stoppage on Broadway in less than five years. A four-day musicians' strike in 2003 was the first time since 1975 that a labour dispute hit Broadway.
And it was the second major stoppage to grip the industry in under a week.
Since Monday the Writers Guild of America (WGA) pressed on in its strike after last-ditch talks with Hollywood producers over the issue of payment from internet sales and downloads broke down on Sunday.
In Los Angeles on Friday, more than 3 000 film and television writers demonstrated with no prospect of a resolution in sight.
Thousands of writers brandishing placards and clad in red t-shirts gathered outside Fox Studios in Century City to protest, the biggest single demonstration since the strike began on Monday.
The writers' stance has earned sympathy from many celebrities this week, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame, Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria and Kelsey Grammer of Cheers who also attended Friday's rally.
"Now people are, you know, drawing their lines and I'm hoping that the lines can be blurred enough that people come back together and start talking," Grammer told ABC7. "It affects the economy of Los Angeles."
The industrial action is the first by the WGA in nearly 20 years and has plunged the industry into turmoil, halting production on hit television shows like Desperate Housewives and forcing the postponement of 24.
Popular late night chat shows hosted by Jay Leno and David Letterman have also gone into shutdown this week because of the strike, which industry analysts believe may last several months.
Most major movie studios have sought to insulate themselves from the strike by stockpiling scripts. However the longer the dispute goes on the greater the risk of film productions being disrupted.
- AFP
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South Africa
