Alan Eisenberg, a lawyer who during his 25 years as the top executive of Actors’ Equity Association helped to build its membership and stabilize the finances of its health plan, and also dealt with a highly publicized controversy involving the casting of the hit musical “Miss Saigon,” died on Oct. 7 in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He was 88.
His wife, Claire Copley, said he died in a hospital of lung cancer.
Mr. Eisenberg had worked at law firms for two decades before he was hired in 1981 as the executive secretary (his title was later changed to executive director) of Actors’ Equity, which represents theatrical actors and stage managers.
In the 1980s, the union was confronted with the AIDS crisis, which had a particularly harsh impact on the theatrical community. Mr. Eisenberg was a champion of Equity Fights AIDS, the philanthropic fund formed within Actors’ Equity in 1987 to directly help members in financial need.
Tom Viola, the executive director of the nonprofit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (the two organizations merged in 1992), said in a phone interview that Mr. Eisenberg offered “ballast and direction” to the “emotional understanding of what needed to be done” that was provided by the actress Colleen Dewhurst, who was president of Equity Fights AIDS from 1985 until her death in 1991.
“Alan gave us a sense of direction,” Mr. Viola said. “He kept us from flying in very emotional directions that could have spun themselves into nothing.”
Mr. Eisenberg found himself in the news in the summer of 1990, when he led the union’s opposition to the casting of Jonathan Pryce as a parasitic Eurasian pimp in “Miss Saigon,” a musical set largely in American-occupied Saigon in 1975.
