EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS: For the reason that begin of the Covid pandemic in 2020, The Actors Fund, the 140-year-old group that provides emergency monetary help and different assist service to staff within the the performing arts industries, has distributed greater than $26.8 million in emergency monetary help – hire, groceries, drugs, medical insurance premiums -.to about 17,900 people. The pandemic-era distribution represents greater than 13 occasions the quantity of help usually offered by the Fund in a mean 12 months.
With its identify and providers reaching unprecedented numbers of individuals, a rebranding may appear greater than a bit counterintuitive, however that’s precisely what Fund officers introduced final night time: As of now, The Actors Fund the , a moniker designed to raised replicate the complete scope of trade professionals serviced by the group.
The change was introduced final night time by actor and Fund Chairman Brian Stokes Mitchell on the Fund’s Annual Gala held in each Los Angeles and New York Metropolis. The night, which was simulcasted from each coasts, raised a record-breaking $1.7 million for the group, which celebrates its one hundred and fortieth anniversary in June.
“It’s a brand new identify and a brand new look, with the identical mission,” stated Mitchell. “We acknowledge the dedication of technicians, digital camera operators, stagehands, writers, musicians, stage managers, actors and 1000’s extra who work in movie, tv, radio, music, theater, dance and opera. All of them contribute to our nation’s cultural vibrancy. We worth them. We assist them. And the Fund is right here for all of them.”
In the course of the pandemic, the Fund, as will probably be referred to as for brief, scaled up operations, serving greater than 60,000 people in 2020 and 2021, a 68% enhance over the previous two non-pandemic years. The $26.8 million in emergency monetary help to roughly 17,900 people has been distributed since March of 2020.
“We’ve lengthy labored to satisfy the wants of these working all through the leisure trade, throughout the nation,” stated Joseph Benincasa, Fund President and CEO. “Now, with our new identify, we are able to replicate the total scope of what we do and the broad vary of performing arts and leisure professionals we serve.”
By way of medical insurance alone, the Fund helped greater than 5,700 folks navigate and enroll in insurance policy throughout pandemic, but one little bit of confusion had dogged the group even among the many folks it’s designed to assist: When somebody who wants help is informed of the providers out there, there’s a greater than good probability the response can be, “However I’m not an actor.”
“I keep in mind my first week on the job,” Benincasa stated in an unique interview with Deadline, “I feel I pitched the United Approach in New York Metropolis for a grant. And I keep in mind the chairman of the allocations committee, who I knew fairly effectively – and I had Helen Hayes on my arm at the moment – stated, ‘Actors don’t need assistance. Actors are wealthy.’ In fact, I had to enter the fundamental details concerning the want for medical insurance, inexpensive well being, direct monetary help once they hit the low interval. So we did get funding from the United Approach.”
“Each time I or any one in all us speak concerning the Actors Fund,” Mitchell informed Deadline, “we at all times need to say, ‘It’s not only for actors.’ It’s nearly like a tagline – ‘It’s not only for actors’ – as a result of folks don’t perceive. As quickly as they hear Actors Fund all they hear is actors after which they assume this can be a fund for actors, regardless that it’s been defined in so many various methods.”
With the brand new identify, the Fund will comply with up the publicity launch with main solicitations and a purpose to triple the variety of folks served everywhere in the nation, Benincasa stated, together with in markets corresponding to Atlanta, Miami, Las Vegas and others with vital leisure industries.
“We’ve set a purpose of serving to thrice as many individuals within the subsequent three to 5 years,” Benincasa stated. “Fairly often direct monetary help is the primary means we assist them, however then they enter totally different packages of the Fund for assist. What we anticipate is, as a result of we’ve made this transition to the digital format and this hybrid means of serving to folks in each state, that extra folks will perceive that they’ll flip to the Fund for assist.”
Each Stokes and Benincasa stated a reputation change has been into consideration for years, with the elevated visibility that’s include the pandemic nudging the group to postpone not. “We did very deep surveying of membership,” Benincasa informed Deadline, “and the entire info has come again to us over 4 or 5 years that the identify was an obstacle to folks understanding who we’re, who we assist.”
