Waldman Gone Wild!

This is the comment appended to the Miami Herald's article about Gary Waldman's latest theatrical venture:

Gary Waldman is his own worst enemy: first, he doesn't secure the funding for his theatre project, then the project falls apart. Then he blames someone else.

Sadly, this isn't the first time Gary Waldman and Jamison Troutman brought a group of actors far from their homes, and then abandoned them. The show was I WRITE THE SONGS, and the hall was the Imperial Palace Casino. Troutman and Waldman maintain it is the Casino's fault that the cast of the show was unpaid and abandoned in Mississippi.

I've felt jaded and turned off ever since this Mississippi debacle. For those of you who don't know, my cast of "I Write The Songs" got stiffed by our producers, a couple of old queerbags named Gary Waldman and Jamison Troutman. DON'T EVER WORK FOR THESE JERKS..
- Ryan Flanigan, actor

Those are the words of Ryan Flanigan, whom I contacted in January after Gary and Jamison claimed they didn't owe any actors any money. So I contacted Ryan, and asked if he's received any of the pay they owe him:

They sure as hell did not. They haven't paid any of us. Bunch of frauds. They are trying to do another show too.

I'm sure they've done several since the mess in Biloxi. Waldman maintains that it's because the Imperial Palace Casino reneged on an agreement, and he claims that there is an ongoing lawsuit over the matter. But the real issue is who signed a contract with these performers: the Casino, or Waldman and/or Troutman?

For the sake of argument, let's assume that perhaps Waldman and Troutman shouldn't be held responsible for leaving the cast of I Write the Songs in the lurch: maybe theey really were merely acting as agents for the casino. (And 'maybe I look good in a size two evening gown,' I know, but this is for the sake of argument.) One would think, that having been burned once by not having the funds in the bank to cover actors' wages and transportation costs, they'd make damned sure to have those funds secure for the next production.

Which brings us to The Life.

On March 10, the cast of The Life flew arrived in South Florida. Not one of them is a member of a performer's union. Like most begininning actors, they didn't have a long resumé of shows under the belt. Nevertheless, the theatre's recorded messages announced "a production starring a first-rate, blockbuster cast of actors out of New York!"

Jasmine Torres reported that the theatre was a mess when the cast arrived, with trash strewn in the house. Some performers were a little nervous that their first paycheck was drawn on someone's personal account instead of a proper company check with a paystub. But work continued. The promised transportation never appeared: the actors were informed that it was "only a fifteen minute walk."

Rehearsals continued.

The South Florida Blade interviewed the boys during that first week of rehearsal:

Waldman and Troutman, who are running the theater as a for-profit company, a rarity in the performing arts, are betting on the appeal of the play (along with a New York cast) years later in a larger community and theater.

A bold move in a troubled economy! But there's more:

Waldman said they haven’t decided what shows they will stage after “The Life” ends its run, to allow an open-ended run if the show is a hit.

The article ends with a quote from Waldman:

“The theater is a local production house, but it’s also a place to give birth to a ‘product’. We’ll run it here as long as we can then we’ll take it national (on tour) or back to New York,” he says.

Tuesday night, Jamison Troutman informed the cast that the show was being canceled because they lost their funding, and that no one was getting paid, and that he and Gary weren't sure how they were going to get the actors home. The cast hadn't seen Waldman since the weekend.

As anyone in theatre can tell you, non-union actors live from paycheck to paycheck. Not getting paid is a disaster. Not getting paid means you don't eat.

Jasmine Torres worried that Troutman wouldn't give any of the cast an idea of when they might get something to at least tide them over, or what the timetable for flying them home was. So she called her agent back in New York, to see if he could do anything. She had found the job on her own, so the agent hadn't been involved in negotiating the contract, and wasn't collecting a fee, but who was going to find answers? Her agent agreed to make some calls.

According to Torres, her agent reported that Waldman screamed a string of obscenities over the phone before hanging up. Waldman then called Torres and informed her that by going to her agent, she had terminated her contract: he was no longer obligated to pay her, house her, or send her home.

That's when Torres went on the internet to find someone who could help her and her castmates: she wrote me, The Miami Herald, several members of the Theatre League, some folks with Broadway Across America, Hap Erstein, and several other reporters.

You may recall that I spoke with Jamison Troutman yesterday, to find out what was going on, and his version of events was very different:

"They've all been met with, and they know that we're doing what we can to take care of them. I suppose it's possible that one or two of them isn't happy with that."

