Chicago play waits out Broadway strike

Chicago play waits out Broadway strike

	Published : Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:34 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - Actress Deanna Dunagan has been in plenty of plays in her 40-year career, but she's never opened a Broadway show until now.

'I'm thrilled to death to be able to come here with this play,' Dunagan said. 'Although we didn't really want to leave Chicago, it was important that more people get to see this play. It's very important to us.'

Except the actress, who plays the matriarch in Tracy Letts' 'August: Osage County,' must wait until the stagehands strike is over to get her chance. The play, imported from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, was slated to debut Tuesday at the Imperial Theatre, but it and 26 other Broadway shows were dark as contract negotiations stalled between Local 1 and the League of American Theatres and Producers.

Dunagan's character, Violet Weston, is a pill-popping, acid-tongued mother of three women who is not to be underestimated. Dunagan won a Jeff Award for the role in Chicago, and while the play was wildly successful there, she wasn't initially eager to come to New York -- especially because she'd gotten her big Broadway break in 1979 and it went nowhere.

Dunagan was an understudy in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman,' and played the leading role of Ann at the Circle in the Square when the actress got sick -- for one performance.

'It was like a fairy tale, I signed a contract and they wrote about me in 'Backstage,' and nothing happened,' she said. 'We thought she'd be ill longer, but it was just the one time.'

She's already more than tripled her time on Broadway with 'August,' after doing about two weeks of previews before the strike.

The play centers on the dysfunctional family relations of the Westons on the Oklahoma plains. The set is a well-worn, life-size dollhouse, and the characters are often on stage doing household chores, playing cards or watching television.

Even for veteran stage actors, the thought of performing on Broadway is thrilling. Francis Guinan, who plays Charlie Aiken, the levelheaded uncle, appeared at the Cort Theatre in 1990 in 'The Grapes of Wrath,' but said coming back to New York was every bit as exciting.

'You get to a certain age and you try to be cynical about it, but when I got here, I realized that's impossible,' Guinan said.

In a sense, the play has a leg up on other openings. The ensemble cast has already closed a successful run at the Steppenwolf, and the majority of the ensemble is performing together in New York.

Guinan and Rondi Reed, who plays his wife, Mattie Fae, have known each other almost as long as their characters have been married. Dunagan has known fellow cast member Amy Morton, who plays her eldest daughter Barbara, since the mid-1980s.

'People in this particular company have such attuned ears and rhythms that quite frankly, as long as we can get a line-through in, we can throw this show back up again and I think make ourselves proud,' Guinan said.

While they'd rather be performing, the actors support the stagehands union. The ensemble had the option of returning to Chicago, but they stayed on to show support -- and on the off chance that the strike might end early.

The union and the league are slated to resume talks this weekend after breaking off negotiations five days ago. The stagehands walked off the job Saturday, shutting down 27 plays and musicals.

The contract dispute has focused on how many stagehands are required to open a show and keep it running. That means moving scenery, lights, sound systems and props into the theater; installing the set and making sure it works; and keeping everything functioning well for the life of the production.

But New York isn't cheap, certainly more expensive than Chicago, and performers in the affected shows will only get $405 a week from the Actors' Equity Association $2.3 million strike fund.

'You could be a star. You could be the chorus. You are going to get the same amount,' said Maria Somma, an Equity spokeswoman.

That means an actor such as Bob Saget, the star of 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' would be getting as much as a chorus kid performing in 'The Phantom of the Opera' or 'Hairspray.'

New York State, according to Somma, requires a seven-week waiting period before anyone who is affected by a strike can apply for unemployment benefits.

Somma said she believes Equity will be paying the $405 this week, but she doesn't yet have the specifics on how the union will do it.

Instead of gearing up for a show Wednesday, Dunagan attended a matinee performance of 'Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry,' organized by the Second Stage Theatre as a little bit of off-Broadway hospitality.

'It's nice to see such good acting and really good words,' she said. 'It makes you want to get your own play up and running.'