Orlando, Florida –
During the three years he worked as a parade artist at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California, Zach Elefante always had a second or third job that helped him make a living.
Unlike the experiences of their peers at the Disney parks in Orlando, Florida, where there is a much smaller talent pool, the performers who portray Mickey Mouse, Goofy and other beloved Disney characters at the California parks don’t always feature with a consistent work schedule. by the company.
This is one of the reasons California artists are organizing to be represented by a union now, more than four decades after their Florida counterparts did so.
While Disney asks artists to be available to work at any time, that demand is not always rewarded with scheduled work hours, California artists said.
“A lot of artists have the feeling that if they don’t make themselves fully available, we won’t be at the shows… and that will affect other jobs that we need to support ourselves in this area,” said Elefante, who lives in Santa Ana, California.
Earlier this month, California performers and the union that organizes them, Actors’ Equity Association, said they had filed a petition seeking union recognition.
This time it’s a different era and a different union is handling the organizing, so the California character and the parade performers will likely avoid some of the bad blood that Disney performers in Florida have experienced with their union, the Brotherhood. Teamsters International.
It’s been a rocky four-decade marriage in Florida between the artists who put the “magic” into Magic Kingdom and the Teamsters, a historically formed union for transportation and warehouse workers that had deep ties to organized crime until the late 1980s. .
Why California character artists now, so many decades after their Florida counterparts organized? Unlike Florida, where character acting is often a full-time job, many of the character actors in Southern California have many other jobs, often in Hollywood movies and television.
Elefante performs at rival Universal Studios Hollywood and works as a tour guide for the movie studios. In addition to acting on the show “Fantasmic!” show at Disneyland, Chase Thomas works as director of operations for a theater festival and previously worked as a visual effects coordinator and entertainment licensing agent.
Angela Nichols moved to California to be a television writer and often works as a writer in addition to her job as an entertainment host at Disneyland, where she helps the characters when they interact with guests.
“Disney really is the cornerstone of the stories we grow up with in our culture. Being able to see people immersed in these stories and living them is magical,” Nichols said. “And when we are supported as cast members and performers, we can do it. “We’re just not set up for success in the way we need to right now.”
When many of their Hollywood concerts sold out due to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent actor and writer strikes, artists wanted more consistent programming at Disneyland once it reopened after a year-long pandemic-related closure. . The pandemic also made them more alert to health and safety concerns related to things like hugging guests or having scrubs.
Most of the more than 35,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California were already unionized, and members of the parade and character department were among those remaining.
“A lot of cast members want to do this full time and make it work,” Thomas said.
Unlike their Florida counterparts, California performers are organized by a union dedicated to performers. As such, Actors’ Equity Association officials understand the unique needs of theme park performers in ways that would be difficult for other unions to understand.
When there is a new show on stage, it is necessary to try out the shoes of the costumes to ensure that the performers do not trip or slip on the stage. Union representatives make sure the “face artists,” whose faces are visible, like Cinderella, have the right makeup and check that parade dancers have ice packs available to care for sore knees.
Dirty costumes are a perennial problem and were one of the main reasons Florida entertainers wanted to organize with the Teamsters in the early 1980s. Other reasons included children kicking Disney villains like Captain Hook in the pimples and adults who grabbed the chest of performers playing Mickey Mouse to see if there was a man or woman underneath.
Clean suits were so important to Florida performers that more than two decades ago the Teamsters successfully inserted a contract clause to allocate individual underwear that performers could take home to wash after pubic lice and scabies were shared through clothing.
There was always a culture clash in Florida between the costumed characters and the traditional union leaders of Teamsters truck drivers and warehouse workers. Hosts often saw entertainers living charming lives, who were paid to dress up every day as if it were Halloween.
Those tensions came to a head in the late 2010s when a new leader of the local Teamsters chapter in Orlando began pursuing costumed performers to harass them. The actors backed away and the fight fell to James Hoffa, then head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who intervened.
In California, Elefante is hoping that union representation will give performers a voice in decisions on issues including giant costumes, which can cause long-term injuries if they don’t fit properly, and the safety of performing in parades during the rain.
“It’s about coming to the table and being part of the conversation from the artists’ perspective,” Elefante said.
Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.