NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Fifteen years ago, Paul Kuhn co-founded Philadelphia’s Curio Theater Co. Now, having reached the conclusion that his leadership is part of a racist power structure, Kuhn says he is relinquishing all authority to choose plays, directors and designers to a new co-artistic director, Rich Bradford, who is Black.

Across the country, in Berkeley, California, Jon Tracy, a white man who serves as the artistic facilitator at TheatreFirst, is demoting himself, and the company is creating a term-limited position of artistic director, hoping the opening will provide an opportunity to diversify its leadership.

And in New York City, William Carden is planning to leave Ensemble Studio Theater — a company he joined in 1978. All four people on its artistic staff are white, and Carden, who has been the artistic director since 2007, said he believed his departure was the way to prompt change.

“The key to anti-racism is sharing power,” Carden said. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of humility, and it requires that white people step aside.”

The outcry over racial injustice this summer was followed at first by a wave of statements in which U.S. theatrical institutions, with a flurry of news releases and website postings, declared themselves allies of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now there is a second wave: changes to leadership and practices at a handful of theaters around the country.

The theaters are mostly small, and it remains unclear how calls for change in the industry will (or won’t) affect life at larger institutions, many of which have been programmatically and financially hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.

But there are indications — on Broadway, off-Broadway and at regional theaters — that the charges of systemic racism aired this summer, along with the advocacy of several organizations pressing for change, are having an initial effect.

Look, for example, at Baltimore Center Stage, whose artistic director, Stephanie Ybarra, has supported calls for transformation of the industry.

Ybarra, responding to demands for change published by an online collective called “We See You, White American Theater,” announced that her theater would make a series of changes, most of which were included among those demands: scheduling rehearsals only five days a week (rather than the standard six); eliminating “10 out of 12” rehearsal days, when artists are expected to work 10 hours; paying playwrights during rehearsal periods; and equalizing compensation for work on the theater’s small and large stages.

“I am hopeful that change is afoot, but I am also waiting, along with my BIPOC colleagues,” Ybarra said, using an acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of color. “Part of me is in a position of power and accountable like everyone else, but I’m also walking through our industry for over two decades as a Latinx woman with all of the institutional trauma that comes with it, and on that front I’m waiting.”

Not all of the change taking place is voluntary. In Philadelphia, the nonprofit PlayPenn, which supports the development of new work, accepted the resignation of its artistic director and fired its associate artistic director after receiving allegations that it “was not meeting community members’ expectations for racial and cultural competence.” In Georgia, the Serenbe Playhouse laid off its entire staff after allegations of racism.

And at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, executive director Ginny Louloudes was placed on leave after a group of current and former employees wrote a letter saying “her presence is toxic, abusive and an obstacle to progress.” The organization, which provides a variety of forms of assistance, including performance, rehearsal and office space, for many small theaters, has appointed Risa Shoup as interim executive director.

“As at so many organizations and institutions, people are seeing that they can take control of what’s happening in their workplace,” said Susan Bernfield, a member of the alliance’s executive committee.

In the commercial realm, change is less obvious, but there are some noteworthy data points.




The musical “Company” has pledged to hire 10 paid apprentices, all of them Black, when Broadway resumes. The musical “Wicked” is sponsoring the Broadway Advocacy Coalition’s “artivism” fellowship, which plans an inaugural class of Black female artist-activists focused on systemic racism and criminal justice reform.

And the Broadway League, the trade association of theater owners and producers, this month doubled the number of Black members of its board of governors, to four from two, by adding Brian Moreland, a producer, and Kendra Whitlock Ingram, president and chief executive of the Marcus Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee.

“For the Broadway League to loudly and proudly proclaim that Black lives matter — a lot of people are saying it’s just words, but it’s so different from where we were four years ago,” Ingram said.

Even some Black theater companies are making change. Penumbra Theater, in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced this month that it is transforming into the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing.

“This is our organic evolution, but also really timely,” said Sarah Bellamy, the artistic director. “For over four decades we’ve been focusing on things like narrative change and inclusion — countering painful and stereotypical depictions of our people, and celebrating our joy — but we have to care about what happens to Black people when they’re offstage too.”

The calls for equity are rippling across the industry in other ways.

The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation said it would establish a new residency program pairing midcareer directors and choreographers of color with theaters seeking to make change.

And at a time when theaters are laying off employees rather than hiring, a number of institutions and organizations are nonetheless announcing new Black leaders. In New York, the Public Theater is naming two artists of color — Saheem Ali and Shanta Thake — as associate artistic directors.

The Tank, a New York nonprofit that seeks to nurture emerging artists, named Johnny Lloyd, who is Black, as a new director of artistic development as the theater examines “how white supremacy is limiting our mission,” according to Meghan Finn, the artistic director.

In Washington, Ford’s Theater this week named Sheldon Epps, who is Black, as a senior artistic adviser; in the announcement, the theater cited “the national reckoning for racial justice” as context. And Theater Philadelphia, an umbrella organization, named LaNeshe Miller-White as its executive director; she was the co-founder of Theater in the X, a company focused on African American work.

One of Miller-White’s proposals is to require theaters to meet specific hiring targets in order to compete for Philadelphia’s annual Barrymore Awards. “I’ve always had a focus on access and equity for people of color,” she said, “and now I get a prime position to be able to enact that.”

The resignations by white leaders are the most dramatic developments. “At this moment of ignition we’re in,” said Tracy, the artistic facilitator in Berkeley, “it just felt like a time to throw the gauntlet down.”

Kuhn, now the co-artistic director at Curio, said he had been struck, during a pandemic Zoom gathering of local theater leaders, by “staring at all the white squares.”

“It’s been on our minds for a very long time that we weren’t fulfilling our mission as a theater to serve our West Philadelphia audience, and as a white leader I had created that environment,” he said. “We were trying to make movement, and we thought it was genuine, but at best it was glacier speed, so I felt I needed to make a change and make it immediately.”

Bradford, his new co-artistic director, said he was pleased to have the opportunity. “There are going to be changes,” he promised.

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