'Problems at The Purple Rose' - Part 7: Theater touts changes made since the pandemic shut-down
This is the final article in a seven-part series about The Purple Rose Theatre and stories and the stories that have come out about it. Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2. Click here for Part 3. Click here for Part 4. Click here for Part 5. Click here for Part 6.
The Purple Rose Theater Company, which has been accused of multiple forms of abuse and operating a toxic environment, has been making several changes in the past 20 months—and they say many started before that.
Some of the changes align with the demands of the 22-page letter that 70 artists signed, though the Purple Rose management insists that the changes were made independent of those demands and make no acknowledgment of past harm, saying that their investigations did not turn anything up.
“I thought that letter was so generous,” said Stephanie Buck, a former apprentice, and a stage manager who worked at the Rose for nine years. “They did a wonderful job of outlining the problems, but unfortunately, the Purple Rose’s reaction was, I thought, dismissive.”
Purple Rose disbands problematic apprentice program
One of the major changes has been the disbanding of the apprentice program. The last apprentice class worked up until the COVID pandemic shutdown in 2020.
Thanks to a PPP loan, the Purple Rose was able to keep most of its staff until June of 2020 at which point they laid off most of the staff and went down to a skeleton crew.
According to a letter from NachtLaw, the apprentices were told that because of the PPP loan, they would be paid through Sept. 1—as voted upon by the Board. In June, apprentices were required to clean the theater in what the letter said was a violation of the Governor’s Executive Order.
“Cleaning the theater in the absence of theatrical productions was not a critical task or contributing to the apprentices’ artistic development, but it was still required,” the letter stated. A week later, apprentices were told that their apprenticeship and salary had been terminated, two months early.
Hubbard said the pandemic closure allowed the theater time to re-evaluate their needs and what the staff should look like going forward.
“Sometimes you do things because that’s the way they’ve always been done,” Hubbard said. “In theatre, you are constantly going and going. (The shutdown) gave us a chance to look at the structure as far as the staff and employees go to figure out what works for us and what makes us the most efficient.”
Part of that, she said, involved evaluating the apprentice program. She pointed out that the apprentice program is nearly as old as the Purple Rose. It is something that was important to founder Jeff Daniels because it was how he got his start in theater. She said they took the time to figure out whether it was still the best choice for them.
“What it came down to for us was what if we put the program on pause and re-evaluate it after we reopen to find out what our needs still were,” Hubbard said. “If we had the opportunity to make more part-time and full-time year-round positions, we could hire more professionals. That was the instruction I ran with.”
She reported that they were able to hire 14 new employees, 13 of which came on since Aug. 23 and an additional one coming on in early November. They are opening their box office this month and their opening show is scheduled for mid-January.
The last class of apprentices brought a lawsuit against the Purple Rose for wage, hour, and OSHA violations. It was settled out of court with a confidential settlement. The letter was delivered to the Purple Rose in mid-August 2020. Hubbard said the plan to put the apprenticeship on hold happened before they received any letters from a lawyer.
Nor, she said, have they decided when or whether the program will be reinstated.
“I would say the future of the apprentice program is to be determined at this time,” Hubbard said. “I don’t think we know what the future holds until we have a full restart of operations. That program is so near and dear to the theater and its history. If they came back, it would look a little different. For now, we are so thrilled to be able to have these full and part-time professionals.”
New hires include contract janitorial and human resources
One of the hires made was Lynch Travis, who was brought on as their Chief Diversity Enrichment Officer and as one of their pool of guest directors. He will be directing the first show, which is “Under Ceege” by Jeffry Chastang. It is a world premiere that will run from Jan. 20 to March 12, 2022.
The play takes place in Detroit in an aging housing project where a mother and son pair bump heads.
The Purple Rose has hired a professional cleaning service. On their website, they say the service was hired for the sake of COVID mitigation, though they have also disbanded the apprentice program and prior to this, apprentices took care of all theater cleaning duties.
They have contracted with EmpowerHR to provide some human resources services, mostly updating policies and helping with the onboarding of new hires.
Management rewrites harassment and discrimination policy
Hubbard said that the Purple Rose, especially the artistic staff, has been working on being more diverse and inclusive. While she says the efforts date back to prior to the shutdown, they became more intense with the death of George Floyd and everything that happened around that period.
“There were a lot more discussions about how it needed to become a priority for the Purple Rose and that we needed to not only be making statements but really focusing on what we could do,” Hubbard said.
She said they spent the shutdown time rewriting their harassment and discrimination policy to get it up to date and make it clear that there was no tolerance for any harassment and spell out the ways people can report issues.
The board signed off on the revised policy on Aug. 31, 2020. It forbids harassment or discrimination on protected classes including “race, color, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy, disability, age, military or veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity (including sex stereotyping), genetic information, height, and weight.”
It spells out prohibited behavior and then specifies that anyone experiencing or witnessing harassment or discrimination must report it to Hubbard, Artistic Director Guy Sanville, or Company Manager Amy Klain.
In the letter from the former Purple Rose artists, they demanded that the Purple Rose invest in a confidential reporting mechanism that will go to an unbiased third party to allow the reporting of misconduct after expressing concerns that there isn’t an atmosphere of confidentiality.
When asked whether employees could report incidents to the newly contracted human resources firm, Hubbard said they could, but it was preferred that it be handled in-house. She stressed that they want people to go to their supervisor or anyone in management.
Daniels, Sanville reveal diversity initiative
The second part of the actions they took, Hubbard said, focused on the plays on their stage and the artists they use. It was part of the plan that Sanville and Daniels put together.
