We think that this book is a huge must read! This book needs to be on the desk of every artistic director. All work on future seasons should halt (while giving staff two months of paid leave) until the admin teams and board of directors have read this book and every scrap of source material. This book is not the end all be all but it is the spark that should get the conversation going. We no longer have to tell you what’s wrong. The book lays that out. Now we can talk about where we go from here.

The Young-Howze Theater Journal
Book Review
By Ricky & Dana
June 20, 2024

This book is an essential piece of the puzzle that is fixing the professional theater landscape. It is required reading for anyone in a decision-making role in the arts. Although the book examines a specific period of time and group of organizations, the principles are widely applicable to all businesses that seek to balance art and commerce.

-Valerie Novakoff Britten

Valerie Novakoff Britten is the Founder of the Broadway Women’s Fund and Interim Executive Director of Open Stage Project; her research on gender parity has been published in the New York Times and Fast Company.

Theatre Work is a fascinating, at times difficult, exploration into some of the deep flaws in the current American Theatre, yet it offers hope and pathways to help remedy those flaws.

-Beowulf Boritt

Beowulf Boritt is a TONY Winning Set Designer of over 30 Broadway designs. He has also designed over 100 Off-Boadway productions; for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus; and around the world in England, Russia, China, Australia, and Japan. He received a 2007 OBIE Award for sustained excellence. His book about Broadway set design, Transforming Space Over Time, is available wherever books are sold.

Theatre Work provokes crucial questions about the future of American theatre and the people who make it. At a moment when the field is at a crossroads, Robin and Cotton provide a valuable set of considerations for moving forward with equity and care for a sustainable future.

-Jessica Brater

Jessica Brater is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Montclair State University and Coordinator of the BA and MA in Theatre Studies and graduate certificate in Theatre of Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Change.

Natalie and Brídín’s book is an essential primer on the history of theater production. It then goes further to provide thoughtful insights as to how we got where we are, and foster valuable thinking about how we can conceptualize new labor and produce models for the future of the theater industry. I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about how theater sustains itself.

-Jenny Gersten

Jenny Gersten is the Interim Artistic Director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the VP and Producer of Musical Theater at New York City Center, and a commercial producer.

This book is a must read for anyone in theater or anyone interested in getting into theater. Natalie and Brídín have done incredible research into everything from the history of the designer’s union to the value or not of university education. You will want to have your highlighters near with this wonderful resource. This book made me think about all behavior including my own.

-Allen Lee Hughes

Allen Lee Hughes: Lighting Designer, Broadway: Topdog/Underdog, Ohio State Murders, A Soldier’s Play, Who’sAfraid of Virginia Woolf; Clybourne Park; Having Our Say; Mule Bone; Once on this Island; K2; Strange Interlude; Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Quilters. His work has been seen at major theaters including A.C.T., Arena Stage, Seattle Rep, Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Playwright’s Horizons. Honors: Four Tony nominations, an Outer Critics Circle Award, USITT Distinguished Achievement Award, Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration and two Helen Hayes awards. The Fellows Program at Arena Stage bears his name.

Theatre Work succeeds in both illuminating populations left in the dark, and offering a hand to those looking to join the cause toward equity in the workplace. It’s a sharp criticism of unsustainable business practices failing workers while simultaneously providing avenues for progressive, safe, and essential restructuring in the theater industry.

-Z Infante

Z Infante is a multidisciplinary artist focused on amplifying the voices of underrepresented and at-risk youth through the arts.

This book gives a detailed overview of how we have gotten to a place of pay inequity in the arts especially within theatre. The authors take great care and understanding to lay it out clearly and then follow through with actionable ways it could be remedied.

-Katie Irish

Katie is a costume designer working predominantly in film and TV and a proud co-chair of Local USA 829's Pay Equity Task Force.

Natalie and Brídín have taken considerable and incredibly thoughtful, conscious efforts to highlight the conditions and composition of today’s production labor force while contextualizing it in theater industry history, rooting it in decades of systemic inequity, bias, and racism. For those of us trying to influence change in the industry, it both validates how challenging pay equity work can be (AND WHY, given the deep deep normalizing of exclusion and working for passion not payment) yet also how important and necessary and urgent it is to work rigorously to dismantle the inequitable systems and industry assumptions of how things should be because “that’s how it’s always been/that’s show business.” We are so fortunate to have this research and data all in one place! And a forward by artEquity's Carmen Morgan?! Yes, please!

-Danielle King

Danielle is a nonprofit arts leader and producer dedicated to building equitable, inclusive organizational systems and cultures which nurture future generations of theatermakers.

Theatre Work is an accessible and timely intervention that zeroes in on the white-supremacist structures governing the labor and compensation of production workers in contemporary American theatre. Building on the work of activists and advocates including the We See You, White American Theater collective, Cotton and Robin consolidate existing studies with their own industry surveys and interviews to make transparent the practices that limit and prevent equitable labor practices. From the impact of networks on recruitment to accessibility and safety issues, they expertly interrogate the areas of theatre production where inequity is most entrenched. With great hope, Cotton and Robin offer strategies for incremental change as well as grand, disruptive imaginings that might change the conversations and structures of American theatre today.

-Laura MacDonald

Laura MacDonald is a theatre historian researching the longevity of Broadway musicals and the labor of the practitioners who help them to globally circulate. She is co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (2017) and The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre (2023).

Theatre Work explores the complicated dynamics of production and design work and workers in the United States with a nuanced, deep, and empathic lens. The book centers theatre production and design professionals as workers within the labor movement. The authors offer intriguing provocations and questions that the entire United States theatre community needs to explore further together.

-Porsche McGovern

Porsche McGovern wrote the series, "Who Designs in LORT Theatres by Pronoun" for Howlround Theatre Commons. She is an anti-oppression facilitator and advocate.

The life of a theatre design practitioner is itinerant and quixotic. I've always considered myself as a migrant cultural worker. This book is crucial in demystifying the misconception around glamour and dilettantism attached to the work we do. Theatre work is work. Theatre workers are workers. And our health is only contingent on the health of our industry.

-Clint Ramos

Clint is a Tony winning designer/producer who advocates for an equitable landscape in theatre and film production.

This is a meaningful read for all theatre makers and patrons, and for those of us practitioners who are not production workers, this should be a must read - so we can better understand the experiences, frustrations, hopes, desires, and dreams of our colleagues in production. This galvanizing work by Brídín and Natalie not only illustrates how unsustainable practices have been born and preserved, but also how we can and must strive towards a fairer industry, if we join together. Onwards and upwards!

-Tatiana Wechsler

Tatiana is an NYC-based actor, singer/songwriter, and creative.