President Morse Addresses IA Convention
At the IA Convention, held in Miami last July, Sally
Campbell Morse was invited to address the opening session. Her remarks were
greeted with much enthusiasm by the Convention delegates and we asked the IA
for a transcript so that could include them in this issue of the HI-LITES.
"President Short, members of the Executive Board,
fellow delegates, brothers and sisters and fellow human beings, it’s our
delegation’s extraordinary privilege and pleasure to bring you greetings
from the membership of the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and
Managers, ATPAM. We are 630 strong. We are based in Manhattan, though we can
be found living and working from New York to California, from Canada to
Texas.
We manage the theatres and the productions and publicize
the shows and the institutions that represent the theatrical profession of
Canada and America to the rest of the world.
We’re largely freelance workers who increasingly find
that we must equip our own offices just to get a job. While some of us find
long-term association with n established institution, some work out of our
own homes. Many of us move from producer’s office to producer’s office,
in and out of non-profit, sometimes simultaneously representing more than
one at a time. And in working on one production or another, we may make a
corner of the general manager’s office our own, or the base of operations
may be a road box or a hotel room.
We work by the week, not by the hour, when we’re lucky
enough to work at all. But what’s true for every last working member of
our union is that we work in a field that is one of the last vestiges of
this country’s heart and we love it and we consider it a trust to keep it
alive.
Without question, that’s going to be a real challenge
in the 21st century for the performing arts, which has the
daunting task of competing with entertainment media, such as home video,
computer games and, allegedly, interactive television. Most of us cannot
guess what else will be out there in the coming years to challenge our place
in the market.
These media promise a connection, an involvement in one’s
choice of entertainment that once distinguished performance, but they offer
it in isolation.
Video games and virtual reality lack the electricity of
seeing a performance in the dark with a bunch of other people, of responding
with the group, or differently from the group, and of sharing in experiences
that are heightened by breathing the same air as the performers.
People want and need community when they play. We think
that the arts make a tangible difference to the quality of life. We believe
that being exposed to the thoughts and feelings of artists and being inside
someone else’s world for an hour or two raises individual experience above
the trivial. We are convinced that any day when one is exposed to beauty or
encounters the truth is a day to remember. Furthermore, we prefer that all
this be entertaining, too.
As for being indispensable, that guy whose successful
cancer treatment included a series of Marx Brothers marathons might
disagree. We think these intangibles are important enough to support with
our waking hours and our working lives.
And we do not apologize for wanting to make a living in
decent conditions while we do it. We cannot apologize for needing medical
coverage. We will not stop protecting our right to retirement benefits after
we devote lifetimes to working in this field.
So Newt and his boys can attack the arts and attack
labor, but we know who we are and what we care about. So how come every time
we call it art, management calls it business and every time we call it
business, management calls it art?
The 90’s are no dress rehearsal; this is the big one.
And ATPAM has bound itself to the IA because we believe our mutual strength
will be in unity and community.
When ATPAM was founded almost 60 years ago, it was with
the express goal of promoting and protecting the welfare of its members and
of maintaining and increasing the economic advantages of trade unionism.
That’s a union for you. But now 60 years later, we all have to share the
burden of safeguarding the arts in uneasy partnership with the employers.
Declining audiences and governmental hostility will not be answered in
isolation. But what more appropriate group than the members of the IA to
help - hard-working, pragmatic, skilled workers who believe in the American
system and the richness it offers employer and employee alike. We at ATPAM
need our brother and sister unions to keep us in the loop, include us in the
strategy, and to count on us as allies.
We all need our business to get healthy and stay healthy.
While ATPAM is investing considerable resources in organizing, we are
prepared to share information and contacts, and we have already found that
local IA reps around the country are ready to share with us.
ATPAM joined the IA last summer by an election that
demonstrated and overwhelming will to affiliate with you and to play an
active part in the future of this organization and in the future of the
theater. And here we are at our first International Convention and we want
you to know how proud we are. We want you to know how high our expectations
are and we want you to know how strongly committed we are. It’s not that
we haven’t noticed that the tide is currently against organized labor, it’s
not that we haven’t figured out that the arts are the enemy to the vocal
political majority. We have noticed that those individuals who seem to
capture the TV time and the newspapers consider the arts wholly dispensable
from American life. We just don’t conform. We don’t agree.
So, our timing may be a little off. Whatever. We’re
ready to grow, we’re ready to organize the auditoriums and performing arts
centers that are opening across the country. We want to help the
institutional theatres provide a better quality of life for their House
Managers and Press Agents, even if they think those jobs are called
Facilities Manager and Marketing Director. Frankly, we need to recapture
venues that we have lost over the last few decades. We know we owe our
material well-being to those terms negotiated by our union and we know that
we can improve the working lives of others.
ATPAM has embarked on its own new era of action, instead
of contemplation. The first sign of this was that a year ago, ATPAM’s
membership voted to do what our founding fathers actually began talking
about in 1937: we joined the IA.
The practical application of our unity is our best hop
for the new era. We want to be an active part of this Alliance and consider
this convention the greatest opportunity to meet you all, to learn from you,
and to prepare for what lies ahead.
In conclusion, it is with the greatest optimism and
commitment that ATPAM looks ahead to a new era with the IA. Thanks for
having us."
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