A Commitment From Fiasco

Over the last year and a half our world and our culture have undergone a series of challenges and reckonings. The overlapping crises of Covid, climate change, and renewed calls for racial justice have involved all of us. And it’s clear that addressing these issues will take a meaningful commitment from all of us.

Out of these difficult times, powerful conversations have taken place all across the theater world, and new possibilities have emerged.

Fiasco has used this time to think deeply about who we have been, who we are, and who we want to be, both as artists and as an organization. And we have engaged collaborators both new and old to help us develop some answers.

While we are very proud of the work we’ve made over the last 12 years, we also know we have to grow and change to meet the challenges and demands of the moment - to become more welcoming, more equitable -  and to hold ourselves accountable for doing so. We invite you to read a new statement of values, policies, practices and commitments below.

This will be a living document; it will be updated as we learn more and refine our goals and benchmarks. We invite your ongoing engagement with us around these ideas. Please send us your questions and comments by emailing artisticdirectors@fiascotheater.com.

FIASCO THEATER ARTICULATION OF VALUES AND OUTLINE FOR NEW JUSTICE COMMITMENTS

This document is just the beginning.  It will become a living document. These practices and values will be continually developed by both the ensemble and the Fiasco organization as a whole. 

The ideas in this document were developed in consultation and collaboration with Groundwater Arts.  An anonymous survey conducted by Groundwater Arts, and the conclusions from it, form part of the foundation for the commitments Fiasco is making for the future.

WHO WE WANT TO BE:

Fiasco wants to be an organization that is: joyful, welcoming, transparent, sustainable, and humane.

Joyful - the pleasure of making the work, being together, and celebrating the creative potential of individuals and ensembles

Welcoming - the welcoming of input across roles and disciplines, the open exchange of ideas across cultures and styles, and the fostering of an authentic sense of belonging

Transparent - the power of being direct and open with collaborators in our process, with audiences in our performances, and with the public in our practices and budgets

Sustainable  - the right relationship between us and the planet, and the right conditions for artists and staff to sustain careers and lives over time

Humane - the commitment to equity and justice, and to caring for the whole human/artist as relating not only to pay, but to caring and anti-oppressive working environments, expectations, decision-making, and relationships

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

  • Fiasco acknowledges that we have not fully lived up to the values above.

  • Fiasco acknowledges that we have caused harm to many of our collaborators.  

  • We acknowledge that Fiasco has been the beneficiary of a white supremacist culture, and that our positional power and success is connected to that culture.

  • We pledge to create policies and practices that ensure Fiasco can live its values in the future.

The commitments below represent a starting point for our work in pursuing racial, economic, and environmental justice.  

PROGRAMMING

  • Fiasco will transition to a season planning model that will allow us to program more work, with more experiences and points of view represented, and more points of entry for new collaborators.

  • Fiasco will welcome all voices from within the organization to participate in the selection process, rather than relying solely on the artistic directors and acting ensemble.  We will create quarterly opportunities for the full organization to discuss possibilities, and also invite all staff to see/hear the work under consideration as it is developed.

  • We commit to de-centering white writers, directors, and designers by including BIPOC writers, directors, and designers in a significant way for every season.  For 2021-22, the goal is for BIPOC artists to make up at least 50% of the directors and designers for the season.

  • Fiasco will hire BIPOC dramaturgs to help present ideas outside of our knowledge for programming.  This practice began in 2020.

STAFF

  • We will, as soon as possible, hire a BIPOC consultant who can receive complaints and concerns from anyone hired by Fiasco for any project.

  • This consultant will also collaborate with Fiasco to design and administer the transparency report survey (see below).

  • Within 5 years, Fiasco full and part-time staff is at least 50% BIPOC and at least  50% female-identifying/non-binary.

BOARD

  • Within 5 years, Fiasco’s board membership will be 50% BIPOC

ACTING ENSEMBLE

  • Within 2 years, the resident acting ensemble is 50% BIPOC and 50% female/non-binary.

  • All decisions about programming will flow up from the acting ensemble. As a theater company founded by actors, we believe that the people who will be performing the work should be the ones determining what it is and why it is being chosen.

  • All ensemble members will have a meaningful voice on casting decisions, from within and without the ensemble.

  • All ensemble members will be asked to help craft and commit to a code of conduct for accountability within the organization and artistic processes.

  • Fiasco will dedicate resources and create time within the working/rehearsal schedule for self-directed support for colleagues from under-represented groups.

CONSERVATORY

  • Fiasco will hire a BIPOC curriculum advisor/coordinator who will help shape the curriculum and lead conversations about the intersection of justice work and training. 

  • Fiasco will hire BIPOC faculty for teaching positions throughout the program.

  • We will ensure that the marketing and outreach efforts of the program are working past previous boundaries of communication to reach more BIPOC actors.

  • Fiasco has budgeted the program such that 50% of tuition fees will be covered by a financial aid fund.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

We recognize that we are not currently creating an environment within the organization or rehearsal space that is fully welcoming and equitable.  Below are the policies and practices we want to implement to address these issues.

  • We recognize that our rooms and internal culture have been connected to a culture of sexism. 

