About Riot Act, Inc.

Riot Act, Inc. – Theater Standards

Based on the Chicago Theatre Standards, Riot Act, Inc. announces the adoption of its own Theater Standards. While not a legal document, the Standards create a set of guidelines to create a safe and creative environment for all theatrical participants.  In addition to the Standards, we will now require anyone in a power position within a production (i.e. director, stage manager, producer, etc.) to take a class to make sure they understand and know how to utilize the Standards in their theatrical work.

Arts environments require risk, courage, vulnerability, and investment of our physical, emotional and intellectual selves.  Riot Act, Inc. has a history of authenticity and risk on our stages.   We are proud of that legacy and seek to nurture spaces with strong safety nets that support that ethos without compromising a visceral and authentic experience for artists and audiences.

When creative environments are unsafe, both the artist and the art can be compromised.  Spaces that prize “raw”, “violent”, and otherwise high-risk material can veer into unsafe territory if there are no procedures for prevention, communication, and response.  Without these procedures, artists are afraid to respond to abusive or unsafe practices, particularly in a situation of power differential between the people involved.  Artists worry that speaking out could ruin a show or harm their reputation, they do not want to let their colleagues down.  When subjected to extreme abuse, they even sometime leave the artform behind, cutting their careers short.  We believe that even in the absence of high-risk material, having protocols and procedures in place to prevent abuse, harassment, and coercion allow us to maintain of work integrity, a safe and respectful environment, and ultimately allow everyone involved to bring their best work to the table.

This document‘s purpose is to create awareness and systems that respect and protect humans in art fostering safe places to do dangerous things.  We seek to adopt similar standards created by theater practitioners in Chicago and throughout the nation.  It is meant to be flexible and accommodate as many types and styles of theatre, budgets, and environments as possible.  

The overriding tenets are communication, safety, respect, and accountability.

We seek to foster awareness of what artists should expect.  By adopting these standards, Riot Act, Inc. states its intention to live and work by them and therefore create a safe and respectful artistic working environment.

A Manifesto

by Eve Bernfeld
December, 2002

I sat around a table in a meeting room of the Teton County Library and, with four other bright, ambitious artists, created a theatre company. We selected our first play and director, we chose a name, we studied the paperwork for our very own 501-C3, we split the list of practical tasks that needed immediate attention, we spoke about our purposes and our hopes for this new company. When we got kicked out at closing time, we were flushed and excited by our accomplishment, this new entity we had midwifed, the possibilities now at hand.

I’ve been telling everyone I know about our grandiose scheme, our fledgling company. Some of the reactions I’ve gotten have startled me: “Why?” “Aren’t there enough theatre groups in this town?” “Are you trying to start a war here?” It is to answer such questions that I write this manifesto.

As humans we tell stories to learn about ourselves, to make sense of our world. This is the life of the theatre. Stoking the fire on a bleak, overcast but not yet snowing morning in Wilson, WY, I don’t have access to the smorgasbord of theatrical options available in a city, but the need for stories–entertaining, thought-provoking, edgy, hilarious or tragic, is no less pressing. If these stories, and thus the theatre, are necessary to civilization, culture, society, to life, then is it not equally important to have a thriving, vital theatre community in Wyoming as it is in, say, New York City?

We hope to create a space for artists in this community; a community for artists in this space. We realize that at the outset, we will be competing for limited funds, limited space, limited audience, limited actors. But we don’t want to win any competition, we hope to create more of these resources for everyone. We envision living in a community where the performing arts are abuzz on the lips of the locals. Where people will read the paper hungrily each Wednesday in order to plan what shows to check out that weekend. We want theatre to be more than just a novelty.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about theatre and about continuing my career in theatre is “If you want to work, create work.” This is a given in most cities, where artists are creating new companies and collectives daily. Some persevere, others are a brief flash, quickly swallowed by the bright lights surrounding it. As young theatre professionals, we feel entitled to create our own work. We’ve seen and participated in plenty of exciting work in this community, but, as artists for whom the theatre is more than a hobby, we have been unable to find an artistic home for ourselves. And as we have each individually come to the conclusion that one shouldn’t have to sacrifice quality of life for quality of art, we’ve decided to set up shop for ourselves.

We hope to be a theatre of community consciousness and artistic accountability. We are a fluid collective of artists who have much to share and much to learn. We want to tell stories: classical and contemporary, traditional and avant-garde. We want to support new work and the work of new artists. We seek to provide a place for artists to explore collaboratively, to make their own artistic decisions, take risks, start a riot.