Like so many of us who work in the theater, Miranda Goh has spent the past few years fighting with questions. Chef among them: How can we change industry? How do we create seats at the table for people who have been historically excluded? Fortunately, she emerged from the early 2020s with a significant path forward: the 11 -week theater producers of color and without tuition fees producing 101.
After being dismissed from a non -profit theater job in 2020, Gohh did an intestinal verification. Do I still want to do this? She wondered. If so, what type of industry do I want to come back? She decided to continue in the industry, but in different terms. The real change, she estimated, “had to come from the summit. For me, it started with the producer. ” Given the many obstacles to become a producer, especially for young people in color, she turns to education.
Alongside a few other color producers, Gohh and Sammy Lopez had already collaborated to found The standard industry groupA coalition to increase the presence of producers and color investors. Now they were ready to invest in the future. In their call to investors to help make the production of 101 tuition fees, Gohh said: “We were able to obtain an excellent membership in industry”, including the Broadway theater owners, production offices and management offices, which consider it a more just and diverse future of Broadway.
These partners have not simply financed the program, said Lopez; They also constitute “an infrastructure of people who believe in the mission”, as he said. Many have lent their offices as a hybrid conference rooms and helped complete the list of stellar speakers in the program.
During the 11 weeks of the program, Lopez and the speakers decompose commercial production into construction blocks, share case studies, describe the subtleties and terminology of production, discuss the approaches of collaboration and transparency and pitch projects. Lopez highlighted a speaker, Harriet Tubman Effect Institute The founder Nicole Johnson, who spoke of anti -racist practices and discussed the “reallocation of wealth”, brought to the participants to think about who historically benefited – and how to spread this wealth.
The program, now in its fourth year, looks like an answer. “We see it as a first step in the trip of a producer,” said Gohh. The 76 alumni of the program have raised 56 Broadway credits, 18 Tony appointments and a Tony victory since their participation in the production of 101.
It is not really a seat at the table, said Lopez, but to reinvent the table itself. “It is a question of directing with curiosity and looking at how these tables have been fixed historically,” said Lopez. “We have the opportunity to define our own table. What do you want to bring? A teapot?
Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she / she) is digital editor of American theater.
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