Actors' Equity Association

Actors' Equity Association, union of actors, singers, dancers, and stage managers of the professional theatre. The organization is known popularly as Equity. It is affiliated to the International Federation of Actors (FIA), which represents unions in dozens of countries. Equity was founded in the United States in 1913 in response to poor working conditions in the professional theatre. The British arm of the association was established in 1930; its headquarters are in London.

The objectives of Equity are twofold: 1) to protect the interests of its members by establishing standard conditions of employment in standard contracts with standard minimum pay for each kind of work carried out by performers, and 2) to promote the welfare of the theatre as a cultural and recreational institution. The essential condition for membership of Equity is a contract of employment with a theatrical producer.