Arts professionals respond in year of #MeToo movement
NEW YORK — Actress Kate Shindle has been backstage in a lot of theaters — on Broadway, off-Broadway and on tour. But she came across something unusual a few months ago when she went to rehearsals for a new show in New Jersey.
Cast members had barely met when they were walked through the theater’s sexual harassment policies and shown a video to reinforce the messages. A staffer came by to explain the policies and answer questions. That was a first for Shindle.
“I had never worked at a theater that set aside an hour of rehearsal time at the very beginning of the process to do a full-on sexual harassment orientation,” she said. “It becomes a lot easier to make sure that the workplace is safe when everybody’s on the same page and participating in reinforcing those values.”
The harassment orientation offered by the Paper Mill Playhouse has been in effect for many years. It may become a model for other theaters, TV shows and film sets a year after the entertainment industry was rocked by sex assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Arts professionals are trying to respond to the crisis in multiple ways, from doubling down on ensuring actors and actresses are aware of anti-harassment policies to holding workshops and hiring onset advocates to ensure a safe workplace.
“It’s something we all are talking about at every level,” said Allyson Green, a professor and dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, which asks incoming students to take an online training program on harassment issues and their rights.
In the spring, the university required all employees to “refamiliarize” themselves with existing university policies related to sexual misconduct and reporting requirements. “There was a definite turn to, ‘This is here and if you didn’t know about it, you need to know about it,’” said Green.
There have also been workshops and programming on diversity, equity and inclusion, and the school is making structural changes, looking into its curriculum and pushing for diversity in its faculty and student body. People of color comprise half of the new faculty hired at Tisch in recent years; 60 percent are women.
“We hope that we’re teaching everyone how to go out and make a more respectful and considered field for all voices,” Green said, noting its alumni include groundbreakers such as Sterling K. Brown, Dee Rees and Donald Glover. “They’re not done when they leave here. They’re just starting.”
Other top performing arts schools are more reluctant to talk about the changes they’ve made in the wake of #MeToo. A representative for the Juilliard School said it didn’t have “anything specific to share at this time,” and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television declined to make anyone available to talk about how the school’s curriculum had changed in the past year.
While the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have triggered an outpouring of allegations against powerful men in politics, publishing, academia and business, the world of entertainment has been shown to be especially rife with misconduct.