The Shark Is Broken will open, as Broadway shows not impacted by writers and actors strike
The Shark Is Broken may be about the behind-the-scenes goings on during the filming of Steven Spielberg’s shark box office smash JAWS (1975), but it – along with all other Broadway shows – won’t be affected by the ongoing writers and actors strike that is hitting Hollywood film and TV productions.
The play, co-written by Ian Shaw who is the son of JAWS Quint actor Robert Shaw – and Joseph Nixon, and actors in other stage shows and musicals treading the boards on Broadway are part of the Actors’ Equity Association, whereas industrial action is from the Screen Actors Guild.
The Screen Actors Guild rules do not stop screen actors from taking work in theater productions like those that run on Broadway, so to paraphrase Mayor Vaughn from JAWS, that Broadway show will be open on July 25.
Stage actors are not included in the strike, which the Screen Actors Guild joined at midnight on July 14, and that is also the case if your Broadway show's cast includes a screen actor – just like The Shark Is Broken does with Alex Brightman, who is currently in the final season of The Blacklist, and plays Richard Dreyfuss, and Colin Donnell, from Chicago Med and Arrow, who is playing Roy Scheider.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the union supporting those actors appearing across Broadway don’t stand in solidarity with those striking.
Deadline reported that the Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing stage theatre actors and stage managers, said: “Nobody should step in front of a camera fearing that today’s work will be mined, manipulated or repurposed in the future without consent or compensation.”
And strikes also played their part in JAWS beginning filming on Martha’s Vineyard when it did. Originally, shooting was not set to begin until July 1974, but it was moved two months ahead to May of that same year due to fear of an impending actors strike.
The first day of shooting JAWS in 1974
All of which show that the making of JAWS, and the story that features in The Shark Is Broken still very much resonates to this day. It may almost be 50 years since those cameras started rolled on Martha’s Vineyard, but some things seem to remain very much the same.
Perhaps the only way to ‘experience’ a Hollywood film being ‘shot’ this summer will be by being in the audience in the Golden Theater on Broadway and discover the trials and tribulations of bringing JAWS to the big screen.