With its new, self-explanatory identify of The Leisure Group Fund – and a brand new brand and an official tagline “Supporting A Life In The Arts” – the group seeks to make clear precisely who it providers – merely, everybody working in performing arts and leisure. The pandemic, Benincasa and Mitchell stated, has made clearer than ever the total extent of the wants inside the skilled leisure group in cities throughout the nation. Whereas employment circumstances have improved because the worst of the pandemic shutdown, the performing arts are recovering extra slowly than different industries, with Covid persevering with to disrupt in-person programming from Broadway to regional theaters, live performance halls and different leisure venues nationwide.
With its new identify and a vigorous outreach for donations and grants, The Fund hopes to triple the variety of folks served over the subsequent 5 years, in theater, movie, tv and different arts, reaching staff each with public-facing roles and with out. “It’s for folks behind the scenes and performing,” stated Benincasa. “It’s the cinematographer. It’s the director. It’s the stagehand. It’s the gaffer. It’s greatest boy. It’s completely everybody.”
“We first tried to do that was about twelve years in the past,” Stokes stated. “When this primary got here up in dialog, the dialogue was very full of life across the boardroom and with the employees as effectively. We determined then that it wasn’t the proper time. However with the pandemic, and extra openness and extra inclusivity at so many organizations and teams, it’s form of this good storm of all the proper components coming collectively.”
Much more not too long ago, he continued, the identify change sparked “very, very strong dialogue” inside the group, with some involved {that a} new identify would hand over appreciable model fairness.
“So long as all people is aware of that we’re previously the Actors Fund, finally, all people’s going to return round,” Stokes stated, including that wording alongside the traces of “Previously The Actors Fund” will comply with the brand new identify throughout a interval of transition.
Fund companions, together with unions and different non-profit organizations, again the identify change, with Writers Guild of America West President Meredith Stiehm, SAG-AFTRA Nationwide Govt Director Duncan Crabtree-Eire, IATSE Worldwide President Matthew D. Loeb, Administrators Guild of America President Lesli Linka Glatter and Actors’ Fairness Affiliation President Kate Shindle releasing statements of assist. “We couldn’t consider a extra becoming identify to proceed this extraordinary legacy than the Leisure Group Fund,” stated Tom Viola, Govt Director of Broadway Cares/Fairness Fights AIDS. “It actually expresses the broad cross part of these assisted and the breadth of the providers offered to all.”
On the gala final night time, actor and Fund trustee Chandra Wilson stated, “In case you are doing standup in Chicago or music movies in Atlanta, that you must know the Leisure Group Fund is right here for you. Performing arts and leisure are a basic a part of each group, giant and small, all through the nation, and the Fund is right here to assist folks in that house no matter what they do. We acknowledge that it may be uniquely difficult to maintain a life within the arts. It’s why we come collectively as a group to assist one another.”
Whereas a lot of the Fund’s upcoming expansions will happen within the digital realm, the group has introduced plans for the creation of The Hollywood Arts Collective, comprising two buildings that collectively will present inexpensive house for arts and leisure professionals to reside, work and create in Hollywood.
The Fund additionally operates a number of inexpensive housing residences in New York and Los Angeles, in addition to gives academic seminars on inexpensive housing choices, figuring out eligibility and making ready for the housing utility course of.
Different Fund providers: The Samuel J. Friedman Well being Middle for the Performing Arts, a program of the Leisure Group Fund and Mt. Sinai Docs, positioned on the Leisure Group Fund’s headquarters in Occasions Sq., and The Actors Fund Dwelling in Inglewood, New Jersey, an assisted residing, expert nursing, short-stay rehab and reminiscence care residence. (The Actors Fund Dwelling will retain the Actors Fund identify.)
And with the brand new identify got here new awards: Eventually night time’s gala, the primary Leisure Group Fund Medals of Honor had been offered to Emmy Award-winning actor and activist Uzo Aduba; President and CEO of Paramount World Bob Bakish; Academy Award, Tony Award and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Mercedes Ruehl; and Chairman and CEO of The Shubert Group Robert E. Wankel.