“The Purple Rose has made the assumption that the door is always open, but maybe that’s not necessarily the case,” Hubbard said. “We need to reach out to BIPOC artists, especially playwrights, to get script submissions and be reading their works.”
In a fundraising letter to donors, Daniels wrote that he and Sanville had begun formulating “The Purple Rose Diversity and Inclusion Plan” in the spring of 2019. In late June 2020, he said, they finalized it and will be executing it with Travis. The board, he wrote, approved a three-year budget to support the initiative.
The 22-page letter sent by former Purple Rose artists said that they are aware of the efforts to establish a diversity initiative, but that, “We are unconvinced that this initiative—which was created unilaterally by the Artistic Director…will succeed except on paper, because we do not believe that the Purple Rose has put in the work as an organization to address the underlying issues of discrimination, exclusion, and privilege, at all levels, that would cause such a program to become necessary in the first place.”
The letter cites as an example that Sanville claimed during a live public broadcast in July 2020 that the Purple Rose was a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that the organization had “nothing to apologize for” in its approach. The concern was raised that if the Purple Rose remains unaware of its past history—and so far there has been only official denial on the part of the organization that it has done any harm at all—that the initiative will be performative and not address the real, internal issues.
Hubbard said the hiring of Travis in the summer of 2020 was done because he was familiar with the Purple Rose and has a background in Michigan theater.
Then they started reaching out to artists and playwrights. They made plans once they reopened to hold auditions in Detroit and other parts of Michigan.
“It’s so, again, people don’t necessarily have to come to us, but we were going to go to artists and find diverse artists,” Hubbard said, adding that during COVID, there were a lot of video submissions for auditions.
They hosted a 10-minute play festival and did readings of plays by BIPOC playwrights over Zoom. She said that expanded into several readings with different playwrights from October 2020 to July of 2021.
“What we learned in the process that was initially part of the diversity and inclusion initiative, was just how much our audience needed that connection with the Purple Rose,” Hubbard said. “The needed to tune into Zoom on Saturday mornings, connect to actors, hear stories and be a part of the process.”
Whereas past live play readings at the local library would attract 75 people, they would get 300 to 400 people to tune in from all over the United States. She said the read nine plays between October and July and that five of them were from BIPOC playwrights.
“We were able to introduce and work with many new BIPOC artists that we had never worked with at the Purple Rose.”
While artists of color have been brought on for the readings and the first play after they re-open, there were few people of color among the 14 new hires. While it is inappropriate to guess someone’s race from a photograph, all but two of the hires are white-appearing. Likewise, the board itself has done little diversification in the past year.
Board funds three future BIPOC plays
Hubbard said the board of directors has signed off on helping to create a more diverse Purple Rose. She said their goal is to find three full-length plays that they can commission and produce on their state in future seasons.
“That’s just the start of the work,” Hubbard said. “We gave ourselves three years and $150,000 for these goals,” Hubbard said. “We were very blessed that the first reading we did in October 2020, ‘Under Ceege’ was so well-loved and a great Michigan story. It has so many great Detroit and Michigan references.”
Artists who signed letter made other demands for change
One of the demands that artists made was that all current and future employees, board members and Purple Rose contractors receive mandatory racial and gender bias training, “especially before any further attempts at DEI are undertaken by the organization.”
They further demanded that Sanville be limited to directing no more than one show per season to make room for more directors, including a BIPOC, Asian or Latinx director each season.
Other demands have been met with silence:
We demand that the Purple Rose Theatre Company recognize that it is an organization that has been built on white privilege in all aspects, from Board organization to the artists and audiences that it has chosen, deliberately, to exclude.
We demand that the Purple Rose Theatre Company, both internally and publicly, commits to anti-racist theatre practices.
We demand that the Purple Rose begin to truly diversify at all levels (Artists/Administrative Staff/Apprentices/Board of Directors); either through the creation of additional spaces/positions for BIPOC/Asian/Latinx individuals or through the resignation of white individuals so their current positions can be filled by BIPOC/Asian/Latinx individuals.
We demand that the Purple Rose Theatre Company immediately, and permanently, adopts the practices of race-conscious casting in shows in which the race or ethnicity of characters are essential to the show, and race-transcendent casting (the best actor in the audition gets the part, regardless of race or ethnicity) for shows in which the race or ethnicity of characters are not essential to the show.
We demand that marketing includes intentional efforts to reach out to BIPOC/Asian/Latinx communities.
We demand that a meaningful partnership is created with BIPOC/Asian/Latinx-led Michigan theatres such as Black and Brown Theatre and Shakespeare in Detroit.
We demand that at least one show a season be directed by a BIPOC/Asian/Latinx director, and that at least one show a season is written by a BIPOC/Asian/Latinx playwright, and centers BIPOC/Asian/Latinx characters and stories.
We demand that funds be allocated to outreach programs for transportation and subsidized tickets and that there is an organization-wide understanding of developing, marketing, and funding this program.
The letter ended with, “The great Black American poet Maya Angelou once wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” With this letter, the Purple Rose Theatre Company can no longer claim that it does not know better. Now, we demand it does better.”
Hubbard shared that she is a former apprentice and later served as a stage manager before returning in her current role.
“While I have not witnessed a lot of the allegations, I will say that I hope that the people who signed the letter and the artists who have worked here and had these situations will please give us a chance to come back post-COVID under this new structure of staff,” Hubbard said. “We are working hard at becoming a more inclusive theater, working hard at being more approachable and more transparent. Just give the Purple Rose a chance to put the work in.”
If you have more you’d like to share about this and other Purple Rose stories, please contact Bridgette Redman at bredman.lsj@gmail.com