Performers and the Entertainment Industry Act

Welcome to the next installment of our dissemination of all your questions surrounding the Entertainment Law Act. In an earlier blog we looked at what it means to be a performer representative.

This time we’ll try to clear up whether you’re a ‘performer’ in the Act because this is a grey area. According to the Entertainment Industry Act 2013 (NSW) a performer means any singer, dancer, acrobat, model, musician, or other performer of any kind.

So this seems pretty clear if you fall into one of these above named categories, but what does a “performer of any kind” actually mean? Does it include a chef, a handyman, a home renovator, an actor, a game show host, a celebrity in the jungle, a sportsman, a YouTube channel-er, a person trapped inside the Big Brother house, a contestant on X factor, the Bachelor or, the Bachelorette or their dates?

From a technical standpoint a ‘performance’ includes “giving a performance in any place or by the use of any medium for the transmission of sound or images, or both.” By this definition, if you’re digging up someone’s backyard and there’s a camera in front of you, reviewing movies on your YouTube channel, showing off your new recipe for lamb shanks, competing for Australia’s love on Big Brother, competing for another person’s love on the Bachelorette, or making the potentially regrettable decision of rumbling in the jungle with other celebrities, you are providing a performance. No matter the type of performance you fall under in this in exhaustive list, you are satisfying what a performance “of any kind” means in the Act.

However, there are still a lot of confusion – a model being photographed by a stills camera is a performance but is a Rugby player playing a televised game? Is a chef cooking you a meal a performance when you film it, or take a selfie with him? This is by no means certain, but we hope we’ve helped a little! Any questions contact us.