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  • All Blogs/ Entertainment Industry Insights: Feb. 16 2021 | Up-To-Date Actor

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New Projects Casting - NY Theatre Returns - Netflix Expansion - Submission Requests

By Sean Gregory, February 16, 2021

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I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day weekend and took the chance to spend time, either virtually or in-person, with some special folks in your life 💘 I've been feeling very grateful for all the wonderful people I have in my own life over the last few weeks, and while I'm not normally the world's biggest fan of Valentine's Day, I definitely made it a point to reflect on the importance of the many different types of love we have received over the last year, and for that, I am incredibly thankful. I'm also thankful for the giant bag of discounted Valentine's Day candy I'm about to snag from CVS 🤷‍♂️ Small victories!

We're over halfway through February which doesn't even seem remotely possible, and the industry is showing no signs of slowing. Love to see it 💯 Let's talk news!

UTD Workshop Feedback

Have you attended one of our workshops in 2021? We want to hear from you! We've compiled this super quick feedback form (I promise super quick is super quick: five questions, should take MAYBE 60 seconds) just to gauge everyone's interest in our last few sessions, and what topics we could cover in the coming months. Please take a minute to fill this out so we can help make your workshop experience with UTD the best that it can be!

Black History Month

BroadwayWorld has continued its coverage of Black History Month offerings from theatres around the country, including jazz histories and performances, dance classes, readings, and other streaming performances. Check out the full list of these week's features!

Agency giant UTA has officially signed the iconic Apollo Theater across the board for its future performances. The move will help spread the Apollo's cultural offerings across film, TV, events, publishing, and more. "The Apollo Theater has long been a vibrant platform for artistic innovation as well as a place for audiences to come together to celebrate Black culture and the arts of the African Diaspora," Apollo Theater President and CEO Jonelle Procope said in a statement. "I look forward to working with UTA to amplify the Apollo’s influence and the artists we champion while introducing the non-profit theater’s mission and programming to an even broader audience."

Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and four-time Broadway veteran, left an indelible mark on the theatrical and artistic community at large with his fusion dance style that combined elements of ballet, modern, jazz and theatre to tell the stories of black history in America. BroadwayWorld chronicled his life in a recent spotlight, exploring his now world-famous REVELATIONS presentation, along with the many achievements of his dance center and the impact they continue to have on furthering dance education in the US.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

The major entertainment industry unions have come together to advocate for a significant, quantifiable, and far-reaching change in diversity and inclusion practices in Hollywood. Exec members of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSA, WGA and more released a statement calling on Congress to take up a host of legislation that would, among other things, create federal tax credits for diversity in hiring, increase federal arts funding and protect the rights of workers to unionize. "We work inside and outside the traditional collective bargaining process to create more and better opportunities for underrepresented people, the groups said in their statement. 'Smart policy solutions aimed at creating diverse talent pipelines, incentivizing diversity in hiring, and supporting collective bargaining will help our workplaces and our industries move forward.'"

Howard University is set to partner with QUEEN & SLIM director Melina Matsoukas on the creation of a newly launched Instagram campaign. The Share Black Stories "Future First" Reels Challenge will select a group of storytellers from Howard's Department of Media, Journalism, and Film to receive a $10,000 production stipend to help get their work off the ground. The content will then be cued up to be broadcast across Instagram in the coming months, in addition to being reviewed by Matsoukas and other educators. "Having the ability to create in these spaces and have hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, immediately be able to see, react, respond, and be affected by your work is so powerful," Matsoukas said.

Moving the needle toward a more authentic landscape for actors with disabilities in Hollywood has proven to be a disappointingly long and winding road, but there have been encouraging signs in the past few years that the tables are beginning to turn in the right direction. NBCUniversal's recent adoption of the Ruderman Family Foundation's guidelines for auditioning actors with disabilities has encouraged many in the industry to believe that as more studios and companies agree to these hiring practices, the opportunities for actors in the community will continue to grow and flourish, opening up the potential for landing lead roles in major projects. As Jay Ruderman wrote: "Through authentic representation, inclusive casting and more opportunities for people with disabilities both in front of the camera and behind it, the entertainment industry could change the public’s view of disability and gain the support of the large population of people with disabilities."

Nickelodeon's BLUE'S CLUES reboot BLUE'S CLUES & YOU released a song last week that has quickly gained popularity for its inclusivity toward the LGBTQIA+ community. "ABC Song with Blue!" ran through each letter of the alphabet, with P being assigned to "Pride," and accompanied by a handful of flags for the Trans community, asexual community, pansexual community, and more. The song has yet to air on TV but is currently available on the show's YouTube channel. We love it!

