Improving Social Equality in the British Performing Arts Industries

Addressing inequalities in the British theatre and performing arts industries, researchers at Central have collaborated with industry professionals to produce impacts across the sector. Ben Buratta, Gilli Bush-Bailey, Tom Cornford, Stephen Farrier, and Katharine Low have identified and interrogated inequalities in employment and representation, relating principally to gender and sexuality.

Improving social equality in the British performing arts industries by generating mechanisms for wider inclusion

Central’s research has generated mechanisms within the performing arts industries to address issues of equality, diversity and inclusion for groups marginalised as a consequence of their gender and/or sexuality. Buratta’s work with Outbox Theatre aims to increase representation of queer and trans* performers, and develop routes into the theatre industry promoting education, empathy, and understanding around gender identity, presentation, and transition. Buratta engaged 7 queer and trans performers in And The Rest Of Me Floats (ATROMF), whose involvement in the show’s creation also enabled them to instigate their own creative projects. A further 40 trans people took part in a summer school based on the show’s creative processes, of whom 11 were mentored and offered developmental support with their own projects. That Buratta’s work has led to increased inclusion more widely is evidenced by the establishment, following the first iteration of ATROMF in 2017, of The Queer House, an artists’ agency and producing house for queer actors, writers, and makers, by Outbox producer Char Boden and associate artist Yaz Zadeh. They now represent 27 LGBTQIA+ artists, one of whom attests that they now have ‘access to an acting career that I never thought would be possible. I am an out Trans performer who finished a national main stage tour and is now a series regular in an HBO show’.

Bush-Bailey’s collaboration with industry partners has informed and supported strategies to confront structures and unconscious biases that continue to impede equal representation and the expansion of female-led theatre practices. Director of Tonic Theatre, Lucy Kerbel, writes that the team of Central researchers, led by Bush-bailey and Katharine Low , who were the academic partners of their Advance Project (2014, 2016) ‘deepened and greatly enhanced the programme, bringing a dimension of academic rigor alongside an expert knowledge of both theatre and gender’. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation-funded 2014 project focused on understanding what was ‘preventing talented women in the performing arts industries from rising to the top’ and ‘tasked 11 leading theatres from across England to proactively explore how they could achieve greater gender equality on their stages’. It led to a second iteration, funded by Arts Council England, which also included dance and opera companies. A key tool generated by Advance was the ‘gender tracker’, enabling organisations to identify crucial inequalities, and to develop mechanisms to rectify them. Following Advance, 13 companies introduced new policies or initiatives, such as altering approaches to recruitment, focusing artist-development activities on women/female-led companies, engaging women in key leadership roles.

Cornford’s research into gender and organisational structures led to his invitation to be lead researcher for Parents and Carers in Performing Arts’ (PIPA) Best Practice Research Project (2016–2017), funded by ACE and Creative Scotland, and delivered collaboratively with 15 leading theatres across England, Scotland, and Wales. This project identified barriers and challenges to working in theatre for people with caring responsibilities and evolved strategies to remove them, demonstrating that ‘substantial, systemic changes are possible’ within theatre production. It formed the basis of PIPA’s Best Practice Charter (launched in 2018), which aims ‘to increase business resilience by working towards the 10 Charter points, attracting and retaining a more flexible and diverse workforce’, providing ‘participating organisations with a tried and tested framework, comprehensive toolkit and ongoing support as well as PIPA accreditation’. To date, PIPA has worked with 26 theatre companies through this charter programme, including 13 regional theatres across England, Scotland, and Wales; 3 touring companies; 6 London theatres; and 4 national companies: the National Theatre (NT), National Theatre of Scotland and National Theatre Wales, and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Kate Sirdifield, HR Manager at the RSC, testifies that this process is ‘incredibly useful. Simply the act of working through the questions helped us remind ourselves what we already do that’s great, and challenge ourselves on what more we can do in future — as well as sparking new ideas and creative approaches we hadn’t considered before’.

Shaping policy debates in the performing arts sector

After Tonic’s 2014 Advance initiative, leading theatre journalist Lyn Gardner wrote in The Guardian that ‘it could transform the theatrical landscape forever’. As a result of their collaborations with Central researchers, the establishing of Tonic as a charity and of PIPA as a limited company and then as a charity has positioned both organisations prominently within the UK performance industries and enabled them to shape policy debate about inclusive working practices. This impact is attested to by The Stage who, in 2018, reported that ‘thanks largely to the efforts of PIPA and its strategic and research partners, the theatre industry is finally waking up to these issues’.

Impacts from the research can also be seen in the development of casting policies. Following the success of Advance in highlighting gendered inequalities of representation, Tonic were commissioned by Equity, UK Theatre, and the Society of London Theatre to create the Theatre Casting Toolkit (S8), launched in Autumn 2019. Following Buratta’s ‘Trans-Acting Workshops’, a Trans Casting Statement was produced from March–November 2020 by Outbox Theatre, the Queer House, and Milk Presents, led by trans creatives of colour. It highlights the absence of policies to address the exclusion of trans people from commercial or mainstream theatres, which ‘rarely commission or host trans-led work’, and commits producers to ‘never cast a cisgender person in a trans or non-binary role’. To date, the statement has been signed by 28 theatre venues (including the Royal Court, Leeds Playhouse, Northern Stage, Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Home, and the Traverse), 70 arts organisations (including ATC, ETT, Fuel, Headlong, Jamie Lloyd, Equity, National Theatre of Scotland), and 107 individuals (including producers, casting directors, directors and writers). The ongoing, transformative impact of this research on policy-making in the sector has been reported in both The Stage and The Guardian.