Diversity, Equity, Access & Belonging
Diversity and inclusion are inextricable from our creation processes.
Our creative teams may include members of the Global Majority alongside disabled, age-diverse, class-diverse, and gender-diverse participants, refugees, or members of other underserved and underrepresented populations. Our casting choices represent a multitude of bodies and experiences onstage.
When invited to work in communities to which we don’t belong, we engage in deep research into others’ self-disclosed lived experience, and employ and creatively partner with members of that group to help build the work. We hold to the adage, “Nothing about us without us.” There are times when we abandon a project, realizing that it is not our story to tell; that’s an acceptable outcome of our process. We prioritize diversity in our hiring and Board recruitment and have developed and abide by robust DEAI policies in our leadership.
Belonging Statement
Read our complete Belonging Statement (PDF), along with examples of how we incorporate the values of diversity and inclusion into our work.
Contact Us
We have much to learn about how to honor and include members of our myriad intersectional communities in our creative work, and are continually learning how to better serve existing and potential audience members, artists and community partners from all backgrounds. We welcome your feedback, suggestions, and ideas. Please click here to connect with RealTime’s email.
REALTIME’S APPROACH TO DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, EQUITY AND ACCESS
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We believe that the inclusion of voices from individuals of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and abilities in our work is vital to the creation of relevant, meaningful, highest-caliber art.
We also believe diversity isn’t just about identification by race, gender, orientation, age, or ability.
It’s about the constellation of forces and influences that make you you. We strive to explore these intricacies in what we do, who we do it with and how we do it.
EQUITY
People come to the theater with different experiences of live art; some have had season tickets to regional theaters all their adult lives but have never been to a site-specific show, for example, while some have never set foot in a building designed for performance, although they’ve been attending Church programs their whole lives. Through pre-show emails, introductory comments, programs, etc, we bake into our shows a “road map” for our patrons, designed to make their experience legible, comfortable and enjoyable, regardless of their background as live-arts audience members.
We believe people should be paid fairly for their work, shared talents, and time, and we create pay structures that support this belief, regardless of if a person is contributing a performance or a personal story to a RealTime production.
ACCESS
Live art is for everyone.
As a performance company, it’s our responsibility to transform that string of words into a reality for all audience members who wish to engage in the magic of theatrical experiences, and for all artistic collaborators with whom we create that magic.
Although one of our founders/Artistic Directors has a disability, this doesn’t mean we are fully versed in all aspects of accessibility, understand other individual experiences of disability, or are experts in other disabilities.
We are still learning how to best serve audience members of all abilities and welcome suggestions and ideas from our patrons on how to meet their access needs. We ask artistic collaborators and patrons with accessibility concerns to contact us directly with their access needs so that we can meet them as effectively as possible. Please connect with our Access Liaison, Molly Rice.
Photo Credits
Heather Mull; RealTime Arts.