The Black Theatre Coalition and Broadway Across America are now accepting applications for their 3rd annual Fellowship Program, which offers Black-identifying undergraduate college juniors and seniors, recent graduates, and early-career professionals an opportunity to learn about the commercial theater business and Broadway touring industry. The application deadline is September 29, 2023.
The paid fellowship is a 14-week program that takes place in the spring semester at one of the following Broadway Across America offices: New York City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Louisville, Minneapolis, Ottawa, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.
Fellows will learn about administrative, management, and business topics, such as producing, presenting, ticketing, marketing, and operations. The program culminates in a four-day trip to New York City for networking, on-the-job learning, and Broadway shows.
The BTC•BAA Fellowship works to address and combat the lack of racial representation in the Broadway industry by introducing young, Black-identifying professionals to the commercial theater business and equipping them with the tools necessary to be successful in the industry. It also provides a foundation of mentors and colleagues to whom they can turn to for support as they pursue a career beyond the stage.
Broadway Across America, press release
While the opera and theater worlds have seen efforts to increase diversity both onstage and offstage in artistic positions, Black professionals “make up less than 1% of the theatrical workforce,” according to the Black Theatre Coalition.
“For us, it really is about not looking at those who are on the stages, but those who are behind the stages, those who are in the offices, in the companies that really support and make Broadway happen,” said Black Theatre Coalition Co-Founder and Artistic Director T. Oliver Reid, in a 2021 interview on The Broadway Show.
“For those who don’t sing, act, or dance, there’s still a space for you in the American theater. That may be in marketing or public relations, or that could be as a general manager or a facilities manager—all these things that we don’t hear about, those positions and those careers, as readily as those that are singing, acting, and dancing,” Reid said.
The Black Theatre Coalition/Broadway Across American Fellowship program will select 10 positions nationwide for its 2024 cohort.
Organizers said that one position will be available in Houston, where Broadway Across America houses its office in the Galleria area and presents its shows at The Hobby Center downtown.
Houston has engaged with the conversation about the lack of diversity in hiring in the theater industry, notably in 2020 when actress Candace d’Meza, with the support of fellow theater professionals, called for Houston theaters to reflect the community, asking for 40% of hires both on and off stage to be Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
The local theater scene has also seen other recent efforts to increase industry training opportunities for artists and arts administrators of color, including Main Street Theater’s BIPOC Fellowship Program, which was founded in 2022.
Houston Arts Journal 