A couple of months ago, four of the Steppenwolf ensemble members currently appearing on Broadway sat down for the American Theater Wing’s “Working in the Theatre” discussion series. Jeff Perry, Rondi Reed, Amy Morton and Laurie Metcalf reminisced about the ensemble’s early years starting with its beginnings in a Highland Park church basement.

Like so many of the young ensembles who've followed their lead, Steppenwolf’s charter members spent their first several years toiling away for nothing more than the love of the game. At the Theater Wing, founding member Jeff Perry recalled the first time the company dealt with the question of paying themselves. “John [Malkovich] got cast—he might have been the first one of us to get cast in another theater’s play. And he got paid. And he came back saying, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to pay ourselves or I’m outta here,’” said Perry.

How long can I do this for free?

As has been previously reported—to say nothing of mythologized, marketed, debated, debunked, rehashed and reinvented—Chicago is a special theater town.

It’s special in its quality, of course, but also in its industry. The vast majority of plays produced in Chicagoland are mounted by nonprofit organizations. Unlike New York, where recouping the producers’ investment is the name of the game, or L.A., where much of live theater exists solely to showcase the talent of film hopefuls (so that they’ll never have to schlep across a stage again), most of Chicago theater exists solely because it can. An ecosystem of tax-exempt small businesses that rely more on grant revenue than box office receipts, the Chicago theater scene allows artists to experiment without the hovering, menacing super-objective of winding up in the black.

The tradeoff: As a result, there’s very little black to go around.

Running on goodwill the way a sports utility vehicle guzzles fossil fuels, the chronically under-funded storefront circuit out of which so many Chicago actors rise wouldn’t exist without artists’ willingness to work for free. It’s a coup for audiences; many of our best experiences at Chicago plays have been in non-union houses that charge less than $20 a seat. But for artists who toil working for storefront companies that can barely afford to pay the light bill (i.e. storefront companies), their pay is the experience and, if they’re lucky, free beer.

So here we have a Chicago liberal’s dilemma. The art is affordable and plentiful, but the labor is getting screwed.

Division of labor

If you attend the city’s theater the way we do—as hungry, adventurous consumers—it’s easy to forget that from the standpoint of employability, there are fundamentally two camps of actors: the ones who are willing to work for no pay and the ones who are not. If the storefront scene didn’t boast so many quality performers, and if there weren’t sometimes stale, been-there work from the mainstays at large theaters, the difference would be would be more obvious. But because each group can resemble the other, it’s easy to forget a border divides them.

In recent months, a rarely exposed tension between the two groups bubbled up to a very public surface—the anything-goes blogosphere—to illuminate the perils of joining the union and dangers of avoiding it. In furious digital showdowns, commenters came out in droves to weigh in on two livewire topics. First, a change made by the Jeff committee—the name of the former Jeff Citation is now the more prestigious-sounding Non-Equity Jeff Award—endured fierce criticism from union actors who argued the switch helps non-union producers cover their tracks. Next, the announcement of the forthcoming SHOUT! The Mod Musical, the second Broadway in Chicago in less than a year to charge $50 a seat while employing non-union local actors, stoked angry debate about the ethics of producing. (SHOUT! and The Sparrow were both commercial, rather than nonprofit, endeavors.)

In most instances, it’s easy to take blog wars with a grain of salt. Their often-anonymous soapboxers and tempest-in-a-teapot hyperbole often beg to be ignored. But given the number of personalities who used their real names and the volume of (too rarely displayed) reason on all sides of the issue, even the most eye-rolling blog skeptic couldn’t ignore the shitstorm.

Hoping to clear some things up, we talked to each of the eight actors featured in this week’s issue of TOC —five Equity, three non-Equity—about why they are or aren’t members. In planning this issue, we also spoke to dozens of other actors about the union and the way it affects both their careers and Chicago theater in general. And frankly, Equity has been a constant topic in our years of covering the scene.

These conversations suggest fundamental differences between Chicago theater and the coasts that go beyond the commercial-nonprofit divide: In the mold of Steppenwolf, the shining light of Chicago-style success, a great number of local companies are ensemble-based. Perhaps more importantly—and arguably also a result of Steppenwolf’s story—non-Equity theater is taken seriously in Chicago, by the press and audiences alike.