BY JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ, ELIZABETH HAYS and MELISSA GRACE
No deal after the first day of talks between stagehands and producers over the Broadway strike comes to an end.
Negotiators hunkered down at a Times Square hotel all day Saturday to try to end the Broadway strike but couldn’t reach a deal.
Representatives of the striking stagehands and theater producers are expected to return to the bargaining table Sunday.
The closed-door discussions began at 10 a.m. in a fourth-floor ballroom at the Westin Hotel on W. 43rd St. – where prestrike talks broke down 11 days ago.
As the day dragged on, both sides refused to comment.
Negotiations didn’t wrap up until about 11:45 p.m.
“Now’s the pressure time, and everyone knows it,” said Barry Peek, a labor lawyer who is not involved in the talks. “I would expect that they’ll stay at the bargaining table this weekend until they get a deal.”
Thanksgiving week is second only to the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day as Broadway’s most profitable time.
At midday Saturday, some union delegates broke away from the negotiations to visit picketing colleagues at a nearby theater and tell them there was no progress.
“We’re just waiting around,” shrugged a Local 1 union captain.
Later, the talks seemed to pick up more steam, but both sides adhered to a news blackout.
“It would be unwise, disrespectful and could sidetrack the negotiations to say anything,” one union leader said. Representatives for the producer’s league also declined to comment.
Delegates and picketers wore black armbands in a show of respect for stagehand Francis Lavaia, 57, who died after collapsing on a W. 45th St. picket line Friday night.
The two sides last talked Nov. 8, two days before the union walked off the job, shutting down 27 plays and musicals.
Seemingly everyone in Times Square – theater producers, stagehands, restaurateurs, cabbies and food vendors – wants the theater lights back on soon.
“I’m hoping that we can resolve this and go back on stage,” said Scott Ellis, director of the mystery musical “Curtains.”
But as curtain time came and went yesterday, the only show at the Richard Rodgers Theatre was the stern-faced picketers handing out leaflets.
The stagehands – prop handlers, carpenters and lighting and sound technicians – have been working without a contract since the end of July.
Negotiations are focused on pay and work rules.
“We’re here as long as it takes,” said a 49-year-old stagehand, who had been working on the highly anticipated “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Jennifer Garner, before the strike began Nov. 10.
The strike is costing the city an estimated $2 million a day. Restaurants in the district began offering 15% discounts Saturday to fill their empty tables.
Thousands of theater fans have been disappointed.
Jane Pealver, 41, of Milwaukee had hoped to celebrate her anniversary at “Monty Python’s Spamalot” Saturday night.
“We’ve had our tickets for eight months,” she said angrily.
mgrace@nydailynews.com
The New York Herald Sun 