COVID Updates

Broadway marketing exec Damian Bazadona is feeling hopeful about the return of theater in 2021. The Situation Interactive President wrote an op-ed for Playbill praising what our community has been able to accomplish, even in the midst of a worldwide shutdown that has relegated human interaction almost entirely to phone and computer screens. The success of virtual fundraising galas, the rise of the TikTok musical (for better or worse), the community outreach for societal issues, tackled and transformed in ways that only artists could do. "[M]y greatest wish is that all of the ideas, passion, thought, and energy that have been compiled over the past year have their push for progress before we aim to turn the light switch back on," Bazadona writes. "Don’t wait—the moment is now. Push for action to create a better industry wherever your passion lives—you may not get a better chance for change than this moment."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled his plan to revive the arts sector throughout the state last week. NY PopsUp, will run the gamut of live entertainment across New York, beginning this Saturday, February 20th, and culminating on Labor Day with the 20th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival, for an expected total of more than 1,000 performances and events. The massive undertaking will be supported both publicly and privately by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and Empire State Development (ESD), as well as producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal. "Creative synergies are vital for cities to survive, and our arts and cultural industries have been shut down all across the country, taking a terrible toll on workers and the economy, Cuomo said. "We want to be aggressive with reopening the State and getting our economy back on track." The governor has already begun separate phases of the state's reopening plan with the approval of large stadium and arena reopenings at 10% capacity, provided that attendees have received a negative COVID test within 72 hours.

Dolly Parton is onboard to #SaveOurStages. The beloved country singer has been doing her part to get the word out about funding for the popular bill, which is set to provide more than $10 billion in financial relief to the hardest hit independent entertainment venues in the country. As of now, little information has been made available to individual states about processing the funding and getting it in the hands of these struggling institutions, prompting the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) to continue soliciting donations for its Emergency Relief Fund, which intends to bridge the gap between the eventual flow of federal funds and the dire need many of these venues are currently facing.

PBS NewsHour sat down with a handful of Broadway veterans from both on and off the stage to track the current state of the industry shutdown, and what people are doing to make ends meet. "For now, the focus must be on sustaining the people and the work they do that make up this great American industry, so there will be an industry to return to."

Though theatre makers at large have undoubtedly been dealt an impossible hand during the pandemic, theatre educators have arguably received some of the worst odds. Shuttered schools, shuffling schedules and waning childhood attention spans on Zoom don't exactly make for a Broadway-caliber introduction for many kids' first step into theatre, but Lincoln Center has been doing its part to bring out the artist in all of their early-ed classes participants. Using Dominique Morisseau's 2017 play PIPELINE, teaching artists with the theater have been making the best of the current situation to allow their students to explore their own writing and creativity with the help of their classmates.

Assessing a New Federal Theatre Project

There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks of reviving the Federal Arts Project, a New Deal-Era answer to the Great Depression that helped employ thousands of artists across the country from 1935 to 1939. The goal of the program was simple, yet its impacts have lasted far beyond the days of Roosevelt and his fireside chats: put artists to work in their own community. While many arts execs are debating the efficacy of a revised FTP at a time when people are by-and-large still relegated to in-home entertainment for the foreseeable future, the prospect of empowering creators to build on the programs in their own towns and cities seems to signal a common ground for believers and skeptics alike.

Opinions abound as to the best course of action to seek funding for such a lofty endeavor. One proposal, touted by NYC Council hopeful and Actors' Equity member Jeffrey Omura, would leave federal government funding out completely, appealing instead to the biggest tech companies - Apple, Amazon, Disney - to fork over 0.2% of their free cash to set up a relief fund, resulting in what Omura believes would amount to over $1 billion in funds to support the artists that have made all of their streaming services so successful during the pandemic. "Almost my entire community has been out of work," Omura said, "and the thing we need most right now is work."

Special provisions would also need to be put in place to support BIPOC work and institutions, many of which are historically shorted on federal funding, if and when it does come. Some artists have already taken matters into their own hands, as has been the case with Jeremy O. Harris, a frequent supporter of the FTP, who recently established the Golden & Ruth Harris Commission, which will award two $50,000 grants through funding from his agreements with HBO. But at the end of the day, nothing will compete with government support, both socially and financially.

And then there is, of course, the struggle of convincing people that our jobs are, in fact, jobs. "I don’t think collectively we know how to talk about the fact that arts jobs are jobs," mused Greg Reiner, director of theatre and musical theatre for the NEA. We need to change the way the arts are regarded at large in the US, and while COVID has shed light on decades of long-held issues that still plague the community, it can also become our moment of greatest action, ensuring a rich, vibrant future of cultural longevity and conversation in America.

There's No Place Like Home

The Actors' Fund officially broke ground last week on their $120 million Hollywood Arts Collective, an expansive campus along Hollywood Boulevard that will feature a performance venue, artist housing, and non-profit arts office space. "This project is going to mean a lot to the entertainment community of Los Angeles," vice chair of The Actors' Fund Annette Bening wrote. The venue will be split into two parts, the Arts Building, which will house the theatre, office spaces, and Actors Fund West headquarters, and the Residential Building, featuring 151 affordable housing units for artists in the area. The new hub was made possible in part through a sizable donation from LA philanthropist Glorya Kaufman, who shared that her "passion has been theater and dance and helping causes that help support people, therefore The Actors Fund has been the crown jewel in [her] philanthropic life." The complex is set to be completed in 2024 🏙

Netflix Expansion Continues

Ted Sarandos' streaming giant is showing no signs of slowing down in 2021: Netflix announced plans last week to open offices in Canada as well as Italy, reaffirming their commitment to producing local content in both countries in the next few years. CEO Sarandos wrote in a blog post that the streamer has spent over $2.5 billion with our neighbors up north since 2017, confirming that the Canadian office will hire a new content chief to help oversee the development of local programming. Across the world in Italy, Netflix is currently eyeing a major shift in its output that had originally been announced prior to the pandemic last year, but is still on track to double the company's amount of Italian content by the end of 2022. "If we want more people to see their lives reflected on screen, then we need to make sure that people of all backgrounds are getting access to opportunities for training, mentorship and on-set experiences," Sarandos said.