  • We pledge to develop practices to disrupt this and ensure we create a safe and inclusive working environment for all. 

  • We acknowledge that the theater world can often blur boundaries between the personal and professional, and pledge to put practices in place to make sure that a system exists for repairing harm when personal boundaries get crossed.

PROGRAMMING: 

  • Fiasco will hire female-identifying/nonbinary artists for at least 50% of the directing, design, and acting positions over the course of each season, beginning with the 2021-22 slate of projects.

PERSONNEL:

  • We will reach more than 50% female-identifying/nonbinary members in the staff and resident acting ensemble within 5 years. 

SUSTAINABILITY: 

  • We support caregiver artists, a disruption in an industry that oppresses and excludes caregivers (predominantly women) because of inflexible schedules and no childcare coverage.

  • We will move to a 5-day rehearsal schedule for all projects, including those that involve partners or presenting institutions.  This practice is already in place.

  • Our 5-day work week, humane tech schedules, and budgets for childcare stipends will be highlighted when we post job descriptions for artists, faculty, and staff, as well as in our casting calls. 

TRANSPARENCY

COMMUNICATION

  • Fiasco will collect data for a transparency report, in order to track our progress in meeting our new goals, and update it in an ongoing way, including obtaining information about our audience and artists, as well as our board and staff.

  • The report will be released annually and made available on our website.  It will include organizational, programming, and budget information, as well as a rearticulation of our mission, vision, and values. 

PROCESS

  • “ON RAMPS” → Fiasco will develop a code of conduct, value set, and working agreements that will begin every process and every new hire. This will also include a detailed policy for reporting when harm occurs, and how that can be safely/anonymously reported (to individuals who are not the directors or artistic directors). 

  • “OFF RAMPS” → Fiasco will develop a practice for evaluating and debriefing all projects within two weeks of their conclusion.

RELATIONSHIPS

  • We pledge to create practices to sustain and nurture relationships with collaborators after active projects have ended, and look forward to sharing resources (e.g. space and time for them to develop their own work) with our alumni-artist community throughout future seasons.

AUDITIONS

  • Going forward, all auditions for Fiasco Theater’s work will include BIPOC and female-identifying people with meaningful decision-making power in the room at all stages (e.g. director, ensemble member, faculty member, casting director.)

  • Within 1 year, Fiasco will commit to having 2 events per year in which we have an “open door” audition/get-to-know event to meet new collaborators. (Access needs will be in the budget for these events, so we can provide folks with what they need in order to participate.) The first of these will happen in the first half of 2022.

LANGUAGE

  • Fiasco will clarify and update its language and habits when describing how the company is run, to ensure that the value and contributions of all staff are properly reflected, both publicly and privately.

  • Fiasco will cease any use of hierarchical language that refers to our process, work, training, or taste as “better than”, “the best”, “the way”, etc.  This will be for all aspects of the company including rehearsals, staff meetings, and conservatory classes.

  • Fiasco will cease any use of language (or attempts at humor) that reinforce hierarchical/positional power

  • Fiasco will avoid references to inside jokes, previous productions, etc in ways that create a sense of difference/status within the rehearsal community

ACCOUNTABILITY

Fiasco will hold itself accountable for the concrete goals and changes in policy and practice that we are proposing by:

  • Holding bi-annual meetings to evaluate our progress.

  • The results of our efforts will be made public on an annual basis - (see transparency report commitment above.)

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Fiasco recognizes that climate-change and the climate disasters resulting from it are:

- 1) a crisis of existential proportions 

- 2) disproportionately harming communities of color. 

We recognize this crisis as an opportunity for the theater community to reevaluate all of its practices as they relate to the environment in general and in particular to: fossil fuel consumption, material consumption, waste and participation in an environmentally destructive economy. 

We are committed to production practices that not only disrupt environmental degradation, but work toward the care of the land, air and waters on which they take place, and the people who inhabit them.

*We are in the process of constructing new practices, but have not yet specified them.  We look forward to announcing those specifics in the coming months. Some ideas we are discussing include:

  • Requiring producing partners to meet levels of fossil fuel divestment and other thresholds in order to host or collaborate with Fiasco

  • Requiring that all sets for Fiasco projects be recycled or upcycled from other projects (This is already a formalized plan for our first full production, planned for Spring 2022)

NATIVE LAND

Fiasco acknowledges that all of our work in New York City has taken place on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Lenape people. We honor and acknowledge the indigenous people past and present who have and continue to steward this land; as well as those who have been and continue to be displaced from this land. We are currently working to establish and cultivate relationships with Indigenous people of this land so we may listen to them, honor their needs and work to be in the right relationship to the land, water and air where we create work. 

In this time of virtual meeting we also want to acknowledge that Zoom, the platform which we use to gather most days, “is headquartered in what is now called San Jose, CA on the traditional lands of the Ohlone and Tamyen peoples. We acknowledge the lands Zoom resides on because the work we create together on a digital platform does not exist in an ether, in an imaginary void, but is made possible because of physical land and the Indigenous people who steward it.” - Tara Moses, Groundwater Arts and Unsettling Dramaturgy