Crowe, left, with aspiring students.
(Al Alexio)
The acting company at Trinity Repertory Company, one of the few resident regional acting companies remaining in the nation, is getting a substantial pay raise, one which Trinity’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis hopes makes employment in the acting company more attractive.
Eustis said Trinity is giving members of the acting company a 14 percent increase in this fiscal year, followed by two additional 14 percent raises compounded in the following fiscal years, which will result in a 48 percent pay raise (cumulative) in a span of two years.
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“We’re going to do that,” said Eustis, who has often expressed concern about elevating actors’ wages here. “We’ve got the money to do it. It’s going to happen. At that point, two years from now, our actors are going to be better compensated. We worked hard at it.”
Eustis said the pay raises are separate from Trinity’s newly announced consortium with Brown University, yet meant as a way of attracting some of the graduates of the new consortium to regional theater. Eustis said young actors now look to movies and television most often, viewing the stage as an add-on. The result has been a dwindling number of regional acting companies.
“We’ve got to deal with both ends of the life spectrum,” Eustis said. “On the one hand we have to compensate our senior actors much better than we do now. And I think a 48 percent increase will be a significant step in that direction. And we need to do it because it is just, fair to them.
“Also, because we’re about to turn out students at the highest level of our training program and we need for them to look at our senior actors and go ‘wow that’s a life I can model, that’s a life I could be proud to have.’ Right now, students are coming out of our program and our best students are looking at our senior actors and saying what a fantastic creative life, but my God I couldn’t live on that. We’ve got to change that.”
While Eustis wouldn’t be specific about salaries, he said “it is rare that one of our acting company members grosses over $30,000. It happens but it is rare. By the time we’re done with the salary increase program that will be a distant memory. My hope is we’ll have our average annual salary in the mid-40’s, which is respectable.”
