Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Futures for Theatre for Young Audiences: An Interactive Guide

This guide, created by the BIPOC in TYA Community, is an invitation for the field of TYA to answer the calls for racial justice and transformation.

Anti-Racist & Anti-Oppressive Futures for Theatre for Young Audiences: An Interactive Guide contains a collection of non-negotiable demands for change, “thought questions,” anonymous anecdotes from BIPOC TYA practitioners, external resources, an interactive glossary, and exercises that require active engagement in community with others.

The guide was created by BIPOC in TYA, a grassroots group of Black, Indigenous & People of Color TYA professionals.

Published in partnership with TYA/USA.

Explore the Guide

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Note: The Interactive Version may vary in scale depending on your web browser. Here you will find the regular PDF version.

Please note that the link on page 36 to the video A BRIEF HISTORY OF WHITE SUPREMACY is broken. To watch this video, please click here.

PDF Version

AN UPDATE FROM THE BIPOC IN TYA BOARD; DECEMBER 2021

Since the release of the landmark project Anti-Racist & Anti-Oppressive Futures for Theatre for Young Audiences: An Interactive Guide in February 2021, over 50 theatre organizations and 100 individual TYA practitioners from across the United States — and the world — made the pledge to meaningfully engage with this powerful resource.

The summer of 2021 saw a rollout of the first accountability check-in, wherein these organizations and individuals were provided a series of prompts and provocations to reflect on their engagement with the resource.

Beyond tallying time spent reading and counting the number of Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression (ARAO) dedicated meetings, the check-in also provided space to consider how this work has transformed cultures, approaches, and practices — the tangible and intangible.

BIPOC in TYA is a collective of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color artists in theatre for young audiences — generously envisioned, supported, and selflessly contributed to this project, and presented it to the field as a gift and an invitation.

This grassroots collective is comprised of brilliant artists, visionary thinkers, revolutionary leaders, passionate advocates, and most important of all, people — real people with limits, boundaries, and finite capacities.

Author and thought leader adrienne maree brown offers us a rich frame and approach to any project or undertaking she calls Emergent Strategy. At a glance, brown invites us to stay responsive to shifts and elastic in our approaches to both the big and the small.

This project is both deeply personal and seismic; urgent and timeless; gentle and a powerful force.

Through a lens of emergence, BIPOC in TYA is announcing the sunsetting of the accountability check-ins as they would continue over the next three quarters. In addition, a shift in its stewardship model and of overall shape and intention.

This transition will provide those who have carried the mantle the opportunity to rest while also making generous room for new voices, thinkers, and trajectories.

The question is, has been, and will remain: What kind of futures would you like to — continue to — co-author? 

To learn more about this resource, please contact Val Ramirez (they/them) at rudyvramireziii@gmail.com


CREDITS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Envisioned by the BIPOC in TYA Community

Curated by Val Ramirez (they/them)

In Consultation with Shavanna Calder (she/her) of Arts in Color

Design and Layout by Reese Iliakis (they/he) https://iliakism.com/

With contributions from the 2020 BIPOC in TYA Advisory Board: Shavonne Coleman (she/they), Khalia Davis (she/her), Min Kahng (he/him), Tiffany Maltos (she/her), Marisol Rosa-Shapiro (she/her), and the BIPOC in TYA Community

Additional Contributors (and Signatories)

Lee Cataluna // Bwalya Chisanga // Shavonne Coleman // Osiris Cuen // Nakeisha Daniel // Khalia Davis // Rachel H. Dickson // Ramón Esquivel // Michael Hammerstrom // Jacqueline Handy // Min Kahng // Kirsten King // Rachel Lee // Megan A. Liles // Michelle LoRicco // Tiffany Maltos // Johamy Morales // Rudy Ramirez // Marisol Rosa-Shapiro // Jon Royal // Brodrick Ryans // Marissa Sanchez // Daniela Santiago // Esther Triggs // Melisa K. Orozco Vargas // Gia Yarn

Signatories

Terina-Jasmine Alladin // E. Dani Belvin // Giana Blazquez // Michael J. Bobbitt // Antonio Bruno // Brittny Bush // Daniel Carlton // Sindy Isabel Castro // Sofiya Cheyenne // Lynne Streeter Childress // Sarah Dahnke // Jody Doo // Christina Eskridge // Chanel Gomaa // Ural Grant // Arlethia Friday Hailstock // Signe Harriday // Isaiah Christopher-Lord Harris // ChelseaDee Harrison // Paige Hernandez // Dannielle Hutchinson // Kerisse Hutchinson // Reiko Ho // Nambi E. Kelley // Chil Kong // Melana Lloyd // Michelle Lopez-Rios // Daňel Malan // Janette Martinez // Laura McMillan // James Miles // Allison Mui // Erica Ortega // Siobhan Santini Pellot // Salim Razawi // Alvaro Saar Rios // Peter Ruiz // Meredith Suttles // Samson Syharath // Ashley Thaxon-Stevenson // Deepmala Tiwari // Tiffany Trent // Dolly Turner // Brad Walker // Ana Cantorán Viramontes // Miguel Zavala

Published in partnership with TYA/USA