I'm Erin Maureen Koster.
A working stage manager, mom to a kindergartner and a fifth grader, and about to wrap up my seventh year on Equity’s National Council.
Here’s my story—who I am, where I’ve been, and what I’ve been up to—and why I’m confident that I can lead Equity into the future we deserve.
My entry into Equity in 2007 might sound like yours:
Making under $300 a week to work with a phenomenal cast and a director I adored, smitten with the idea of supporting beautiful artists making mind-blowing theatre. My rent was over $1000 for a shoebox with two holes for windows, and I had some $60K or so in student loans. I had a dollar and a dream, but the math wasn’t mathing.
Nevertheless, I spent the next six years building a career in the working class landscape of our union contracts (LOAs, Off-Broadway, SPTs, LORT…) mostly shepherding beautiful, controversial, funny new work into the theatre world. The only offers I had to refuse were for Production Assistant work on Broadway—at the time the pay was a few hundred dollars for the run of the show, or $150/week, or even, memorably, a Metrocard (more on this later).
Was I making it work? Or was I rolling the proverbial boulder up a hill?
Then, I dared to give birth to my first child. “We won’t interview you while you’re pregnant,” one producer actually said, “what if something happens? Who would cover you?”
How predictable.
Like so many before me, I made plans to exit the industry I loved that was not loving me back.
Several temp jobs, some corporate gigs, and a toddler later, my life changed when someone called me about the 2016 Off-Broadway Contract negotiations. Alongside a core group of actors, I spent months collecting and publishing stories of the unsustainable nature of Off-Broadway life, getting letters signed, engaging audiences, and organizing our way to an extraordinary 30-83% increase in salary across the contract. The #FairWageOnStage movement was the first of its kind for our union, and I. Was. Fired. Up.
I was ready to LEAD.
I ran for a Council seat.
So what happened after a young mom with a penchant for spreadsheets and organizing made it into the Council room?
I compiled numbers and aggregated research.
I showed up in committees with fact-based data on why and how we need to ask for more.
I nursed my youngest kid while chairing meetings.
I ran for and won a seat as Vice President.
In short:
I showed up. I did the work. I cared.
I led.
But what did I DO?
RADICALLY RETHOUGHT MEMBER OUTREACH FOR NEGOTIATIONS
For the past six years, I have been the chair of the Eastern Committee for Independent Theatres (so many words!). Basically, we oversee individually-bargained agreements including SPTs (Small Professional Theatres) and LOAs (Letters of Agreement). Historically, the committee has been heavily populated from New York City, and has had little contact with the Equity members whose careers depend on these contracts. I populated the committee with members from across the Eastern region, have made a point of speaking to the members working the contracts under negotiation, and on several occasions have invited them to participate in the meetings where the committee will vote. Our Eastern independent contracts are significantly stronger these days as a result.
As chair of the Stage Managers Committee and also as a member of several negotiating teams over the last year or so, I have scaled this same peer-to-peer organizing to great effect for multi-employer contracts (think of LORT, COST, CORST). While Equity has traditionally solicited feedback passively (It’s a survey!), I proactively solicit input from members who have worked the contract (which often looks like literally finding friends of friends of friends on the internet), and turn these conversations into proposals for new and better rules in the contracts. I have also begun to close the loop: holding a meeting for the workers after the contract is ratified to discuss how to implement and advocate for these newly achieved rules. As far as I know, this is new ground for Equity in its most important role—contract negotiations. This shouldn’t have been radical, but it was.
BUSTED MY ASS FOR CONTRACT PROTECTIONS FOR ABORTION ACCESS AND GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE
After the Dobbs decision leaked, I knew what was coming. I could not stomach a world in which our members could be stuck touring through or working in a state where they couldn’t access an abortion and where they would risk legal repercussions for even discussing it. I collaborated with leaders in other unions and then within Equity to create reproductive rights language. And then we negotiated that language into contracts. I have looked producers directly in the eyes and asked, “imagine an Equity member having a miscarriage on stage right and needing a D&C. What happens next?” Many of them had not begun to consider the impact of these draconian laws on our workers—so I told them. And as anti-trans legislation came into (dystopian) vogue, we expanded that language to include gender-affirming care. Simply stated, because of my efforts, our union is one of the first in the country to achieve contract protections around abortion and gender-affirming care.
UNIONIZED PRODUCTION ASSISTANT WORK
For decades, our employers have been calling members of our stage management teams “Production Assistant.” And they’ve done so for the explicit purpose of being able to pay them minimum wage (or less—remember the Metrocard?) without a union contract. Often, even the actors working a Broadway show aren’t aware that these folks are actually Equity members being required to do non-union PA work in order to “prove themselves worthy” of future union stage management jobs. I was fed up with this “pay your dues” culture that kept me and so many others from working on one of the only contracts in New York where an Equity member might be able to breathe. Months of grassroots organizing later, we now await a National Labor Relations Board decision to send those Production Assistants to a formal vote to unionize (and these workers are $%@! inspiring, full stop).
What’s Next?
Here’s what a Koster Presidency at Actors’ Equity Association will look like:
We want our contracts to allow you to be a whole human, right? So we have to focus on contract negotiations. Next year, both Production and Touring contracts will come up for renegotiation. LORT follows two years later. Myriad other contracts come between and around those. Upon assuming office, I will scale the transformative outreach and mobilization work I’ve been doing in my 7 years on Council and before. The union will find you where you are and listen to your thoughts on bettering your work life. My job will be to serve you and to represent your interests by speaking your truth to power. The union will become the place where you can have your blue sky dreams and then, alongside your colleagues, take steps to make them come true. It will be the place you come to when you need to be reminded that this industry doesn’t exist without you.
Your decision in this vote is enormously consequential. We will feel it in our paychecks and our working conditions for years to come. I take this incredibly seriously: The President of our union is committing to full-time responsibility and oversight of a $25 million non-profit with a membership of 50,000 people. People who need money that pays our bills. Coverage so we can call out to heal or grieve. Workplaces where our whole selves are truly safe. To get there, we must have a leader who knows what she is doing, why she is doing it, and how she is going to get it done. I am all of those things.
You ready? I am.
Let’s get organized
