Stagehands, producers continue talks

NEW YORK, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Striking stagehands resumed negotiations with theater producers in New York Monday night after taking a 12-hour break from a marathon session Sunday.

Most of Broadway has been shut down since the stagehands walked out Nov. 10. The parties resumed negotiations Sunday for the first time since the strike began.

The two sides disagree over the number of stagehands needed to open a show and keep it running.

Playbill.com said talks began Sunday morning and continued through 6:30 a.m. Monday, then went into recess until resuming Monday night.

"We all felt exhausted and bleary-eyed. I was able to get 20 minutes sleep on the floor; some people weren't," Local One spokesman Bruce Cohen told New York One of the Sunday-early Monday negotiations. "The need here is to be creative and to crunch numbers. Local One has its spreadsheets and its computers and its calculators, figuring out the economic impact of everything being discussed and just at one point, everyone realized, we're not functioning at 110 percent."

Both sides told New York One they are feeling the pressure to resolve their differences in this latest round of talks.