With eighty percent of its members unemployed, British actors? union Equity has been struggling with a widespread and growing trend towards the hiring of American actors both famous and relatively unknown for theatre productions. Equity recently declared that enough is enough when the taxpayer subsidized National Theatre cast American actress Glen Close in the role of Blanche DuBois, and American actor Robert Pastorelli in another major role in an upcoming production of ?A Streetcar Named Desire.? While the union was careful to point out that it does not want the production cancelled or the American actors dismissed, it is pushing hard for the National Theatre to give more roles to British actors in the future to correct imbalances in the number of American actors performing in Britain relative to the number of British actors performing in the U.S.
See DAVID GRITTEN, Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2002