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Whether touring on a large scale production or on your first starting out band, you will always notice that your physical health takes a hit. Much of the entertainment and performing arts industry is just beginning to talk about mental health, but still ignoring the physical aspects of health and safety. What can we do to change this?
From day one, you realise you are going to be extremely close to all of your coworkers, especially in the small spaces that you come across while on the road. Part of being on tour is being in a small confined space (the tour bus/van always comes to mind for this). Unfortunately this van can get a bit messy from all the meals that you take to it from the late night drive throughs. This means you are likely only eating fast food for most of your travel days, and you’re also staying in a space that isn’t the cleanest and likely won’t be cleaned out at every petrol station you stop at. The good news, coffee cups are mostly recyclable.
But it’s not just about what you eat while on tour. Several technicians and touring members of staff consider the get ins and get outs of a show to be their workout. This is a valid concept if you’re doing several one-nighters in a row and touring with all of your own equipment so you have to do the heavy lifting frequently. However, the logic in this falls short when you are on a smaller scale tour and renting most of the equipment or have several travel days or days off back to back, or are travelling for the majority of the tour.
In this industry, it’s also highly likely you will get some kind of injury while on the job. If you are like most people I have met, you will just work through it and not bother going to see someone about it unless it’s excruciating pain or until the work is done. This doesn’t help set a good example to younger staff members though. That’s not to say that getting medical attention is always easy while working in this industry. While on tour, you can’t see your regular doctor (unless you are travelling with a physio for the tour) to get things like medical prescriptions renewed or seeing your gynaecologist for a regular check up. Oftentimes, you have to find doctors while on the road and explain to them your situation. Some medical professionals will be understanding of this lifestyle, but not all of them as most medical doctors want to only see regular patients.
Many of these aspects are ultimately under the control of the employers of the entertainment and performing arts industry. As touring technical and backstage crew are left to carefully read through their contracts (if they are lucky enough to get one), we must ask the employers how they would like to be treated if they were the ones going through all of this. While this can be seen as demanding, this is quite often necessary as more and more big companies in this industry attempt to take advantage of their workers.
Also by Drew Janine:
Janine has always been a part of music and performing. The first show that inspired her to go into theatre was the Velveteen Rabbit which she saw as a child, and Drew works to keep that magic alive in her work. When Drew was accepted into an internship program for audio engineering at a recording studio, she jumped at the opportunity. That was at the start of 2020, and so much has happened since then, both in her career and in the world. Since then, Drew has taken several opportunities to work at recording studios, concerts, festivals, and even large theatres while spending some time on tour. Drew's favorite by far though, has been the chance to work on Broadways and West End shows, as this was a dream come true. Drew is honoured to get to share these experiences from being inside the entertainment industry.
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