SDC has announced that they will provide union recognition to Associate/Resident directors and choreographers working on Broadway productions and tours.
The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) is the national labor union that represents theatrical directors and choreographers, working on Broadway and on National tours, Off-Broadway, and in various resident, regional, stock and dinner theatres throughout the United States.
An interim agreement with the Broadway League, currently being negotiated, will cover Associate/Resident directors and choreographers who are working full-time to maintain Broadway productions and tours, ensuring health and pension benefits and workplace safety. The interim agreement will be retroactive to November 2021.
There are more than 100 Associates/Residents working with directors and choreographers on Broadway productions and tours at any given time, rehearsing, remounting, and maintaining these productions.
These artists serve as the designated conduits to the producer, director, choreographer, and general management office regarding creative issues, maintaining the integrity of a production over the course of its lifetime. Their duties include rehearsing understudies, putting in swings, and adapting staging as necessary when productions are on tour.
SDC launched a formal organizing campaign on behalf of Broadway associates and residents this past summer. The organizing committee was co-chaired by Benjamin Endsley Klein (most recently, associate director for Hairspray in London) and Katie Spelman (former associate choreographer for Moulin Rouge!). The reopening of Broadway, along with the wider industry’s demands for safe and more equitable workplaces, galvanized this group of artists to seek representation and support from SDC.
Associates and residents on nine productions demonstrated majority support for unionization in August and asked their employers for voluntary recognition. There was further demonstration of widespread majority support for SDC representation when associates and residents working on 47 productions submitted a petition to the League in October of last year.
SDC and the Broadway League are now working to finalize the interim agreement.
