Broadway performers and stage managers who worked on four shows connected to producer Scott Rudin will be released from nondisclosure agreements under terms of a new settlement between the Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association.
The NDAs, Equity says, prohibited the union members from speaking about potential workplace abuses.
The four productions mentioned in the agreement are To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, The Iceman Cometh and The Lehman Trilogy. None are currently in production on Broadway, although Mockingbird is expected to return at some point following a Covid hiatus. The Tony-nominated Lehman closed in January, and director Ivo van Hove’s 2020 revival of West Side Story closed with Broadway’s Covid pandemic shutdown; the 2018 production of The Iceman Cometh featured a cast headed by Denzel Washington.)
The settlement – reached after the union withdrew two unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board – releases actors and stage managers in the four Rudin-connected productions from confidentiality, nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreements.
Following Rudin’s headline-making fall from Broadway’s graces last year after reports of longstanding bullying and abusive workplace behavior, Equity requested that he release performers and stage managers from the nondisclosure agreements that his productions had required.
“Equity first called for this change when Rudin was accused by former assistants last year of abusive workplace behavior, and it became clear that NDAs were preventing far more workers from speaking out,” the union said in a statement today.
In the settlement, the League, according to Equity, also agrees that going forward its members “will only use non-disclosure language in contracts or riders in limited, approved circumstances, such as protecting intellectual property or financial information.”
“Producing members of The Broadway League may no longer use NDAs to silence actors and stage managers who want to speak out against workplace harassment, bullying or discrimination,” Equity stated. “Equity intends to bring similarly protective language forward in negotiations with their other bargaining partners in support of creating a new industry standard.”
“As new shows develop, we understand that sometimes NDAs are necessary to protect these works in progress,” said Al Vincent, Jr., executive director of Actors’ Equity Association. “However, NDAs may not and will not be used to protect anyone from the consequences of their own bad behavior. This settlement is a major step in ensuring they will not be used in that way again.”