How much is that MRE in the window?

And is it worth losing a tv, commercial or film booking over a $400 stipend and your sanity?

I used to not read my casting contracts all the way through. Hell, I used to not even use contracts and all terms would be agreed upon over email. And boy did that bite me in the ass several times, including once when I didn’t even realize that I had signed a contract with an open ended NDA (OOF!).

Nowadays, I read my contract at least 10 times before either signing it or pushing it back to the production manager to negotiate better terms or add a clause or two. But it took eight years out of undergrad to finally start throughly reviewing a legally binding document. WILD, I know. And unfortunately, I was never taught in undergrad how to even do it, so I had to learn on the job and from my fellow freelance theatremakers.

I use this cautionary tidbit to hopefully get you to pay attention to the even more important advice I am about to give.

ANY and ALL actors who want to perform in storefront theaters that were formally funeral homes or multi-million dollar stages with dead white people’s names plastered on their entry way, pay attention: you MUST always ask for an MRE in your contracts.

For those who are unfamiliar, MRE stands for More Remunerative Employment. It is a clause that a theatre can put into a standard actor contract that will allow an artist to leave a production, typically for 2-3 days at a time but it can be longer or permanently, depending on the terms, if you book a project that is higher-paying. It will also be defined in the clause how much notice you have to give for approval. The majority of the instances I’ve seen an MRE utilized is when an actor books a guest star role on Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D., or, if they’re lucky enough, The Bear.

You shoot for a few days, your understudy covers for you if you are in performance or they finagle a rehearsal schedule change, and then you come right back to your show.

And then there’s the blackout period: a time where it’s imperative to have an actor not miss rehearsal or performance even for an MRE opportunity, typically from tech to opening of a show. And during this time, you can definitely ask to take a couple days off to film a Wisconsin Dells commercial but the likelihood of that opportunity getting approved is SLIM to NONE.

The blackout period can vary depending on the company but let me state this: if a non-equity company is paying you a small ass stipend and has a blackout period that starts at tech and goes through closing night…RUN! I’ve cast shows where the company will argue that it would be “so awful to lose an actor during our very short run!”. THERE IS A REASON YOU EMPLOY UNDERSTUDIES. They’ve been saving our asses for awhile now and you never know when the next Sutton Foster will step up to the stage.

And especially since we’ve had an ongoing pandemic for over 4 years, it is crucial that every single actor has an understudy. *please note here that understudies typically do not have an MRE, especially during the performance run of a show because if they book a gig and are out when their overstudy gets sick, the show will not go on! Or some poor internal cover will have to learn a new role in less than eight hours which is wildly unreasonable but that’s a rant for another time.*

Some larger theaters will choose to buyout your MRE clause, which means a nice little bonus for you and they might still approve these opportunities to book higher paid acting work for a limited period of time, depending on where it lands in the production process.

*Side note: MREs are often not included on new play workshops or reading contracts since they are incredibly short processes and 99.9% of the time, do not have understudies. So if they lose an actor, it’s utter chaos.*

One of the reasons I wanted to start out with this topic was because of the amount of times I’ve seen actors never ask in negotiations if they will have an MRE on their contract. Or, they don’t even know what an MRE is. This is definitely one of the top perks of having an agent because often times, especially if this is their first time working with a specific theatre company, an agent will confirm that an MRE is included and even challenge the blackout dates if they’re unreasonable. There are times where agents won’t be involved in the negotiation process, due to the amount of pay or stipend an actor is receiving from the project, but it never hurts to ask your agent to review the contract.

I’ve also seen instances where an actor didn’t take the time to review their contract and in the midst of performances or rehearsals, gets a check/avail for a film project and asks the theatre if they can take a day or two off if they book it. And most of the time, the company says no (despite having an understudy…).

Here’s my “not even that hot take”: if you are a theatre company that cannot afford to pay actors a living wage OR can’t match the daily guest star rate on Chicago Med, then you need to let actors make their money by having a reasonable MRE clause in all actor contracts. It is a genuine fact that in the city of Chicago it is RARE to find an actor who makes their income solely on acting. So why not give them an opportunity to make several months of rent in a single day, let their understudy have a performance (YAY!) and come back to your experimental storefront production of All’s Well That Ends Well set on Mars, for which you are paying them $0.00000034 per hour.

And if a theatre is not willing to let you get your coin and perform in a play you are really passionate about, then they don’t care about your livelihood. “People over Product” is just a cute little saying companies proclaim but the majority of the time, they don’t put it into action with how they treat their artists. So let’s push back more and have these difficult conversations when negotiating actor contracts because all in all, if they actually want to invest in you as an actor and an artist, they’ll work with you so you can accept that role as “coma patient #1” on Chicago Med, cause capitalism is real.

If you have any additions to this rant, leave a comment and I’ll put a few on a follow-up post that will include additional takes and experiences with MREs in and around the Chicago Theatre community. Or, if you’d rather keep it anonymous, send me a message!

And as always:

“good casting is good dramaturgy!”