A Message from the Houston-Austin Local President

Hello Fellow Houston-Austin SAG-AFTRA Members, 
 
Welcome to 2021! I hope you and your family made it safely through our terrible winter weather and blackouts last month and are getting back to normal, with more auditions and bookings coming your way. I don’t think I have ever been so ready for hot, Texas summer days.   

We closed a bittersweet chapter in our local, as we said goodbye to our amazing executive director, Trish Avery, who after 13 years of service retired at the end of last year, but who we fortunately get to welcome back as a member.

It’s award season (Yeah!), and I hope you have been enjoying watching your digital screeners and DVDs, along with virtual cast Q&A’s of all the nominated performances. I have to admit, I truly miss seeing you all at membership meetings, workshops and especially at our SAG Awards viewing parties, all dressed up and dazzling on the red carpet as we did last year. But, I look forward to when we can all safely be in a room together once more. This year’s 27th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be held on Sunday, April 4, 2021, airing on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. CST. Final ballots must be received by noon on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, so make sure to mark your calendar.

I’m excited to announce our new Micro-Budget Project Agreement, which you can find on our SAG-AFTRA website. It’s an easy-to-use contract designed to provide a streamlined signatory process for independent producers to create scripted and unscripted content for film festivals, social media and more. Now more than ever as artists, we are expected to create our own content, as we have an entire professional production company right in our own pockets — our cell phones. I hope you will also familiarize yourself with our new Texas Regional Commercials Code, which was created to help increase local and regional commercial union work produced in our market.

This year’s virtual convention will be held Oct. 16–18, 2021. Although we are still unable to formally meet in person, your local board continues to be called upon virtually to handle local business surrounding the core functions affecting our local.  

I will close with a message from our local presidents found in our winter 2021 magazine, reminding us how truly connected we all are “We may not be able to be together during the pandemic, but you are always in our hearts and we will get through this together.”

Better days are ahead, my friends, if we keep our chin up, masks on and always have hope in our hearts!

Save the date for our annual membership meeting, held virtually on Wednesday, April 28 at 5:30 p.m.

In unity and always looking forward,

Mykle McCoslin
SAG-AFTRA Houston-Austin Local President