Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >
To: Dana Kopel <██████████████████████ >
Cc: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>
Dear Dana,
Thank you again for this precise and clear-eyed text! Josh and I have been raving together about your clean style and brave voice. You seem to make easy work of laying out some of the fundamental arguments and relationships the The Employee is grappling with. There are also many points where you perfectly articulate a point that gets extrapolated upon in Marina and Mariane's and I am grateful for the relationship-building you accomplish here. I also appreciate that you discuss the organizing landscape around The Employee, both in and outside the arts, as this feels like such an essential perspective that needed picking up.
You will find a few notes, suggestions and questions from me and Josh in this document (please let me know if you have any issues accessing this document). Please keep in mind that all these edits are the start of a conversation, and we are both always happy to talk things through.
One aspect that we particularly wanted to work together on comes at the end of the second page and in your quote from Josh at the top of page three. We'd like to suggest some disambiguation around how your argument function with regards to, on the one hand, Teresa as an ARC employee who has a direct line to government funding, and on the other, Camille who is a contract worker but also a performer. Perhaps this would mean nesting Camille's roll within Teresa's and indicating how precarity in terms of employment and funding transparency is different for each of them in this context, which I grant is an unusual one.
Your argument may pertain more to Teresa's situation, as it is she who works for less than minimum wage directing an artist-run centre and is largely self-exploiting under the mandate to "be your own boss". By contrast, Camille’s working conditions within the project were (though temporary) relatively stable, and her payment was comparable to that of other employees within ARCs at the time. Your argument about contract workers is essential to essay and stands strong, but there is some slippage between Camille as a performer and Teresa as an underpaid worker that could be made clearer.
I hope this note is clear, and thank you again, Dana, for such a terrific essay. I'm really looking forward to hearing your further thoughts and I'm at your disposal for any questions or chats.
With gratitude,
Lauren