Trinity Repertory Company’s mission is to reinvent the public square with dramatic art that stimulates, educates, and engages our diverse community in a continuing dialogue. To advance this mission, we publicly committed in 2017 to struggle together for equity, diversity, and inclusion.
As our community and country grapple with the trauma of centuries of racial injustice, groups like We See You White American Theatre and our own community of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) artists have told us that our initial steps have not gone far enough and that we have caused and continue to cause harm and pain, which we acknowledge. With humility, Trinity Rep thanks them for their labor in documenting and communicating important demands for our industry and organization. Their voices have been guiding our conversations in truly meaningful ways in recent weeks.
Trinity Rep acknowledges our complicit and too-often active involvement in upholding and benefiting from structures of racism and oppression. We are committing now to go further and take steps toward healing in our community. As this work is so vital to our mission, we will take the time necessary to be deliberate and center the voices of BIPOC individuals in reimagining what our theater and community can be as we rebuild our organization and industry back from the destructive effects of the pandemic.
We resolve to immediately and meaningfully place anti-racism at the center of our work. We are committed to developing, sharing, and holding ourselves accountable to short- and long-term goals, with full recognition that this work has no endpoint. We acknowledge that our goals and methods will evolve as we continue through this iterative process, though our intent is to complete the planning phase and foundational actions for this work by June 2021.
We begin now with the following action items and process commitments:
• Charter a non-hierarchical and representative Anti-Racism Transformation Committee to lead this effort over the coming 10 months to gather input on how Trinity Rep has contributed to systemic racism in our community and to define the steps and timeline the organization will take to develop and implement a bold new vision for theater making, education, and community engagement for Trinity Rep, founded on the principles of genuine equity and anti-racism.
• Retain an experienced firm or individual(s) by the end of September 2020 to provide consulting, training, and facilitation services for the continued advancement of Trinity Rep’s equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and anti-racism goals and initiatives.
• Establish mandatory formal anti-racism training and an expectation for continued learning for board, artists, and staff, including cultural competency and bystander training, while committing resources for intensive initial trainings and ongoing trainings to ensure the work continues.
• Review and revise all current practices, policies, procedures, stated values, codes of conduct, systems, and structures to better align with anti-racist values. The review will include, but is not limited to recruiting, hiring, performance evaluation, and compensation; programming; funding; and the effectiveness of employee resources and benefits.
• Host an EDI/anti-racism working discussion forum for board, artists, staff, students, and community members.
• Engage all members of the board, staff, resident acting company, partners, patrons, students, and other community members in our process, including the creation and structural support of affinity groups, without placing the emotional labor of the work on our BIPOC staff and artists.
• Develop a new EDI/anti-racism strategic plan, which will include specifically defining what it means for Trinity Rep to be an anti-racist organization with measurable goals, metrics, and reporting systems.
This is a living and dynamic process that will be updated and shared publicly based on our ongoing work and the feedback received from within and outside the organization. We invite input on these actions from any member of our community, which can be submitted at trinityrep.com/antiracism. We pledge to protect from retribution those who speak out or hold us accountable for this work. Updates on our progress and specific goals and actions will be published publicly at least once each quarter.
Thank you for holding us accountable and for joining us on this journey to move our community forward. ... See more
