Racial Equity Statement
Theatre plays a vital role in shaping our culture and our community. SLO REP believes that we have a responsibility to enact positive change through our productions, operations, educational programs, and policies.
Anti-Racism Work and Commitments
Our Belief Statement: Live theatre’s powerful storytelling connects people in ways that open the mind, nourish the soul and illuminate our shared humanity.
Our desire and our mission as a company of artists and storytellers is to live up to this statement. In 2020, our board and staff took a long, hard look at our organization and since then have sought to identify tangible, actionable steps forward to make SLO REP a more welcoming, inclusive and diverse organization. We started with a list of questions which led to a list of action items and we are committed to making changes and moving forward in this area.
SLO REP is in a unique position, in that we are raising the funds to move into a brand new building dedicated to that vision — illuminating our shared humanity. It is our #1 priority to do everything we can to ensure that this new theatre is built with a strong, diverse, anti-racist foundation, and that we act now in our current space, to leave no question that we can move forward with integrity and true solidarity. All of us remain grateful to have this opportunity to explore our organization and do better. We hope you’ll join us on our journey.
Our Current Work
SLO REP’s current DEI initiatives are a result of our efforts to become a more diverse, inclusive, equitable and actively anti-racist organization. We want to be a model in the San Luis Obispo community as well as for other regional theatres for the actions that we take.
We have distilled our efforts and program into three core initiatives that will directly and indirectly impact on our organization and the community.
Programmatic Goals
Since fully reopening our doors in 2022, we have made progress toward more diverse casting and artistic team roles and have been able to hire more diverse casts and creative teams for our productions. However – as we already knew – the outreach to and hiring of actors from outside San Luis Obispo County is costly. Therefore, we continue our commitment to:
- Organize in-person auditions in areas, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, with more diverse actor and artistic talent pools. This effort incurs travel costs for our team and off-site (i.e. space rentals) costs.
- Continue to seek talent through virtual auditions, in order to provide more equitable access for actors and artistic professionals from out of the area.
- Contract with performers from underrepresented communities for at least 25% of available mainstage contracts.
- Produce at least one play written by a BIPOC playwright in our 5 play mainstage season.
- Contract BIPOC directors/core artistic team members for at least 20% of available mainstage contracts.
Education – ACT Goals
Growing and building participation in a theatre training program is an investment in our local youth. Numerous studies have shown that students who participate in theatre education reap gains in academic and intellectual skills and in measures of psychological well being, i.e. regulation of emotions, positive self-concept, empathy, and the ability to take others’ perspectives. To grow and diversify the ACT program, we are committed to:
- Actively seeking native Spanish speakers to fill administrative and teaching roles.
- Continuing to translate ACT outreach/marketing materials into Spanish.
- Reserving places in each class for scholarship students.
- Ensuring tuition scholarships are accessible and comprehensive for potential students and families.
- Expanding outreach to local schools, particularly those nearby such as Pacheco and Hawthorne Elementary Schools and Laguna Middle School.
- Allocating marketing funds to ACT, in order to specifically reach out to underrepresented communities.
- Ensure that our spaces and our programs are welcoming to ALL.
Organizational Education and Training Goals
We believe in the importance of focusing inward, as well, and are committed to providing DEI seminars and training for all staff members (working more than 25 hours per week), Board Members and ACT instructors. This will include in-person training as well as virtual theatre industry-focused training.
Moving Forward
While we recognize that we have a long way to go, we are absolutely committed to listen more, talk less and do the work required to make SLO REP a more diverse, equitable, inclusive and welcoming place to all — both onstage and in the audience.
If you have any questions, or would like to suggest specific areas that you feel SLO REP should focus on in the future, please email Kevin Harris. We will continue to update this page as our plans evolve.
Thank you for listening everyone. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay involved. We’ll keep you posted.
SLO REP’s DEI initiatives and programs were underwritten in 2021 by a generous grant provided by the City of San Luis Obispo through their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force.
