What is a Guest Performer?

I’m leaving next week to work as a guest performer on a cruise ship in Hawaii. Rehearsals for the show began this week in New York. So far, so good, the job seems satisfying and the other performers seem like they’ll be very nice to work with. The production staff is very supportive as well, and generally its all good news so far.

Guest performers are a different kind of gig than most cruise ship jobs. There are basically two classifications of musicians on each ship, crew members and guest performers. If you are auditioning to be part of the show band, or if you are going to work in a lounge, you will mostly definitely be a crew member. You’ll have a crew cabin and access to the crew amenities like free laundry machines, cheaper internet, and the crew bars (where all the good stuff happens).

Guest performers, on the other hand, are more like passengers. They have a passenger cabin and passenger status. Passenger status means that they don’t need to follow rules like wearing a uniform in passenger areas, they can use the passenger gym, etc., etc. – the point is that guest performers are essentially regular passengers who perform.

The down side of guest entertaining is usually the travel and schedule. Many guest performers fly into the ship for their 1 show and leave very soon after for home or the next ship. For instance, maybe you’ll fly into Barcelona for 2 nights on Ship A, then fly to St. Maarten in the Caribbean for 3 nights on Ship B. Then you’re home for 3 weeks, then off to Greece for 4 nights on Ship A again, followed by a 1-nighter on a ship in Alaska before going home again. That’s a lot of traveling and probably not a lot of enjoying the scenery.

On the other hand, the compensation for guest entertainers can make it worthwhile. Guest entertainers can make about 50% more than crew musicians, and the travel and many expenses are all paid for.

The other kind of guest performer job – the kind I’m doing – is a “resident guest performer” gig. That means you live on the ship for an extended period of time and perform each of your shows once for each cruise. If you have 2 shows, then you work 2 nights for each cruise.

There were 2 guest entertainers on the ship I worked on several years ago – the magician and a singer. The magician had his wife and daughter on board as well, which ended up being a pretty sweet deal for them (the daughter was too young for school at the time). The singer, on the other hand, was mostly pretty bored most of the time it seemed. You have to admit – that is an awful lot of time to fill. Sure, there are books and things that you’ve been meaning to get around to reading or doing – but what’ll you do with the other 5 1/2 months of your contract? Better find something.

For me, it will be different still. My contract is 3 months long, which is a nice length of time – any more than that and it will probably start to feel like forever. I have passenger status. We’ll work 2 nights a week. The ship is supposed to be massive – 14 stories tall! It only cruises the Hawaiian islands and there are zero sea days in the itinerary. I will be on the beach everyday. There was also more good news today – my girlfriend L. might be able to join me for a little while on the ship as my guest. Its unclear yet whether I’ll have a passenger cabin for the entirety of my contract, or if they’ll eventually move me to a crew cabin. If I keep the passenger cabin, it is possible for L. to come stay for a week or so with me in Hawaii.

If you are wondering how to get a gig like mine, I’m afraid I can’t give you much tangible advice. I acquired this job not through my cruise ship connections, but through my theatre connections. Since I left cruise ships several years ago I’ve worked almost exclusively in Broadway-style musical theatre. One of the producers I’d worked with before in musical theatre called me and offered me the job – there wasn’t any audition since I’d already worked with him and with other people he knew. They fact that this job was on a cruise ship was just a peculiarity of the job offer – it could have just as well been in a theatre in Spokane or something. It was just coincidence that I had been on ships before and had an interested in cruise ship musician jobs. I was in the right place at the right time.