The Vivero celebrates new Latiné voices at City Lit

Chicago Reader: Latiné theater in Chicago has been having a renaissance in recent years, thanks in part to the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA) and the annual Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. But particularly during a time when Latiné communities are under fascist assault, uplifting and supporting the voices of Latiné writers has taken on a new urgency.

How to Cultivate a Gender-Inclusive Ballet Studio Environment

Dance Magazine: The ballet studio has historically had rigid gender-normative standards. But making it a space where artists of all genders feel affirmed and respected in their identities will only enrich the art form. “I think to have an interesting future for ballet requires developing creative humans that can play,” says educator and Ballez founder Katy Pyle. “Can we all imagine a future where we have the most talented dancers onstage and not just the dancers that fit into the archetypes that have been prescribed from history?”

Sign of Inclusivity: 'Another Kind of Silence' at City

onstagepittsburgh.com: It was no exaggeration when City Theatre announced that Another Kind of Silence, the world-premiere play that leads off its 2025-2026 season, “is one of the most ambitious shows the company has taken on.” Bilingual and bicultural, the plot unfolds simultaneously in English and American Sign Language (ASL), along with some Greek Sign Language, as Evan and Chap, two already-partnered queer women, cross paths in modern-day Greece and find themselves falling in love.

Erasure is Not an Option: Intimacy Advocacy Through a Transgender Lens

HowlRound Theatre Commons: I became aware of the intimacy field in about 2017 while I was living in Chicago and working in the DIY, devised storefront theatre scene. I recall hearing little rumbles about the idea of something called an “intimacy director,” and I got really curious. At the time, I was writing for this DIY arts magazine, and I had approached my editor and I got approved to write an article on this new role and how it might find its way into the DIY arts community.

Retrofit Update

Actors' Equity Association: On Wednesday, July 28, the Diversity & Inclusion Department of Actors' Equity Association provided members and update on its Diversity & Inclusion Retrofit of the organization.

Theatrical unions unveil diversity, equity and inclusion agenda

Broadway News: Theatrical union leaders put forward a legislative agenda Thursday aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion within the arts industry. In a joint press conference with affiliated members of the Department for Professional Employees, the unions highlighted priorities including strengthening collective bargaining and copyright laws, increasing federal arts funding to help diversify talent pipelines and awarding federal tax incentives to productions or entities that participate in diverse hiring.

Acting with Autism

Bitter Gertrude: I invited actor and playwright Cameron McNary to write a guest blog about being a theatremaker who’s on the Autism Spectrum. I wish I had read this piece 20 years ago. Every theatremaker should read this piece! I learned so much I wish I could apply retroactively to my work.

CFDA & PVH Release The State of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Fashion Study & Report

News | CFDA: Today marks the beginning of Black History Month. It is an extremely important time of the year, and the tragic and senseless acts of racial injustice in 2020 – including every life lost at the hands of racism in the United States and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color – crystallized this.

Program Aims To Enhance Inclusive Teaching

www.cmu.edu/news: "As the national conversation pivots to finding real-world solutions to racial and cultural inequity, we saw this as an opportunity to operationalize our commitment to inclusion and quickly identified the classroom as one of the most, if not the most, critical venues to be discussing and demonstrating the practice and benefits of full inclusion and equity in our community," said James H. Garrett, Jr., provost and chief academic officer for CMU.

Hollywood's inclusion problems still run deep, study finds

CANVAS Arts: As Hollywood searches for a response to the reckoning brought on by the death of George Floyd and the Academy Awards move to make Oscar nominees more inclusive, a new study captures how the film industry has improved in diversity and how it still lags.

In the most popular films of 2019, protagonists were more diverse than ever, and there were more women were behind the camera. But in many other areas — speaking roles, behind-the-scenes jobs, LGBTQ representation, parts for people with disability — Hollywood remains far from reflecting the makeup of its American audiences

The Oscars Announce Sweeping New Inclusion Requirements for Best Picture

The Mary Sue: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new inclusion rules yesterday, with specific standards that must be met for films to be eligible for nominations. This means that by 2024, when these changes go fully into effect, we can hopefully say goodbye to the days of #OscarsSoWhite.

Disability campaigners warn of UK's progress unravelling in the arts

Culture | The Guardian: Progress made in the representation and inclusion of disabled artists and audiences is in danger of unravelling because of the pandemic, campaigners have warned.

A new alliance of disabled people and groups working in the UK’s cultural industries, #WeShallNotBeRemoved, has been established to make sure disabled voices are heard as the nation’s devastated arts sector attempts to rebuild after the lockdown.

How Liberal Arts Theatre Programs Are Failing Their Students of Color

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Many liberal arts theatre programs have predominantly white faculties as well as declared majors. This homogeneity is often reflected in the syllabi and programming. Whenever the mainstage season was announced at my school, the playwrights skewed mostly white and male, the plays lauded as “the canon.” Little space was made for writers of color, and the few glimmers of representation were advocated by the few professors of color.

Language In Production

SoundGirls.org: Microaggression is a form of bias that can occur in everyday language, often subtle and said inadvertently. Language can be problematic when it’s a common phrase or saying and people avoid understanding its origins or implications. We use language to express ourselves, and even when we have the best intentions some phrases, wording, and terms, in general, are no longer applicable or widely accepted.

Walking the Walk: Impressions of the #ASTC2018 Conference

ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: The 2018 Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Conference in Hartford, Connecticut felt like an opportunity for the International Science Center Community to really "walk the walk" on a variety of topics and concerns facing museums and their communities.

Crews With Disabilities Want More Inclusion

Variety: Hollywood, aiming for more diversity, hopes inclusion riders will help broaden the composition of behind-the-camera crews. But so far, people with disabilities — who comprise nearly 20% of the population — have been left out of the conversation.

Column: Hollywood Needs to Open Up More to People With Disabilities

Variety: In five years, nothing has changed.

Despite open calls for greater diversity and inclusion, recent research shows that there was little change in the number of characters with disabilities in popular films in 2017.

TV Reboots Have a Long Way to Go on Inclusivity

Variety: The network television climate of 2018 is marked by a couple of key trends: An often-too-incremental but real movement, pushed along by voices in the media and among fans, towards greater inclusivity onscreen, and a flood of reboots and revivals from the semi-recent past.

12 Years Later, Evangeline Lilly Gets an Apology for Feeling 'Coerced' into Nude Scenes for Lost

jezebel.com: Earlier this week, Evangeline Lilly told The Lost Boys podcast that she had felt like she “had no choice” over whether to remove her clothes for scenes in Lost, which left her “mortified” and in tears. She described two instances:

Hollywood Should Let Women Fail Upwards Too

The Mary Sue: In a recent study done by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, they uncovered a frightening reality: there has only been minimal change in representation both in front of and behind the camera. Both are important, but representation onscreen is more visible and often gets more attention, so let’s talk for a moment about representation behind the camera, where things are sorely, sorely lacking.