From Center Stage to Starting Wage: Structuring Salary Transparency Legislation to Benefit the Performing Arts Industry

In the performing arts industry, passion is everything.Unfortunately, however, passion does not pay the bills.To understand the financial plight of many performing artists today, picture yourself as an aspiring actor in your early twenties.You just moved to New York City to try to land a role in a small theater production after seeing an advertisement for an open position.In pursuit of this opportunity, you signed up to audition and spent a few hundred dollars preparing for this chance at your future acting career.While you await the results of your audition, you realize you were never told how much you would be paid-if at all-if you were offered a role in the production.You push aside your concerns and instead wish for the best.Eventually, you are offered the role!You are ecstatic about the opportunity, but your excitement turns to alarm after you are told that the position is entirely unpaid.You wonder how you will ever pay your rent or buy your groceries and think to yourself that you never would have auditioned for the role in the first place if you knew it was an unpaid position.Frustrated with the lack of clarity in the job posting but too fearful you might lose out on your potential "big break," you decide to accept the role anyway and resort to waiting tables at a local restaurant to try to make ends meet.This is an all-too-familiar experience for actors, dancers, and other performing artists alike.Job seekers in the performing arts will often find out late in the process that their jobs pay below the amount *