The Association of Teaching Artists (ATA) is a not for profit professional organization whose mission is to strengthen and serve Teaching Artists from all disciplines in New York, California, and beyond. Connect. Get jobs. Go Teach!
Showing posts with label the actors fund. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the actors fund. Show all posts
Teaching Artists who find themselves working without adequate health insurance coverage might be excited to learn that the Al Hirschfeld Free Health Clinic provides free health care to eligible artists who work in the entertainment industry.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Over at Carla Ching's Minutiae & Flux I found a brief review of Target Margin's newest Off-Broadway production, Ten Blocks to the Camino Royale.
"...an early version of O’Neill’s Camino Real. It reminded me that fantasy is an important place to run around in. Beautifully acted and realized. In the cold, in hard times, it’s important to remember the dream life. Sometimes, questions are answered there."
Many professional Teaching Artists moonlight as professional actors.
Neither of these careers comes with a guarantee of a living wage, health care or a pension.
Like a swiftly turning planet, like a wheel within a wheel, you think:
Healthcare is a right, not a luxury. But there's a reason it has been set up this way and who knows why healthcare is tied to employment? I'm not a historian. It goes all the way back to the time before there were unions and before that even and the simplest answer is that people don't care enough about other people even if they are sitting there possibly suffering right in front of them. If we did care about each other, we'd all have health insurance. But we don't, so we don't. Do we?
Breathe.
If you are a freelancer, the government considers you to be "self employed." Which means you're on your own. You have to pay your own taxes and beyond that you have all the rights of a migrant worker. No one owes you anything, including healthcare. Of course, migrant workers are totally worse off than professional Teaching Artists, what are you babbling about? Anyway, there's no point in arguing about degrees of suffering when you're suffering and if you keep muttering about this they'll find it unpleasant and then they won't ask you back.
So hush.
What to do? What to do?
Ok. You're smart. You're working. Go to the Freelancers Unionwebsite and get a cheap insurance plan because you can't walk around all uninsured and anxious.
Ah. Sweet security.
How could you have ever walked around without this? You risked bankruptcy and death. How immature of you. So it costs like $400/month. How many workshops is that? Yikes. Need more work. Now, when you're in your next planning meeting try to focus on the art. Don't think about what will happen if you don't get enough work this month to pay that new insurance bill. Set those outcomes. Smile. Nod. Suggest clever activities. Rent! The printer just broke, student loans etc...Don't think about it. Stay positive. Negative people get sick. You heard it on Oprah. If you do get sick, you will go to work anyway. If you take a sick day, you won't get paid. Then you can't pay your health insurance. What is the actual definition of irony? And always remember, this is your choice. You chose a life in art and you have to pay for it. The flexibility of the part-time gig or the freelancing life comes with a price. Potentially, it could be your actual life but look what you get in return...art. Congratulations and don't get sick, don't get sick, don't get sick .....because your friends will have to throw a party to pay your bills and they won't feel much like dancing.
The Actors Fund is a not-for-profit human services organization that serves all professionals – and not just actors! - in film, theater, television, music, opera, and dance.
Their Health Insurance Resource Center (HIRC) connects artists to health insurance and affordable health care.
The Freelancers Union/Working Today offers low-cost health insurance plans for people like us. It's amazing and, if you can keep it all together, it's yours for the keeping. Just don't get sick or you won't be able to afford it.
*According to this report on the National Arts Policy Database, artists are slightly, but not substantially, more likely to be uninsured than the general population...It is widely estimated that over 46 million Americans are uninsured. Individuals who are younger (19 to 32); self-employed; have lower incomes; are sicker; and those without dependents in the households are most likely to be uninsured.
