www.broadwayworld.com: Actors' Equity Association, the national labor union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theatre, has released the union's third diversity and inclusion hiring bias report, tracking the demographics of how its members are hired for acting and stage management work, and how much they were paid in the year 2020.
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Actors' Equity Association has released its third diversity and inclusion hiring bias report. The national labour union represents more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theatre. "2020 was obviously an outlier year; our industry was among the hardest hit by COVID, and work weeks were nowhere close to the norm. But 2020 was also the year in which theatrical leaders across the country loudly and collectively promised to do better, so we felt it was important to continue our work tracking hiring bias," said Kate Shindle. The results of the bias report show a lack of dedication to the empty words many proclaimed–people said they would do better, and that starts with financially supporting oppressed and less represented groups in theatre. I went ahead and read the report itself, and the results were disappointing, especially on a race front. Hopefully with these findings, Equity acknowledges its shortcomings in protecting marginalised groups and does better going forward.
After reading the article, words that stick out to me are “slow and inconsistent.” Both things that clearly need to change. It is genuinely so frustrating because I can feel the momentum, the push, want and need to do better when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion but the fact is that it is not going at the pace we need it to. This feeling might come from the fact that I am in two bubbles which are the educational institution and social media. Although, I will say that a lot of the time the school is also a reflection of the work that needs to be done because while diversity, equity, and inclusion is preached by professors and members of leadership, it feels like little is done or at least not enough. Anyways I hope we do better and we need to do better because it is not fair.
It is incredibly disappointing to hear that the industry has not acted on their commitments to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. What I am afraid will happen is the public’s shifted interest from DEI to other issues will allow companies to not make a continuing effort to adhere to their DEI published statements. However, it is unclear how the general public and even people in the industry can put pressure on the companies to do better. Equity or another third party could review each theater company and publish individual diversity and inclusion hiring bias reports so consumers know whether or not the company has taken action. The industry failed to uphold the demands from Black Theatre United’s New Deal for Broadway within a year of it being published. There is obviously a strong need and desire for greater momentum and yet the slow pace for change is still the norm.
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