The NUU Checklist: The Non-Union Unofficial Checklist

Tweet

The NUU List, a digital sign-up platform, was born in February 2025. Barnett saw the problem and decided to fix it. “I was tired of waiting for someone else to do it,” she says. According to a statement from the NUU List on Instagram about this challenge, “Those who are afforded more flexible working hours, or have external financial support systems, may be more readily able to adjust their schedules and spend hours waiting outside in the cold in the heart of Manhattan, without driving themselves to the point of exhaustion and risking their health, a privilege not afforded to those performers who live hand-to-mouth, relying on survival jobs or parallel careers to live.” The digital list also prevents people from signing up multiple people at once due to one sign-up per email. Prior, people would rotate who showed up in midtown Manhattan early in the morning to sign names on the list, often groups of friends’ names at a time.

While people want to see this change happen and there has been a positive response to the digital list, there is a grey area, and both the digital list and physical list exist. If you wonder why physical lists are still getting chosen in the room after this new digital form, Barnett says, “At the end of the day, performers will choose whatever path will get them on the Official Non-Member Sign-Up List, because that’s the only list that really matters when it comes down to getting seen at an ECC or EPA.” Barnett adds that when the digital list is chosen over the physical list, “it is a success not only because of the obvious win for a digital system, but because this decision was made together. And when we as a community choose to move forward in this way, we are choosing to put the health and safety of each other over the priority of getting seen first, and that is a huge cultural win for our community.”

For clarification, which list is chosen to be used at each audition comes down to the performers in the holding room and a majority vote. It’s not up to the AEA monitors to decide which list to use since they can’t show partiality for one list over another. Barnett is a non-union performer herself, so she knows how important fairness is. When asked if there is a conflict with her using the NUU List as the creator herself, she replies with, “After creating the lists for the week, I just try to use it like anyone else.” With waiting and buffering through the link, sign-ups create a bit of a lottery system, ensuring no one has an unfair advantage.

Image courtesy of the NUU List.

With the growth and popularity of the NUU List, there are upcoming plans to launch a new, streamlined platform. Barnett has found help from working actors who have abilities as software engineers and other professional skills to assist with this new version. Community is and will continue to be the most important takeaway and Barnett’s focus.

Creating the NUU List from a desire for change, she ends our conversation by saying, “Working as a NU actor should not feel like you are the bottom of the barrel, scraping past one another to get seen. We are a necessary part of theater all across the country. We are a viable and valuable option for filling stages with great performances. We are a community that is trying to evolve and change, and I’m really happy to be a part of all that.”