Our Statement on Anti-racism

Nov 3

Written By Page 73

Page 73 believes there is no truly successful execution of our mission if it furthers white supremacy, anti-Blackness, or racism. These malignant systems must be dismantled in our work with playwrights and artists, in the resulting art, in our staffing and internal structures, among our Board, and when engaging audiences and donors.

As a theater and development house for playwrights, we believe in the power of words. In publishing the following we aim to increase the transparency in our internal processes at a time when white-led institutions across the country are appropriately receiving high scrutiny. We also believe this new page is a tool of accountability for our staff, Board, and members of our community who wish to engage us in these conversations.

Questions we are asking ourselves:

The following is based on work we have been doing and our sense of the work that remains to be done, and we expect it will change along with our process. This document was most recently updated on November 5, 2021.

CLICK ON AN INDIVIDUAL QUESTION TO READ OUR CURRENT THINKING.

Does executing our mission align us strongly with racial justice? ⊕

Page 73 produces and develops early-career playwrights and launches their careers in the theater industry. Our programs provide resources to writers underserved by larger theaters, and we strive to lift up as-yet-unheard voices in order to draw more attention and resources to them for their future endeavors. In this way, diversifying the American theater is in the original DNA of our mission.

Has that diversifying been inclusive of playwrights of all races? Playwrights who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) receive fewer resources than white playwrights in the American theater and face institutional racism while pursuing their work, often at white-led organizations. For Page 73 to fully embrace our mission, we must not replicate the inequity. In recent years, this principle has driven our allocation of resources, but accounting for our organization’s 22-year history, Page 73 has worked with a larger number of white playwrights than BIPOC playwrights.

Does offering significant resources to BIPOC playwrights as we execute our mission —even offering a majority of our resources to BIPOC playwrights (as is true of our three most recent seasons)— mean our mission aligns with racial justice? We believe it is an important step, but not sufficient. The composition and comportment of staff, Board, audience, and donors who create the larger context in which those resources are allocated must embody the practice of anti-racism so that the playwrights served by our mission are not receiving that service in a harmful, unliberated space.

Where are anti-racism practices established in our company, and where do practices need to be implemented? ⊕

In the past year, Page 73 has brought more intentional social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to our office, including weekly working meetings. Some examples of those meetings include: defining our core, operating, and aspirational values through the lens of equity, diversity, inclusivity, and justice and preparing those to be published here; examining times when we feel we failed our values in the course of doing our work and plans to operate differently in the future; and discussion of research, personal testimony, and other writing on the topic of equity, diversity, inclusivity, and justice. We also encourage staff to bring what they learn from their personal anti-racism work that can apply at our organization. Nevertheless, we have sometimes cancelled those weekly meetings with little accountability. Also, expanding this work to include our Board has only just begun.

Our work on diversifying Board and staff has been unsatisfactory. We have held 7 job searches for full-time positions in our company’s history, and none of them resulted in a non-white person being hired full-time at Page 73. Our Board has been majority white since its founding. We recognize that our BIPOC playwrights and artists are being offered opportunities to create work within a white-led institution. That needs to change, and heightens the importance for majority white staff and Board to learn and uphold anti-racism practices.

We interact with dozens of artists via our casting processes, and we are always collaborating with directors, designers, stage management, and production personnel. With the exception of actors, until recent seasons, the majority of people we have hired into every single other position have been white. That means our BIPOC playwrights and actors frequently work among largely white collaborators, managers, and crew. We are proud to empower our playwrights to select their own directors -- often a relationship between playwright and director has been long established before we produce a premiere. However, the virtue of that empowerment has to be held against the results that, despite 8 of our last 19 productions being by BIPOC playwrights, only 1 has been led by a non-white director -- our most recent production. We need to work harder to disrupt the overall whiteness of the collaborators on Page 73 productions.

What does “advocacy” mean for Page 73? With respect to racial justice? With respect to activism? ⊕

When Page 73 identifies our work as advocacy, it has meant career advocacy for talented playwrights, not social justice advocacy or activism. We believe that the art and artists we have fostered and developed over the past 22 years have made vital contributions to cultural discourse through works that identify and dismantle oppression and racism. We believe that showing the full spectrum of humanity onstage is a tool for creating a more empathetic world.

But the reality is more complicated. We often say “we launch careers,” and what we mean by that is we launch careers in the American theater. We advocate for our playwrights to gain access to the systems in place that gain them productions, commissions, and awards. Those are the exact systems in which institutionalized racism and white supremacy have flourished. Page 73 seeks to help our playwrights “get in the game” while understanding that game is broken. So even while we strive for Page 73’s production and development work to take place with equity and inclusivity, our long term efforts on behalf of our playwrights will fail if we do not concern ourselves with addressing the entrenched racism of the American theater industry.