Today, I spoke with Jasmine Torres, and asked her if anyone from 26th Street had met with her after she and I had talked. She was very firm:

"We haven't heard from anyone. They never stated they intended to pay us, or gave us any indication they were working on flights. And now they're saying that we're the reason the show closed!"

Now that seems hard to believe, but the Miami Herald also reports:

Waldman said he intends to pay the actors' wages and airfare to return home, but he blamed them for delaying his efforts with phone calls and e-mails.

And then Gary himself appended a comment to the article:

...these people were HORRIBLE. Selfish, completely un-directable (yet needing all of the help they could get), lazy, worthless, no-nothing creeps. We closed the show because it was AWFUL. I would not put my name on it (nor take a customer's money for it) even if it meant going through this, which was no surprise. No surprise at all."

So much for his "cast of blockbuster stars." Of course, this doesn't jibe with their telling The Blade that they were thinking of keeping it running; the article appeared over week after rehearsals started. Even after a few days, they should have had an idea if the show was in trouble.

But let's say that Gary is actually being honest with us, and that his entire cast was completely inept. Who cast these people? Gary Waldman cast them. So who's to blame if they suck? Gary Waldman.

But in fact, the quality of their work is not an issue in the current debacle: the point here is that he hasn't paid the actors that he flew in from out of state. Period. Actors in rehearsal can't have any impact on a show's funding. How could they? No one can see them, no one can decide not to buy tickets on the basis of a performance they haven't seen. Either Gary had the funds in hand, or he didn't. And it's very obvious that, once again, he didn't. How do I surmise that? Because he hasn't paid his actors.

I'm still trying to figure out how it is the actors didn't have return flights available: it's much cheaper to book round trip than one way: so they should all have had return flights available. What happened to those return tickets? Were they cashed in to help the company's cash flow?

And here's another point to ponder; Gary and Jamison have produced this show (to great acclaim) in South Florida, with South Florida based actors (who were criticially praised): curious that they decided to cast mostly out of state when they garnished so much critical praise with locals last time.

Well, interestingly enough, one of the comments to the Herald article speaks to this question:

My wife was the original Queen in their first production of The Life and then in The Last Session. They are in debt to her for over $1000.00 which they will not pay. The reason they went with "out-of-towners" for this show is because no local talent will work for them. Now you know why. My wife and I will be more than happy to back you guys up. I am sure you will find more people to help.

Maybe Gary is avoiding you, but The South Florida Theatre Scene isn't. Leave us a comment.

Speaking of comments on the Herald article, Gary posted back about an hour later:

It's a shame he didn't agree to meet with the police when they were out there on Thursday. They wanted to meet with him and get his side of the story. Instead, Gary screamed at Officer Sweat and hung up on her. The good news is that NBC6 had a camera crew out there, and interviewed the cast in the living room. We can all view the tape to see if, in fact, there was a large LCD television in there. We can also watch Officer Sweat's end of the conversation as Gary told her to "butt out" from his business.

I'm really looking forward to reading that police report. I'll post it when I get a hold of it.

After that phone call, the police told the cast members that they would do some extra patrols, because they agreed that the cast probably was right to be concerned that someone "that emotionally engaged" might "act out."

The police on duty also took up a collection and bought some food for the actors, who didn't have any money on them since they hadn't been paid. According to Jasmine Torres, it was the police who "strongly suggested" that the actors contact friends and family for help getting out of the situation "as quickly as possible."

I spoke to Jasmine Torres this afternoon: she was calling from an airport during a layover on her flight home. A flight her family helped pay for, and she arranged herself.

"We, the rest of the cast and me, we just want to do whatever we can to make sure these guys can't do this again. They're crazy! The things they said to us. They told us that since we complained, that meant we terminated our contracts and they didn't have to pay us! That they no longer owed us anything! This isn't how producers are supposed to treat people. We just want to make sure that everyone knows about these con artists. They shouldn't be allowed to do this."

You're right, Jasmine. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. Not again and again and again. Everybody makes mistakes: but these two are making the same mistakes over and over and over again, and they are doing damage, real damage.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that transporting people to another state with the promise of employment while knowing that there isn't money in the bank to cover their salaries must constitute fraud at some level or other. And if it doesn't, it ought to.

The good news is that word is starting to get out. My articles on Gary and Jamison have been in the top ten most-read pages on The Scene since they were published. Now it's time to make sure that theatre professionals know to research producers who want to transport them far from home before accepting those non-union out of town gigs.

Tell your friends.
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