PSP Commits to Inclusive and Antiracist Theatre

As a community theater that strives to challenge the perspectives of our audiences, we can and must do more for our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community. We are committed to amplifying BIPOC voices and creating a more inclusive environment at Pacifica Spindrift Players, and we have been working to reassess what this means to our community. We welcome in its totality a mutual educational opportunity where we can help each other develop our understanding of art and honor all people and their works to be truly represented.

We are taking the opportunity to clearly state that Pacifica Spindrift Players is committed to holding ourselves accountable in the ever-important work of processing, identifying, and ultimately dismantling systems of oppression. White supremacy and privilege have undeniably harmed the BIPOC community, creating a barrier to artistic expression and expansion.  We are committing to the following action plan in addition to developing and growing it as time goes on:

  • Mandating Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracist Training for Board leadership, directors, and stage managers.
  • Actively examining barriers to entry for different communities, in order to both create and make attainable growth and leadership opportunities for BIPOC, Queer, and Trans artists.
  • Working with external HR and Diversity specialists to strengthen our incident reporting process.
  • Revising our mission statement to reflect PSP’s commitment to Diversity and Antiracist work, and to be used to hold us accountable for adhering to this commitment over time.
  • Creating opportunities for BIPOC artists outside PSP to develop and produce independent theatrical work by offering our stage and space at a reduced rate for the BIPOC community. 
  • Creating more performance and production opportunities for diverse communities through intentional season selection and active outreach to BIPOC artists. The above antiracist training and education will be leveraged so that underrepresented people are treated with respect when they are at PSP.
  • As a non-profit theater that typically survives on breaking even with ticket sales, we are invested in creating expansive sponsorship programs that financially enable us to make valuable impacts in supporting BIPOC, queer, trans, and neurodiverse artists. 

We ask our Bay Area community to share in this important work and to help to hold us accountable for making visible and measurable progress toward enacting our action plan. It is not enough to merely state an intention. We acknowledge that we have contributed to upholding an oppressive system throughout the theatre community, admit to perpetuating silence in order to protect white fragility and supremacy, and take responsibility for continuing to listen, learn, and translating our words into action.