text: Opinion | The Play's the Thing. And the Pay, Too? - The New York Times
  Opinion|The Play's the Thing. And the Pay, Too?
  CreditCreditLilli Gärtner
  Re "Actors Union Rules on Wages in Los Angeles" (Arts, Briefly item, April 23):
  I don't want the small theaters in Los Angeles (or anywhere else) to go out of business, but as an actor I know that without Actors' Equity, many people on Broadway would be working without pay, so it was good to read that the union has ruled that the minimum wage must be paid by the small theaters in L.A.
  I have worked at a lot of places that nobody in Los Angeles or New York thinks important, like the Milwaukee Rep and Arena Stage in Washington (they actually paid me to act). I was not only thrilled to be able to support my family and me, but I was also very proud to be able to do what I loved in a community that honored us enough to pay us. And there are lots of successful small theaters in both those towns.
  The union was created to protect actors from the "I love it so I'll just do it for free" trap. Would a doctor or a carpenter ever consider that? The bottom line is that actors, like everyone else, need to eat.
  Re "Union Pushes for a Minimum Wage, but Not All Its Actors Want It" (front page, April 20):
  Those who write fiction will sympathize with the actors in your article.
  There are scores of literary magazines that most often pay their contributors so little that the check would not even pay for a nice dinner for two. A lot of these magazines pay nothing at all.
  If you asked these writers if they objected to this measly pay, they would say their appearance in print, where others can read their work, is far more important than mere money.
  If you want to become a writer, go ahead and write, but you'd better get a day career to help pay the rent.
  The writer teaches fiction writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard and is the fiction editor of the new online magazine Pangyrus.
  A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: The Play's the Thing. And the Pay, Too?. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe