Hire Survivors Broadway is working to end career retaliation against survivors of sexual violence in the theatre industry by encouraging those in positions of power to pledge to hire survivors and silence breakers, while creating a safer and more equitable industry for everyone.
Live theatre is often the first way young people find an artistic voice, and it comes with unique opportunities and risks. As an in-person art form and vital means of connection, theatre – at its best – offers a critical space for marginalized artists. At the same time, it also creates vulnerable situations for those artists as they create work for the stage.
No one should be forced to perform their craft in an unsafe environment. And no one should be penalized or face retaliation for reporting abuse, assault, or harassment in a theatre space. Unfortunately, for far too long, many institutions have perpetuated this behavior or turned a blind eye to it.
Hire Survivors Broadway is partnering with theatre companies, stakeholders, artists, designers, and staff to address this problem once and for all.
Hiring and supporting survivors:
– Makes our theaters more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible
– Leads to better representation and more authentic storytelling
– Stops a cycle of broken dreams
– Makes the industry a safer, happier, more productive, and more profitable place for everyone
I pledge to build a safer, more equitable industry by giving opportunities, auditions, & interviews to survivors & Silence Breakers. I’ll never retaliate against anyone for coming forward about sexual violence. I pledge to hire survivors.
In addition to seeking pledge-takers, we are building an industry-wide survivor database to support survivors in finding work and opportunities. We are also developing an industry-specific toolkit – in collaboration with survivors and theater professionals – to guide theatres in supporting survivors at every stage of the production process, from new play development to load out. We would love your help in these efforts.
In our efforts to get survivors hired, we are always looking to expand our database of talented survivors and trauma informed professionals. So, if you’re a self-identified survivor* of sexual violence (harassment, misconduct, assault, abuse, etc) who works in theatre and would like to be recommended for work in future, we would love to add you to our database of on and off-stage talent. The database we are compiling will be used to make recommendations to artistic staff, casting directors, directors, development programs, etc that we have partnered with or are offering our consulting services to. All of these folks will have taken the Hire Survivors Broadway pledge and are actively seeking to hire survivors on their projects while creating a safer and more equitable working environment. Our database is currently hosted at Hire Survivors Hollywood® so please click this link to get full details and to submit.
We are excited to provide comprehensive consulting to a wide variety of theatrical projects in the near future and we are very proud of our first official consulting partnership – the workshop presentations of POSTMORTEM at DC’s Mosaic Theater. If you would like to learn more about our comprehensive consulting services, please email HireSurvivorsBroadway@gmail.com