It's Spike's World, We're Just Living In It

The entertainment industry has by-and-large been completely shuttered over the past year, but no one tell Spike Lee. The Oscar-winning writer, director, and producer has had one of his busiest years to date over the last 12 months, headlined by his highly-praised Netflix drama DA 5 BLOODS, along with his host of other projects including the HBO adaptation of David Byrne's Broadway show AMERICAN UTOPIA and the harrowing 3 BROTHERS, the project we shared last week that draws chilling parallels between the deaths of George Floyd, Eric Garner and Radio Raheem, a character from Lee's 1989 flick DO THE RIGHT THING. The never-tiring director chatted with Deadline about the work he's been doing over the last year, his thoughts on the COVID vaccine and the industry's return, his plans to head the jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival, former President Trump's impeachment trial and more.

Advice, Classes & Submissions

Dominique Fishback has offered a masterclass of her own with her performance in JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH. We highly encourage everyone to sit down and watch Dom's performance in this incredible piece, because it is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year without question. Dom talked with Collider about how she prepared for some of the most difficult parts of the film, and the interview is a wellspring of knowledge for every actor out there. Spoilers ahead, so be sure to watch the movie first before reading her interview!

SUBMISSION: The Black Theatre Coalition has partnered with Broadway Records to produce and release Black Writers Amplified, which will seek to give new and emerging Black talent the chance to showcase their work for the musical theatre community. The album will also open up a slew of opportunities for Black musicians, engineers, orchestrators, and more to produce the songs, all to be released at some point later this year. Submit your songs by March 31st!

SUBMISSION: Ron Howard's production company Imagine Entertainment is looking for an emerging writer to take the lead on developing his latest project. Described as "SCHOOL OF ROCK meets MONEYBALL," the basketball comedy has opened up submissions for a screenwriter to head the project. Applications are due March 7th!

Interested in upping your musical theatre game this winter from the comfort of your own home? The Institute for American Musical Theatre has partnered with BroadwayWorld to produce a 10 week series of classes, spanning acting, singing, and dancing, to help keep your skills sharp and get your creative juices flowing. Sign up online and get 10% off!

Looking to spruce up your social media presence? BroadwayWorld has you covered 🤓

Quick Bites

The return to Oz has finally found its leader: WATCHMEN director Nicole Kassell will helm the reboot, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, after an extensive search by WarnerMedia over the last year. Kassell has received a DGA award and an Emmy for producing WATCHMEN for HBO, for whom she has also directed episodes of VINYL, THE LEFTOVERS, and WESTWORLD.

A lesson in knowing your worth and asking for what you deserve: Six main cast members of the Netflix hit series THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY came together to ecure a substantial pay increase ahead of the show's third season. Considering the show scored the top slot on last year's first-ever Nielsen rankings for streaming shows, it's safe to say the raise was well-deserved. Advocate for YOU!

I'll take neckties for 300, Alex! Late JEOPARDY host and beloved American game show icon Alex Trebeck's wardrobe has been donated to The Doe Fund, an organization that helps support underserved communities in their search for jobs, as well as provides training and educational opportunities to Americans who have struggled with incarcertion, homelessness, and addiction.

Georgia continues to be a hotbed for production activity with the announcement of a new venture from Bay Point Advisors, a major film financing firm in the state. Bay Point Media, located on North America's second biggest studio complex Trilith Studios, will oversee at least three feature films each year, having already confirmed development on the Kevin Bacon-led ONE WAY.

Through Three Things, a new production company formed by SUPERGIRL star Melissa Benoist, has landed a deal with Warner Bros.Television Group to produce exclusive content for the studio over the next few years: "I can’t wait to collaborate with new voices and find stories that hit the heart in that indefinable way."

Lena Waithe is officially working on a secret new theatre project with multi-award winner Debbie Allen. The MASTER OF NONE writer, actress, and producer spoke with a group of students from Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts last week about her experiences in the industry, and shared insight about developing her own projects and the importance of authenticity in her storytelling.

Actors' Equity released a statement in support of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, after the legislation reentered conversation in Washington last week. The act would outline a handful of protections for workers looking to unionize and would prevent companies from mandating employees' attendance at anti-organizing meetings.

What to Watch & Read

That's all for this week, folks! Please please please (if you haven't already) take a minute to fill out our Workshop Feedback survey. I promise it will not take longer than two minutes, and it will make me VERY happy 🤓 We really appreciate it!

Stay warm!