Looking beyond the theater, does rejecting racism at Page 73 demand that we use our marketing platforms to mobilize our audience to take action against systemic white supremacy in other American institutions, like the police, the criminal (in)justice system, mass incarceration and deportation, corporate exploitation, and voting rights? At this moment, we feel we have more questions than answers about the intersection between civic responsibility and the execution of our mission. We are listening to and learning from our artists and peer theaters, many of whom are also exploring the varied paths and platforms of social justice activism.

How does the intersection of American capitalism and racism impact Page 73's ability to pursue our mission? How might we change the ways we interact with audiences, raise money, and compensate staff and artists to further anti-racism? ⊕

Page 73 is a non-profit theater, but that does not mean we operate outside capitalism. Rather, to fund our work, we depend on the donated excess wealth of citizens and foundations. Those donations are solicited through grant applications and through the development of personal relationships to inspire belief in the mission of our company (with additional motivation from the United States tax code). In a typical season, 80% of the expenses of Page 73 productions come from donations. This statistic illustrates the importance of our relationships with Board members, with large donors, and with representatives from foundations. Two tools for cultivating those relationships include presenting our art publicly and offering access to our artists.

Many donors find tremendous value in opportunities to interact with playwrights, directors, actors, and designers in “post-show” or party settings. Page 73 likewise benefits from chances to converse informally with audiences and donors and further engage them in our work. These interactions at their most successful are mutually rewarding. But we have seen how racism and aggressions, micro and macro in nature, can surface when we enable unmoderated access between BIPOC artists and largely white audiences and donor crowds. There are too many instances when we have failed to disrupt harmful behavior in the moment, tacitly accepting it -- therefore compelling our artists to also accept it -- as “the cost of doing business.” We are profoundly troubled that an invitation from Page 73 to our artists to help us cultivate the relationships required for us to execute our mission can result in an unsafe exchange in an inequitable, unliberated space. The gratitude typically focused on donors must be mutually and freely offered to our artists by Page 73 and by our audience and donors.

We also see potential correlations between the salaries we have been able to offer over our history and being a white-led company. Historically, to accept a job offer with Page 73 has required a form of privilege that allows one to work full-time (more than full-time) for a salary that is lower than the median income in NYC. The same is true to accept an acting job, directing job, design job, and the list goes on. We have made progress on this front in recent years, but we do not believe we’ve escaped the problem of who can afford to accept work at Page 73. If one tool for diversifying staffing is offering higher salaries, we must get there without exacerbating unacceptable fundraising practices.

We add this question: how can we make our audiences and our donors partners in our work of anti-racism, just as they are partners in funding the company and celebrating the work of our artists?

What actions will Page 73 take?

We are in the process of a new strategic plan that makes Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice guiding principles of the vision for Page 73’s future.
We have created a values statement that we share widely with all Page 73’s constituents with the goal that they embrace those values and strive with us to work and socialize in a space that doesn’t accept racism.
We have long recognized that our free, online application process each spring is our most crucial pipeline for meeting the playwrights we work with in our development programs and, ultimately, in production. To mitigate reader bias in our application review panel, for four years we have dictated that every application be read by at least the same number of non-white readers as white readers (the same principle is applied with regard to gender identity of reader). This practice will continue and we will continue to monitor our evaluation process for potential bias.
Since 2018, Page 73 has assembled teams with at least 50% artists of color in the following positions: playwright, director, stage manager, set designer, costume designer, lighting designer, sound designer, and when applicable, choreographer and music director. We are committed to continuing this practice and expanding the roster of BIPOC artists we know by increasing the time (and money) we spend getting to know their work.
Page 73 is committed to moving the composition of our Board to more closely reflect the diversity of our artists and the city in which we work. Beyond Board make-up, we are also actively examining board culture and practices that we share with the broader arts non-profit sector and those particular to Page 73. We need to understand barriers that have limited our board to primarily white Board members and ensure as the Board diversifies it also becomes an inclusive space.
To honor the activism our staff wishes to participate in, Page 73 will create a new HR policy for paid time off designated for staff to partake in social justice education, training, and actions.
We will audit our vendors, the spaces we rent, the financial institutions we do business with, and the marketing platforms we employ to seek out partners who have strong anti-racism practices in place.

This newly created space on Page 73’s website will continue to grow and evolve. We will use it to transparently state our values and hold ourselves accountable to the action steps outlined above.

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR RESPONSES TO PAGE 73’S WORK ON EQUITY, DIVERSITY, INCLUSIVITY, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL US:

CARSON GLEBERMAN, BOARD PRESIDENT: CARSON <AT> PAGE73.ORG
AMANDA FELDMAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR: AMANDA <AT> PAGE73.ORG
KARI OLMON, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: KARI <AT> PAGE73.ORG
MICHAEL WALKUP, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: MICHAEL <AT> PAGE73.ORG
REBECCA YAGGY, DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR: REBECCA <AT> PAGE73.ORG

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