Los Angeles Acting blog by David August: Actor Market

Monday, November 26, 2007

Actor Market

As actors, a lot of our job is to find our next job/project; we spend our careers in the labor market searching for jobs. Al Roth, a professor in Harvard's Department of Economics, gave a talk at google last month that was an overview of the field of market design called Market Failure and Market Design; it focused on labor markets.

He speaks of things like "stable matches" and "thin markets" and other fun econ stuff. A stable match is when both the hiring firm (producer/production company) and the worker (actor) would mutually prefer to be matched to each other. That seems to describe the roles actors should be booking.

Some of his examples, like an endocrinologist who likely fits in an endocrinology department and would apply for a position in a predictable way at a predictable time, don't perfectly reflect the realities an actor who might be bookable for two (or more) very different parts at any time (e.g., Liz Stauber played two notably different roles in movies that were in theatres at the same time [Ally Hayden in T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous and Debbie Barlow in Three Kings]).

I'm mulling how Professor Roth's talk may apply to or inform the daily routine of submitting oneself, or courting the most ideal representative for one's own unique career.