BK.
I agree that Equity is not the friendliest union when you are trying to put on a low budget production.
It's my understanding that they've dropped this rule now, but back in the 1980s when I was first staging my one-person plays via Equity Waiver (e.g. GABLE, TRACY, etc.), the actor had a "lien" on your play. In other words, if in the future you did a regular Equity production of that play, you had to offer him the role or pay him Equity minimum if you didn't. That was certainly fair, but this rule didn't just apply for the first Equity production of the play, but to every production.
That rule certainly didn't help authors get future productions of their plays.