Honours Schedule Change

Since 1975, Council has regularly solicited nominations from members across the country for deserving honourees in (now) four categories. The nominations and support material are reviewed by a Council committee, and the final candidate list is presented to Council for approval. The awards themselves are presented at a honours evening to which the general membership is invited.

Going forward, Council will be changing the honours schedule from an annual to a biennial activity, and will be combining the presentation event with the national AGM. This change is intended to save money, since the expense of holding the event is not inconsiderable, and neither is the cost of bringing honourees in from across the country. The new schedule will maintain Equity's ongoing commitment to peer recognition, while recognising the financial situation in which the association currently finds itself. 

The first presentation under the new schedule will take place in February 2014. Nominations already received in 2013, as well as any held over from previous years, will be considered for presentation at that time.

The upside of this change, however, is that if you have been considering nominating a colleague for one of the honours, you now have a bit more time in which to do it. If you catch yourself thinking "people really ought to know how special that person is", head to the nearest computer, or give the office a call, and submit a nomination. That is exactly the kind of person the honours exist to celebrate.

                                                                                       

Life Membership is awarded to members who have made an outstanding contribution to the performing arts within the jurisdiction of Equity. It recognises not only an extraordinary career, but also colleagues who have gone "above and beyond" in other ways that contribute to the benefit of either Equity or its members.

Honorary Membership is awarded to an individual who is not an Equity member, but who has made an outstanding contribution to Equity and/or its members, or to the performing arts within the jurisdiction of Equity.

The Larry McCance Award is awarded to a member or to a former staff member, who has made an outstanding contribution to the Association and its members, through elected representation, notable service on staff, or other exemplary action and advocacy.

The CAEA Award of Distinction may be given to any organisation, individual, or group of individuals, excluding current staff, in recognition of significant contribution within the realm of live performance benefitting the membership of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

Full details on the honours categories, as well as a nomination form and instructions, can be found here. Nominations are accepted all year, and will automatically be considered for the next available round of honours, depending on the submission date.

Dancers at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens join Equity

Welcome! Bienvenue!

Did you know? - Learning more about Council

Ok, I'll concede right off the top that attending a board meeting may not be most people's idea of a fun way to spend an hour or seven, but it's good to know you can if you would like to. All regular meetings of Council are open to members in good standing.

If you would like to attend a future meeting, drop us at note at president@caea.com in advance, and we'll set it up. Generally, meetings are on the 4th Monday of January, March, April, May, August, September and November, and the 4th Sunday/Monday in February, June and October. Exact dates are posted in the Calendar section of the Equity website.

There is other stuff available to you, too…

You have elected Council to govern the organisation on your behalf, and we are committed to being transparent about how we do that. Members have ongoing access to agendas, minutes and the recent monitoring reports on all aspects of Equity; these can be found in the Members Only section of the website. Our policy document (the Big Book of Board Rules) can be found here.

If you would like to know even more about Council, and how it operates, you can find a series of articles throughout this blog.

Advisory Committee Update #2

At yesterday's meeting, work on the next two advisory mandates were completed. There is now an Ontario Caucus (Mark Brownell, liaison), responsible for linking up with the full breadth of the Ontario membership, and an Opera Advisory (Wade Nott, liaison), responsible for connection with all disciplines working in opera across the country. As with the others, members who expressed an interest in participating in these will be contacted regarding involvement.

In addition, Council made some determinations on the following suggestions:

Insurance – the majority of the submissions in this area centred around the desire to strike a committee to review our insurance plan and propose improvements. However, the plan has just completed a major overhaul and was relaunched only three weeks ago. Council would still like to consider striking this committee as a feedback mechanism on the new plan, but will table the idea for 6 months and review it again at that point. This will allow more time for members to have experience with the plan.

Auditions and Engagement Opportunities – Council needs more information on the possible mandate for these two committees, and I will be contacting those who expressed an interest in participating to see if we can flesh that out a bit.

Member Education – this has a lot of overlap with our new Communications and Education Committee (Aaron Willis, liaison). We will be reviewing this to see if there is a specific branch of the proposal that would be a good mandate for a separate committee in this area, or if the committees are best combined entirely.

Diversity – mandate development for this committee is underway. As a side note, this is also a hot topic in general for Council, and will likely dovetail with that work.

Agreement Ratification – this topic is already on the Council agenda for debate. Council will table this suggestion until that discussion is underway, so that if a committee is needed to complete that work, a mandate can be developed to suit.

New Members – Council is about 80% done on reviewing our approach for welcoming new members into the association. We will table this suggestion for 6 months until that work is complete, and a committee mandate can be created in keeping with the update.

Working Conditions – no committee will be struck for this topic, since working conditions vary widely across the different agreements and policies, and ample input opportunity is already available as part of the negotiation and review cycles for each.

Rehearsal Models – The Directors, Choreographers and Fight Directors Committee (Vinetta Strombergs, liaison) has agreed to take this on.

Regional/local Support Committees – mandate development is underway for one to support the Atlantic Region.

Review work will continue on the remaining suggestions.

Advisory Committee Update #1

The first four of the new Advisory Committees were formally struck at today's Council Meeting, and they are:

• Equity Independent and Small-Scale Theatre Resource Committee - Mark Brownell, committee liaison 
• Member Communications and Education Committee - Aaron Willis, committee liaison 
• Directors, Choreographers, and Fight Directors Committee - Vinetta Strombergs, committee liaison 
• Stage Management Committee - Allan Teichman, committee liaison 

The contact info for members who expressed an interest in participating in these committees has been passed on to the liaison for consideration. Because each committee has a requirement for representative composition, it will be up to the liaison to put together a group meeting that standard.

In April, Council will begin work on the next set of committees, so stay tuned...

Did you know? - Venue health and safety

Each of Equity's agreements and engagement policies includes language about providing a safe and sanitary place of work. I wrote about this in some detail a few years back.

Upon being told about these rules, the most common question members then ask is: what about the midsize theatre, the name of which I will not mention, but which is close to [location] in the city of [name], where the actors have to share dressing room space with [name of vermin], and the [name of plumbing fixture] in dressing room [x] has not worked properly since [year]? 

The answer to this is invariably: we didn't know, or we'd have done something about it.

What most members don't realise is that we don't have a stealth squad of health inspectors roaming the theatres of the country. However, we will deal with issues promptly if you tell us about them. That's right - you have to let us know that there is problem, and, please, not two years later as part of a random conversation.

If you are experiencing a health and safety issue, either with the work environment or the work you are being asked to do, speak up about it. First, talk to your deputy and/or stage manager, so that they aware that there is a problem. The fact that [name of vermin] are raising a family in your makeup tray will not spontaneously come to their attention. 

And please, don't do it as an offhand comment at the bar - make a formal complaint and ask for something to be done about it. Engagers have both a legal responsibility under workplace safety legislation, and a contractual responsibility to Equity, to take action on workplace health and safety issues.

And if nothing is done, please get on the phone to staff promptly, and they will see to it. It's what you pay them for.

2013 NAGM

Another National AGM has come and gone. Well, not entirely gone... 

If you were not in the Toronto area on February 25, or couldn't make it to the meeting, videos of the main presentations are posted at www.caea.com, along with information on Equity's new insurance plan and the most recent audited financial statement. Swing on over and have a look. It's your association, and we want you know what's going on.