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Playbill Article Opens Conversation About Danger, Safety and Standards for Broadway, So Why Aren’t We Talking About That?

On February 8th, 2023, playbill.com published an article by Margaret Hall, entitled “Physical Assault Vomit in the Aisles, Stalking in the Streets: Why Audience Misbehavior Has Gotten Out of Hand”.

The article consisted of interviews from Front of House staff on Broadway, whose compelling testimonies created an unignorable narrative: the culture of Broadway theatres and their patrons is unsustainable, disrespectful, and at times dangerous. It was met with immediate buzz and urgent discourse. On Friday February 10th, 2023, the article was pulled from playbill.com. It will be edited, and re-published at a later date. Below is an excerpt from the original piece: 

“Tessie, a former actor turned front of house worker, began working at a family friendly musical in the winter of 2021. Since beginning the position, they have been “spat on, shoved, had my ass slapped, and been screamed at more times than I could count.” Still, they consider themselves lucky; one of their coworkers was shoved down a staircase by an irate patron, resulting in a serious hip injury. Continue reading “Playbill Article Opens Conversation About Danger, Safety and Standards for Broadway, So Why Aren’t We Talking About That?”

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REVOLUTION GLOSSARY: What Is Accountability?

Green Rev Gloss

Rescripted’s Revolution Glossary is our new series where we dive deeper into words which are part of the conversations about justice happening around all of us. The goal of this series is to provide a resource for people who want to expand their vocabulary around social justice topics, or people who want extra context and perspective on their word choices. Our hope is that this series can spark some important discussions, and help people jump into those discussions with enthusiasm.

Accountability is one of those words that pops up everywhere, but which means something slightly different everywhere it’s used. Phrases like government accountability, personal accountability, and community accountability bring to mind completely different concepts, but they’re all drawing on the same idea. They all relate to a person or entity’s responsibility for themselves and others, but also imply a mechanism which assesses and enforces said responsibility.

When organizers in movements for justice talk about accountability, they’re often talking about community accountability. To talk about that we have to take a little detour through the idea of transformative justice. Transformative justice is about challenging dominant ideas about finding justice when someone causes harm. Transformative Justice will eventually have a Revolution Glossary entry of its own, but for now know that transformative justice grew out of feminist movements against racism and violence anti-racist and anti-violence movements. Trom the 60s to the 90s, there was a slow accumulation of new theories about what caused and prevented violence, the relationship between violence and racism, and the role of the state in sanctioning violence. Continue reading “REVOLUTION GLOSSARY: What Is Accountability?”

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Why They Walked – Members of the Cast of ‘Starcatcher’ at Citadel Theatre Speak Out

  October 23, 2019

Our Dear Chicago Theatre Community,  

We write to you to share that we, the cast of Peter and the Starcatcher directed by Jeremy Aluma and produced by Citadel Theatre, concluded three weeks ago that due to persistent and pervasive problems with the production, our relationship with Citadel was no longer sustainable. Our production was scheduled to run from September 18th to October 20th, but after eight public performances and much deliberation, it became clear that in view of the circumstances, we could no longer continue in the production. Continue reading “Why They Walked – Members of the Cast of ‘Starcatcher’ at Citadel Theatre Speak Out”

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TCG Conference Coverage 2019: What is a Review(er) Good For?

The Theatre Communications Group Conference took place on June 4-8th, and for the first time ever they included an arts journalism track. My conference journey began with co-facilitating a session with Brian Herrera of the Sol Project titled “What is a Theater Review(er) Good For? A Critical Look at the Role of Journalism in Theatre Today.” This session was a lab that took place before the official start of the conference, and was a three hour round table discussion. In addition to the obvious title question, we chose to investigate what our present relationship to reviewers was, and try to shape what it could be. This article is an attempt to summarize these rich and invigorating hours of conversation. Continue reading “TCG Conference Coverage 2019: What is a Review(er) Good For?”