Thyra, I certainly respect and understand your point of view. Believe me, I'll be the first in line to protest canned versus live music!

I can't imagine there are musician minimums (or musicians hired at all) for plays, since the plays did not stop for the strike...only the musicals did.

Make sense?

I understand that quite a few years back there were some theatres designated as "musical" theatres and "non-musical" theatres, and at that time the "musical" theatres did in fact have musician minimums for all performances in that theatre. On rare occassions a non musical would be done in one of those theatres and musicians who did not play were hired according to union requirements. But that practice was abolished years and years ago.

One of the reasons I think the strike settled so quickly this time and the reason the union agreed to the considerably lower numbers in some theatres, is that another term of this agreement is that it will last for ten years -- while it used to only be for four year periods.

By the way, the minimum number of 19 that is being stated now is only for 6 theatres. Seven others have 18 minimums, and then three have 14, 2 have 12, 3 have 9, 3 have 8, 2 have 4, and 8 others have 3 musician minimums. Some of those lower numbers are actually the same as what they were before this latest strike.