How Can Non-Diverse Community Theatres Become More Diverse - Pt 1
There has been a newfound call to arms for theatres across the globe to make their stages more diverse when they resume operations. I love that and it’s something I’ve been arguing for years.
However, not every community theatre can do this. Not every community is diverse enough or has the talent pool to produce heavily diverse shows. These theatres have the best intentions of wanting to diversify their seasons, but if BIPOC performers don’t walk through their doors, how can they?
I understand that. Telling these stories needs to be done correctly. If the goal is to truly showcase the talents and stories of BIPOC, then theatres must take the proper steps to tell those stories and not counteract them.
Over the years, largely due to the content on this blog, I’ve been asked by dozens of community theatres in non-diverse areas and non-diverse community theatres for advice on how to produce more shows with diverse casts. It’s not an easy process but it can be done.
So I’m going to lay out my advice for this situation. I’m also going to divide it into two parts - The first being on how to attract a more diverse talent pool and the second being suggestions on shows to produce if you don’t have a diverse casting pool but want to produce shows about acceptance of one another to your communities.
Part 1 - Attracting a Diverse Casting Pool
To start, I think it’s great anytime a community theatre wants to produce more shows with people of color. It’s a fantastic statement and opens your theatre to so much more material. But it’s not always that easy when you don’t have any diversity among your talent pool or are located in an area with not a lot of people of color.
The important thing to know is if you’ve been a historically white community theatre, simply announcing that you’re going to be doing Hairspray or Raisin in the Sun is not going to be enough to attract BIPOC performers. Show announcements like those aren’t some sort of “Bat-signal” that POC’s seek out.
Chances are they don’t know about your theatre because your theatre has never done anything to attract them in the first place.
So how do we get more BIPOC performers to know about your theatre and show up to auditions? It’s a process that takes time but will be worth it in the end.
The first step is being careful with your show selection. If you’re not a diverse theatre, don’t try to do Miss Saigon or Dreamgirls. The licensing for these shows is expensive and you don’t want to roll the dice on whether or not the right BIPOC performers walk through your door. Often, when they don’t, this leads theatres to whitewash these roles which CANNOT HAPPEN under any circumstance. It eliminates any positive message you’re trying to convey about valuing diversity. Once again, I’ll be naming some suggested shows in part 2 of this series.
The next step is making color-conscious choices with casting. The color-blind system doesn't work. Conscious choices to cast BIPOC performers have to be made. The other option, while not ideal, is to precast these roles in order to make sure you have the correct racial makeup in the cast, theatres that don't have large diverse groups tend to do this to start off to make sure they're getting right and then can leave it up to chance at auditions.
I would also encourage your theatre to cast BIPOC performers in roles traditionally thought of as "default white". No reason you can't have an Asian Belle or a Black Roxie Hart.
Then when advertising auditions, go beyond social media, or your own website. Reach out to colleges, schools, community groups, churches, whoever you can to spread the message that your theatre is producing diverse shows. EXHAUST every avenue when it comes to casting these roles. You have to exhaust these avenues, you owe it to the characters and their stories.
I would also suggest seeking BIPOC to direct shows and serve in positions within your space.
And those are the things you need to do in year one. Once you’ve done these things and your diversity numbers start to grow, then you can really start to move into producing a diverse season.
This is obviously the short-hand version of the advice I give theatres but hopefully, it gives you some ideas of how to get started.
But if this doesn’t work? What if you’re tried all these things and you still don’t attract the diverse numbers you need but still want to produce shows that convert messages of acceptance and equality to your communities?