News from California, across the nation and world - Los Angeles Times reported that two non-Equity tours opened simultaneously at major Los Angeles venues in late October. The current theater season features twenty-five touring Equity shows and twenty-four non-Equity productions.
Actors’ Equity Assn. represents over fifty-one thousand professional actors and managers nationwide. Non-Equity touring productions emerged during the nineteen nineties following megamusical growth. Big League Productions has produced mostly non-union tours for approximately thirty-five years, according to the report.
Discussing the realities of these productions, Savannah Stevenson told News from California, across the nation and world - Los Angeles Times, "We should completely dispel the notion that because we’re a non-Equity tour, we’re somehow put through the wringer." Stevenson also told News from California, across the nation and world - Los Angeles Times, "The biggest difference in my mind is, frankly, the schedule. As a non-Equity tour, we do significantly more one-nighters or short engagements."
Center Theatre Group artistic director Snehal Desai addressed scheduling and financial constraints facing the industry. Meanwhile, critic Charles McNulty panned The Music Man as community theater level. The broader context of regional touring also touches locations far beyond major metropolitan areas, noting that Senatobia Mississippi has a population of about eight thousand five hundred residents.