On Broadway, an agreement avoids a strike

While the actors are on strike in Hollywood, the curtain will not fall on the famous boards of Broadway, after the signing of an agreement in New York between the various parts of the sector, they announced Thursday in a joint press release. The agreement, signed between the International Alliance of Theater Employees (IATSE in English) on the one hand, the Broadway League, which represents theater owners and producers, and Disney Theatrical, a subsidiary of the entertainment group, must still be ratified by the some 1,500 IATSE members affected by the text. They will decide in the coming days, the statement added.

“The strike was avoided even if the agreement still has to be validated by our members”, welcomed Jonas Loeb, spokesperson for the union. An agreement obtained after the organization had authorized its members the day before to start deciding on the possibility of a strike on Friday, according to the local press. Twenty-nine shows in New York, as well as 17 others currently on tour in North America, would then have been affected, for an industry which sold 12.3 million tickets during the 2022-2023 season, for a turnover of 1.6 billion dollars.

A threat of strike which would have been added to that, effective this one, of the actors in Hollywood, a first for 63 years. Last week, 160,000 series and cinema actors stopped working there due to the lack of agreement with the production studios, joining the screenwriters, themselves on strike for several weeks.