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Academic & Professional Training Programs

Valuing Anti-Racism

We demand that anti-racism become an explicit core value.

  • This must become as central to your mission as your standards of excellence.

  • Claiming you do ‘EDI work’ is not enough.

  • You cannot erase a history of racist policies and practices with a social media post.

  • You must implement a transparent and accountable workplace Code of Conduct that explicitly disavows white supremacy and other racist ideas/ideals.

  • Regular Anti-Racism and Ethnocultural Competency Training, along with a transparent system of accountability and regular external auditing/review, must be implemented immediately.

  • We will not allow these values to be implicitly or quietly held by you while

  • we suffer out loud and in plain sight.

ALREADY DOING
  • Hiring BIPOC teaching artists and guest instructors (some, but can increase)
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with Edu dept.
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION

  • Ensure Signature's Edu staff and teaching artists have the Anti-racist training they need to feel supported, particularly in our residency programs where the classrooms are predominantly BIPOC students (KIPP partnership

  • Identify ways where we can better implement this core value into our education programs.

  • Bring in additional BIPOC teachers and instructors.

Training in Anti-Racism

We demand regular mandatory universal Anti-Racism Training.

  • This includes Anti-Racism, Implicit Bias, Anti-Oppression and Bystander Training, to be conducted by a qualified, fully vetted specialist.

  • The myth of the ‘innocent bystander’ has caused untold harm for BIPOC bodies in your spaces for far too long.

  • Every student/employee/volunteer associated with your institution should be properly and regularly trained by a specialist in anti-racism intervention with the requisite tools necessary to address racism/harm when it happens.

  • We are tired of being harmed while you sit idly by.

MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED

  • Determine with Edu. If it should become a requirement that we make sure our teaching artists have anti-racism training.

  • Set a standard for our teaching artists and guest instructors. Are there certain programs where we make it a requirement (ie in classroom teaching)?

Creating BIPOC Feedback Pipelines

We demand the formalization of protocols to provide safe structures whereby racist incidents are reported with timely administrative response and a transparent chain of accountability without fear of retaliation or retribution.

  • Transparent enforcement policies around accountability must be created immediately.

  • Institutions must regularly submit policies to external audit for assessment, strengthening of efficacy and necessary revision of best practices.

  • Internal review boards where faculty/staff can engage with the administration in real time to assess issues of lived racism and strategies to formalize and normalize anti-racism must be created.

  • We also demand the furnishing of vetted referrals to qualified, specialized support professionals (e.g. occupational, behavioral or clinical therapists) to provide additional support for BIPOC community members when institutional support limits have been reached.

ALREADY DOING
  • All teaching artists and guest instructors already receive a copy of our discrimination and harassment policy with their contract.
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with EDU
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION

  • Seems valuable for more of our long-term structured programs (like Overtures, SIS, Conservatory, etc.) to establish discrimination and harassment policies that extend to our students, with clear reporting procedures in place.

  • Ensure that teaching artists, and guest instructors have the tools to receive, and process reports from students.

Keeping BIPOC Bodies Healthy

We demand the urgent, immediate prioritization of the health & well-being of BIPOC bodies in your space.

  • We demand that all students be provided with a relevant advisor who can properly mentor them from an ethnocultural and artistic perspective.

  • Institutions will furnish outside support if no member of faculty is able to adequately provide guidance to BIPOC student artists.

  • Institutions will also prioritize the recruitment and hiring of qualified staff/faculty to fill any existing gaps in their ability to adequately serve BIPOC students.

  • We demand the creation of policy for regular well-being assessments of BIPOC communities.

  • Institutions will provide safe, transparent structures for BIPOC community members to provide assessments/feedback.

  • Special emphasis will be placed on harm reduction.

ALREADY DOING
  • We have brought on a BIPOC (female!) playwright to write the SIS show this year
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with EDU
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION

  • As Signature establishes safer practices and protocols to better protect our BIPIC artists and community members, we need to make sure that these practices carry into our education programming. Particularly on projects like SIS, where we are often telling BIPOC stories performed by BIPOC students, how can we ensure that we are cultivating a safe and supportive environment for our young BIPOC artists? Taking into consideration that this project is traditionally directed by our education staff (who happen to be white), what are other changes we can make surrounding the rest of the production staff to create a more equitable team and working environment? Education programming should be valued and considered equally in regards to AR&E work.

