RWS sucks. They want to turn musical theatre into a theme park show. They are bad for actors, bad for the industry, and bad for art!!!!

Would not recommend. I worked 2 Halloween contracts with them and truly have not been this confused with management before. Extremely poor communication skills and low respect for our time. I understand things change and schedules are not set in stone, but consistently not being able to trust the scheduling process is very stressful. A lot of attitude from stage management in my 2nd contract. They think because RWS pays well they can treat us poorly. Had good experiences with cast mates and had positive moments, but the inconsistency was too much. I don’t blame stage management so much as higher ups. It truly doesn’t seem like they care about their performers, just that they’re pretending to.

(wardrobe dept) Job was consistent until it wasn’t. Completely blindsided contracters in the new year and gave same day notice that people would not be hired back after the holiday. Things are absurdly chaotic and management does not like to change the way they do things, despite evidence that those ways do not work.

I cannot emphasize how horrible of a place this is to be a contractor. They don’t keep track of the people who pick up gigs with them, so every time you come back they’re like, “how did you hear about us?.” The wardrobe department is cursed, they have such a high turnover rate with stitchers and wardrobe folks because no one wants to come back. The managers won’t even look at you. They’ll pay you as little as possible and treat you horribly, but expect you to break you back for them. Would not recommend.

I think everybody’s experience with RWS is going to differ drastically because every project is so different. My particular experience was as a musician on a shoreside theme park contract. My project manager was young and inexperienced but generally pretty responsive to our needs. When he was there. Because the thing is once your show/event is up, RWS is gone. The company managers they hire for the project have basically no power and have to run everything through corporate, which often takes forever and they don’t really understand what’s needed because they aren’t there. Pay: always different depending on where you are/what you’re doing. Ship contracts will always pay more than shoreside, but even shoreside is going to be more than most regional theatres, but the work is also different. Most of the time if you're shoreside, you're working for theme parks, which means kids. Housing: always different. I had an Airbnb with a couple of other performers. It was nice in theory, but it had a lot of issues and to report anything we had to tell our company manager, who contacted our project manager in NY, who had contact with the housing people, which meant a lot of time and middlemen to go through. Your experience is probably going to depend a lot on your other coworkers. If you get lucky, you can have a great time. I got pretty unlucky with some very dramatic and unlikable coworkers, but that's not everybody's experience. If you do your work well for RWS, they’ll hire you again. If you don’t, and you cause drama, you won’t. Simple as that. Just remember this is a massive entertainment corporation, not some mom-and-pop theatre operation. (edited)