While there were some positive aspects to my time with TWUSA, this is not a company I would recommend working with. The positives: Both of the directors I worked with were lovely and easy to work with, I felt they trusted me as their stage manager and we worked well as a team. I also worked with some truly lovely actors, and I firmly believe the people you are on the road with can absolutely make or break your tour. I am grateful to have touring experience now and to have seen parts of the country I would not have seen without this contract. The final positive from this contract is I have a deep appreciation for TYA coming out of these tours. Being a stage manager, most days I was in the house with the kids, and I could truly see and feel their reactions to the show which helped me feel very connected to the work I was doing. There were also some people at the TWUSA headquarters that were lovely to work with and are a bright spot in the organization. The negatives: Unfortunately, a lot of the negatives are written into the AEA agreement. The long hours, the driving, the low pay and per diem are all part of the contract we sign, however TWUSA banks on people not realizing the depth of the contract when they sign on. One of the biggest issues I found was the tour routing. TWUSA says they want to be as accessible as possible and be brought to as many schools and theaters as possible, which usually results in a tour route that has you driving half way across the country and back from day to day. We found this to be extremely taxing when we were waking up at 6am, loading in, performing 2 shows, loading out, then driving 4 hours to the state we were in the previous day. The schedule is incredibly physically and mentally grueling, with the ability to work up to 12 days without a day off. On the road, the days are long. We were waking up between 5am-6am and leaving the hotels from 6am-7am, only to not get to the next hotel and end the day until 3pm-5pm most days. When the venues were putting us up, the hotels were pretty nice but we got the minimum per diem possible and we had no choice in the matter, and when TWUSA was putting us in the hotels, they were the absolute bare minimum for the AEA standards. This was especially disheartening when we could see a hotel across the street that was still considered a budget option, but we were in a motel. However, my biggest complaint with TWUSA is how little they truly care about their touring companies. The company did everything they could to avoid paying us overtime, even when we were having car troubles, and forced me to call meal breaks at times we could not take one just so we didn't go into overtime. Any issues with the hotels were addressed off the clock because the day ended when the cars were parked in the parking lots at the hotels. The biggest issue with the lack of concern however came when I was being verbally harassed by an actor and TWUSA did essentially nothing to intervene. After an initial meeting with a few TWUSA staff members, the behaviors persisted and I began reporting everything to the production manager, company manager, and HR manager, all of whom did nothing to solve the issue or help me feel heard. Their refusal to address the issue was incredibly defeating to me and showed their lack of concern for my wellbeing.

So I may be a complete outlier here, but I loved my experience at TWUSA. Getting to launch a show and work with a great small cast wasn’t on my bucket list for 2024, but I’m so happy I did! Would gladly work there again :)

This contract has absolutely zero value in 2024. Pay is garbage. Hours are garbage. Work life balance is garbage.

Honestly, eff Theaterworks. They get you with all this non-profit, good for the children nonsense and exploit their actors. Zero flexibility for life events (weddings, family engagements, etc) even if you tell them WELL ahead of time. The fact that they set the "base" location on 107th st in Manhattan is also viciously unfair, since a lot of people are living in Brooklyn and Queens which makes a lot of the performance locations OUTSIDE of the 50-mile radius that they limit in order to pay for housing. Leaving ones apartment at 330am ON THE SUBWAY because they don't reimburse for travel, to then drive and unload a truck and do two shows and pack the truck and drive back down (approx. 16hr days door-to-door every time) is NOT worth it. It's a wonderful way to introduce kids to theater, yes... but there's no time to discuss or do meet and greets after because they don't want to pay the OT I guess so it's like DO THE SHOW PACK UP GTFO which isn't really a great way to engage with kids. There were times during which we were breaking down the set cuz we had to GO and kids were still in the auditoriums. Not the vibe. Do yourself a favor and wait until negotiations change something because these special agreements are... not it.

TheatreWorksUSA is a company that preys on young, new-to-the-industry actors who they know don’t have enough experience in the industry to know the pay and treatment they deserve and who they know are fearful to speak out because they are so new. This company prides itself on diversity and inclusivity yet consists of an entire staff of white people and mostly only hires white stage managers while their actors (the only people of color in the company) are treated like nothing more than products to be shipped around the country and propped up as tokens. Because of the lack of diversity in management they are extremely ill-equipped to handle nuanced conversations about the treatment and experiences of POC in their company as well as recognizing and dealing with instances of microagressive behavior and racist action within its own ranks. The actors are expected to do the work of four different jobs (actors, asm’s, drivers, and builders) all while being paid the bare minimum that they could muster without it being illegal. We as actors are constantly shipped around usually performing twice in one day and driving for hours directly after to sleep in a hotel (the cheapest they can find that barely pass equity standards) for one night before having to drive to a completely new city the very next day. This intense schedule that TheatreWorks pushes onto its actors does not allow for proper rest and healing between shows and leads to many actors getting injured, sick, or suffering with their mental health. All of this mistreatment occurs under the guise that the company is doing this for the benefit of the children for which the actors perform but is largely done to help the owners of the company make a higher profit to boost their already hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of salary. They lure in shiny new POC actors with the promise of an equity tour just to pull the rug out from under them when the actors set out on the road lending no help and no sympathy and certainly no realistic or fair pay. Should you choose to work for this company you simply must accept that you will be pushed to your absolute physical, emotional, and mental limit for very little pay doing insane amounts of work and labor with very little rest for a company that views you as nothing more than a token who they will happily replace once you are fed up with their treatment. There’s a reason why most actors from this company actively dislike it once they leave their contract.