  • Depending on the subject material of the show, consider bringing in a BIPOC moderator to lead the student talk-back.

Diversifying Student Cohorts

We demand sufficient outreach to ensure that BIPOC students comprise the majority of student cohort groups (across all disciplines).

  • This includes using your endowments to ensure that financial need is not a barrier to matriculation.

  • We demand that you invest in assembling diverse adjudication panels to administer the recruitment and admissions processes.

  • We also demand transparency around the facts, figures and finances of your admission processes.

  • This includes yearly demographic breakdowns on students that have been recruited/auditioned/accepted/enrolled.

MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with Edu. Identify the programs where BIPOC enrollment is lacking most and brainstorms ways to increase BIPOC enrolment.
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION
  • With our EDU programs, not every size fits all. A lot of the outreach work we do involves going into classrooms where the student make-up is pre-determined. However, for programs that we run out of the theatre, we should work towards more balanced cohorts.

Decenerenting Whitness

We demand the immediate decentralization of whiteness and the white/Western aesthetic as the default.

  • Assimilation to whiteness is not a learning outcome.

  • BIPOC artists should not have their cultures, languages, perspectives and aesthetics stripped from them in order to receive your training.

  • We demand the decentralization of whiteness as a ‘default’ in acting, design, directing, management, movement, speech, voice and writing classes.

  • This includes the immediate abolition of coded, racist language in the teaching of those skills that diminishes the artist in training or discourages them from bringing the fullness of themself to the work.

  • BIPOC students should have their value derived individually and not out of a spirit of tokenism/“model minority” exceptionalism.

  • Design students across all disciplines should learn specific design skills for BIPOC bodies.

  • This includes specific curricular space for the care of Black hair in costume design training as well as specific curricular space for lighting of Black bodies on stage and on screen.

  • If no one on your faculty is trained/skilled in these competencies, a guest lecturer will be provided at the expense of the training institution.

  • If no one on your faculty is trained/skilled in these competencies, a sincere good faith effort (with external auditing) must be conducted to identify and hire a member of your permanent full-time faculty with these skills.

  • We demand the creation and nurturing of space for BIPOC students to explore the full range of their experience.

  • This includes expanding the idea of BIPOC and specifically Black experience beyond the fetishization of Black and BIPOC trauma.

  • However, proper ethnocultural context and necessary faculty training to equip faculty with tools to address physical manifestations of generational BIPOC trauma must be provided.

  • We demand the creation of criteria to explicitly define ‘student success’ without erasure of BIPOC students’ intrinsic ethnocultural expression.

MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with education.

Diversifying the Pedagogy

We demand an audit of your pedagogy to ensure the inclusion of BIPOC writers in the canon.

  • This includes all core teaching texts, not just adding August Wilson to your syllabus and calling it a day.

  • Submit your core texts to an external audit to ensure inclusion of works by BIPOC instructors, writers, and creators.

  • We demand the publication of ALL your curricular texts on your website as well as a submission of those texts to a regular external review for feedback on equity.

  • Invest in support of BIPOC instructional writers, dramaturgs and historians.

  • We demand that accurate and adequate ethnocultural context must be provided when teaching works outside of the white canon.

  • Provide accurate and adequate supplemental teaching resources (e.g. reading materials, interviews, videos, etc.) to assist in the provision of ethnocultural context

  • We demand space for BIPOC faculty to teach non-BIPOC works in order to provide a diverse lens through which white/Western stories are taught.

  • We demand the provision of scholarship for visiting BIPOC educators to work with students in order to develop new teaching modalities.

  • BIPOC artists and thinkers have been developing pedagogy around arts education for centuries. You must invest in their research, not just wait for the finished product.

ALREADY DOING
  • While this by no means makes up for the last twenty years, we welcomed a BIPOC writer to pen the Signature in the Schools play this year and plan to keep this at the forefront of our programming moving forward.
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with education.
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION
  • This is a little more applicable in a university setting, but if this audit were to be conducted, we would fall short and should work harder to include more works by BIPOC authors in the classroom material (songs, showcases, scenes, etc.).

Programming Thoughtfully

We demand rigorous dramaturgical investigation and good faith effort of ethnocultural competence when programming student productions.

