Posted September 25, 2024
September 2024:
At HVS, inclusion is one of our core values. As a predominantly white institution, we acknowledge that our actions and procedures have often upheld established systems of white supremacy that are directly opposed to this core value. With this update, we continue our commitment to dismantling these practices and advancing the work of anti-racism throughout our organization. We know the eradication of these systems will not happen overnight, and recognize that the update we share today represents small steps in a comprehensive institutional evolution. In June of 2020 we shared the foundational commitments that guide our work, and promised to deliver regular, transparent, and specific updates on our progress. Those updates can be found here: June 2020, November 2020, June of 2021, and February 2022. We share today’s update with our community in the spirit of full transparency. We do not represent this list of updates to be complete. Rather, it is a description of work that is continually progressing and evolving, and we recognize that there is more work to be done.
Our Code of Community can be found here
This Code is a living document, as well as a tool to evolve a more equitable Hudson Valley Shakespeare. We invite our community to suggest, recommend, and contribute additional insight as we continue to capture and honor the specific needs of our members.
- Hudson Valley Shakespeare engaged Anthem of Us/Perception Strategies to provide equity and antiracism training for its Board of Directors. The work took place in September of 2023 the sessions focused on Dignity and Belonging, as well as Unconscious Bias.
- HVS Staff has formed a working group who join a bi-weekly IDEA sessions (an acronym for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access), moderated by a facilitator Luis Castro. These sessions focus opportunities/efforts to identify and address structural inequities in our industry and our institution. This group reports back to the entire HVS staff on a quarterly basis and lifts up topics for discussion in the All Staff weekly meeting.
- The 2024 proposed budget for Hudson Valley Shakespeare has again prioritized the engagement of Alejandro Rodriguez and Melle Powers, as facilitators to assist in the creation of company agreements and accountability mechanisms for both staff and visiting artists. They also led a post-season facilitated company conversation (as well as a survey to capture input from company members no longer in residence), designed to learn from and improve their experience and quality of life for all seasonal artists and staff while living and working at HVS.
- Further adjustments to the production calendar have been made to observe holidays, aiming to provide more ample breaks throughout the season and promote human sustainability. 10/12 tech rehearsals were eliminated in 2021.
- Reflecting feedback that we heard at the conclusion of last season, for the 2023 season, production practices will focus on our commitment to “prioritize people over stuff.” This includes publishing a designer handbook to make purchasing information and local resources more accessible, tracking the usage and spending of props and costume materials (stock, used, and new), and aiming to use 45% used materials. The target for used vs. new materials will increase in future seasons as the stock becomes more accessible.
- To maintain affordable pricing for the widest possible audience, we’ve made adjustments to our seating chart. We have slightly increased our most expensive seats and removed discounts in the Center-Front section to ensure seating throughout the rest of the theater remains accessible for all audiences. We began a program to offer tickets to anyone under 18 at $10.
- Our 2024 season programming included two world premieres, and we continued our commitment to expanding the canon of classical theater as well as ensuring a diversity of voices in our theatrical repertoire. The seasonal artists, onstage and backstage, on creative teams, working at HVS reflected our ongoing commitment to advancing inclusion and representation, throughout all aspects of our organization.
- Building on Upstander training in past years, this year for the first time we brought in additional outside training for Front of House teams, empowering them with additional customer service tools and resources for interacting with patrons, handling and diffusing challenging situations with the public.