e-Drive Guidelines (Read Me First!)
“I wish I knew this before I submitted my posting!” – anonymous
e-Drive is a moderated email subscription list. This list is primarily for genuine, paid work opportunities for Equity members under Equity contracts. Job notices not involving an Equity contract must be for theatre/opera/dance-related opportunities (e.g. instructor positions, theatre administration positions). Subscribers also receive Equity news and related information. Non-members may subscribe.
e-Drive questions may be sent to Communications at communications@caea.com or by phone at 1-800-387-1856 (416-867-9165 in Toronto).
Notices may require up to 10 business days for review and approval, but every effort is made to publish e-Drive notices as fast as possible. The average turn-around time is three business days. Time permitting, Equity will endeavour to contact an individual or engager if there is a question about an audition or work opportunity notice.
All messages are reviewed prior to posting and are subject to editing and/or rejection at the discretion of the Communications and Business Representative departments.
If you have made an e-Drive submission and it has not yet been released, there may still be time for revisions. Email
communications@caea.com with your revisions as soon as possible. If your e-Drive posting has been released, it is not possible to make revisions as it has now been emailed to thousands of e-Drive subscribers. e-Drive cannot send out correction postings due to the high volume of content on the server. Additionally, sending (virtually) the same email twice runs the risk of our server being flagged as spam and/or blacklisted. This would affect everyone who benefits from our services.
In order to provide Equity members with a fair and reasonable amount of time to submit an application, the submission’s application deadline must give applicants at least seven days’ notice. Submissions with a notice period of less than one week will not be accepted.
Eligible e-Drive Submissions
- Auditions (for Equity members or for Equity contracts)
- Stage management opportunities
- Job opportunities in live performance under Equity's jurisdiction
- Actors' Fund and PAL benefits (An engager of a fundraiser must have an existing contractual relationship with Equity)
- Grant or award notices
Submissions That Will Be Rejected Without Notice
- Volunteer positions
- Unpaid intern positions
- Community theatre opportunities
- Non-union auditions
- Auditions for recorded media
- Non-union postings for stage managers, directors, fight directors or choreographers
- Playwright opportunities
- Postings for jobs outside of Canada (excluding bona fide tours under Equity (Canada) or Actors’ Equity Association (U.S.) contracts)
- Corrections to previously released postings
- Repeats of previously released e-Drive posts
All postings must be submitted via Equity’s online e-Drive form. Email attachments cannot be sent.
Requirements for e-Drive Audition and Job Posts
Audition notices will only be distributed if the notice is calling for Equity members or for contracts under an Equity agreement. Amateur production audition notices are not distributed.
All audition notices are subject to an internal approval process. Engagers must have an existing contractual relationship with Equity in order for audition notices to be posted. New engagers must contact a Business Representative prior to submitting an audition notice. Failure to do so may result in your application deadline lapsing and a posting not being approved.
CTA and ITA audition posting must include an ethno-cultural mandate or ethno-cultural casting statement in their e-Drive submission. All e-Drive users strongly encouraged adopt this practice.
Ensure that the any descriptive emphasis is placed on the "role" and not the actor auditioning. Direct references to ethnicity, age and body type may be edited at Equity's sole discretion to conform to these guidelines.
As per various provincial requirements for accessibility (known in Ontario as The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005), engagers are required to include information in audition notices indicating if the AUDITION, REHEARSAL, and PERFORMANCE spaces are free of physical barriers. Please include this information in the Additional Information section of your submission. This will save a lot of time and work for the artist submitting for your project if you have no accessibility within the entirety of the engagement.
Festival and Artists' Collective Policy notices must include an Equity or ACTRA member in good standing as the contact person or the post will not be released. If the contact is an ACTRA member, a copy of their ACTRA member card must be emailed to communications@caea.com, which references the post to which it applies.