Diversity

  • Undertake robust and separate marketing and audience-development strategies to target diverse races/ethnicities, ages, physical abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds, hiring paid specialists and consultants when identities are not represented by our team members
  • Broaden our sales targeting to include culturally specific groups for all productions, not just the shows that reflect their lived experience
  • Invite potential partner organizations/associations to performance days with interactive programming and interaction with staff to deepen mutual engagement
  • Expand media outreach, including opening night ticketing to include BIPOC media—specifically non-reviewing press
  • Explore and expand how Roundabout Underground can be used to support emerging talent beyond playwrights, to encompass creative teams and backstage staffing
  • Continue to support the pipeline of diverse theatre-makers by investing in and seeking guidance from existing Roundabout Directing Fellows, Roundabout Directors Group, and Theatrical Workforce Development Program cohorts; and creating sibling programs in areas such as design and stage management
  • Expand donor outreach to encompass new audiences, including external identity-based giving circles in the community
  • Provide additional tickets to established critics for mentees from the BIPOC community, to help the media outlets transform their staff composition
  • Invite BIPOC writers/outlets to press events and give them access to cast and other creatives
  • Service photos and other media to smaller outlets who might not have the resources to send their own staff
  • To help broaden the critic/media community, partner with learning organizations in those fields to make tickets available and explore allocating resources
  • Allocate unsold tickets and available space at wraparound events to benefit community partners

Learning

Develop and share pre-show materials—pre-attendance and in-venue—to convey to all attendees our initiatives and values around EDI/AR

Solidify and expand audience and donor demographic-data collection, and use this data, along with targeted surveys, to better understand and serve these stakeholders

Educate audiences, ushers, and front-of-house staff about resetting expectations for audience behavior and playing their part to create a welcoming experience for all, particularly underrepresented groups and students

Host Community Conversation events for audiences about new policies of anti-racism and belonging

Network with and learn from existing diverse organizations to share and challenge our expertise and perspectives, both for individual productions and for the institution as a whole

Accountability

  • Share and enforce our EDI/AR values and expectations for all non-staff vendors and contractors; sever partnerships with those that do not adhere; and internally share lists of approved vendors
  • Codify methods for staff to address and report incidents or behaviors from and between audience members, and create standardized responses to alleviate our staff’s burden of explaining EDI/AR issues
  • Revise post-show surveys for audiences—including partner-school students and teachers—to monitor and measure experience of belonging in Roundabout spaces
  • Ensure promotional and communications materials accurately reflect the actual diversity of our programming and do not tokenize any artists, productions, or participants
  • Ensure press and marketing teams are equipped with vocabulary, strategies, and practices to include BIPOC artists, staff, and students without tokenizing them

Targets

50%

50% BIPOC representation in audiences within the next five years

10

Create and develop 10 deep, multi-year relationships with new community-partner organizations over the next five years