The Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the union for professional stage actors and stage managers, announced on July 25 that online casting call notices would no longer be publicly available on the AEA website, as has been done for years past, and would only be available to members. 

We wish to voice our strong disagreement with this decision, and we urge the AEA to reconsider. While we applaud your efforts towards increasing the value of AEA membership, we believe it should be done not by discontinuing valuable services to future AEA members, but by adding new services as well as enhancing and improving services to existing members. This decision to cut off access will make it even more cumbersome for future AEA actors to find and attend AEA auditions and work their way towards becoming dues-paying union members themselves. In addition, announcing such a change after it has already been instituted without providing a period for comment or an opportunity for consultation with non-union actors is frustrating and disappointing.

We therefore strongly urge the AEA to immediately reconsider this decision and continue providing open and free access for all actors to the casting call notices on the AEA website.