  • We will no longer squander our years in your training programs learning only to amplify and exalt racist tropes, furthering racialized trauma and driving us out of the art form.

  • We demand the creation and nurturing of space in all institutions of learning for BIPOC students to use their instruments, cultures, and histories to the ends that they desire.

  • Create space for BIPOC students to engage with programming processes in accordance with educational needs and desired growth areas.

  • We demand the choosing of culturally specific material that reflects the full spectrum of what will be asked of BIPOC students as working artists.

  • This includes the curation of diverse performance expressions for BIPOC students that reach beyond the scope of the reinforcement of racist tropes.

  • We demand ethnoculturally responsible decisions in the hiring of guest directors, design staff, stage managers and dramaturgs for student productions.

  • A good faith effort MUST be made not to restrict hiring of BIPOC guest artists to BIPOC plays.

  • Institutions must ensure that guest design staff is adequately trained in working with BIPOC and specifically Black bodies.

  • This includes the hiring of design staff with necessary resources to allow BIPOC students to successfully execute performance expectations (e.g. proper makeup, costuming, hair, lighting gels, etc).

  • We demand specific training for stage management students and guest stagemanagers on care for BIPOC bodies.

MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with education.
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION
  • Look at the makeup of the creative teams of SIS and Overtures. What are the changes/improvements/additions that should be made for future years?

Casting Appropriately

We demand culturally appropriate casting of all student productions.

  • This includes the immediate removal of the onus on acting, design, directing, playwriting and stage management students to assist in extradepartment casting for BIPOC roles.

  • We demand the end of black face, brown face, yellow face, red face and crip face casting, full stop.

  • We also demand the provision of equitable funding, engagement and mentorship to support the artistic vision of BIPOC students in every discipline.

  • Institutions will furnish outside support if no member of the faculty is able to adequately provide mentorship for BIPOC students in their discipline.

  • We demand support for the artistic vision of actors.

  • They will not be cast in roles that perpetuate cultural stereotypes.

  • They will be cast in multiple leading roles before they graduate.

  • There will be clear, open lines of communication for acting students to advocate for the roles that they best believe will contribute to their growth.

  • We demand no BIPOC playwright be forced to cast white actors in roles written for BIPOC performers; acting programs should be diverse enough to reflect the stories of BIPOC playwrights.

MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with Edu but this is less applicable with our programming.

Ending Alum Favors

We demand the immediate cessation of BIPOC alums being asked/expected to perform pro bono networking tasks for graduating BIPOC students.

  • If BIPOC alums are being consulted for their networks, or asked to speak to graduating students, that work needs to be equitably compensated
ALREADY DOING
  • It's rare we do work like this, but as one example, on the Signature in the Schools episode of Sig Strong Live, all alumni were compensated for the episode.
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with Edu but this is less applicable with our programming, but make sure that whatever work we are asking BIPOC alum to do, they are being compensated fairly.

Hiring BIPOC Faculty Fully

We demand the abolition of the “Adjunct Industrial Complex” that disproportionately perpetuates financial vulnerability amongst BIPOC faculty.

  • Invest in your BIPOC faculty. Provide them with financial stability and healthcare, as well as scholarship, continuing education and clear advancement opportunities.
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with edu, but we don't think this is applicable.

Reassessing Faculty Merit

We demand the re-evaluation of criteria around “excellence” and “scholarship” to provide specific language in reappointment, promotion, and the tenure process to weigh work at BIPOC organizations and theaters and on BIPOC work as “state of the field”.

  • This includes the creation of specific language that acknowledges BIPOC faculty for mentorship and advocacy work done on behalf of BIPOC
MORE DISCUSSION NEEDED
  • Discuss with Edu, but we don't think this is applicable, but may pertain to Overtures scholarships.

Removing Inappropriate Materials

We demand, without argument, the total banishment of any play that employs racist, stereotypical, harmful and any non-Native created imagery/characters/metaphors of and about American Indian, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian or Indigenous peoples from the college and university system.

  • This incredibly harmful practice has practically closed the door on generations of American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Indigenous students from seeing theatre and the performing arts as a viable, inviting or safe career path. This means Peter Pan, too.
SUB-COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION
  • This is likely not applicable, but worth looking over our scene work/musical anthology to make sure there aren't any titles that would apply to this.