Theater Resources Unlimited & The Players Theatre Host January TRU Panel Tonight

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) presents the January panel, Bringing Diversity to Theater: More Crucial Now Than Ever, tonight, January 22, 2015 at 7:30pmat The Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, 3rd Floor Loft Theatre, NYC. Doors open at 7pm for networking and refreshments; the event starts at 7:30pm.

This panel is hosted by TRU's Young Patrons and Artists Circle (YPAC), and moderated by Christin Cato, Diversity co-Chair of the YPAC board. The panel will discuss diversity in the American theater, and explore how we can get it to trickle up to the Off-Broadway and Broadway communities. Panelists will include: Patrick Blake, founding artistic director Rhymes Over Beats, producer (Bedlam Theatre's Hamlet/St. Joan, The Exonerated, In the Continuum, Play Dead); Debra Ann Byrd, Artistic Producer of Take Wings and Soar; Luis Cadenas, Open Hydrant (the first ever Equity theater company in the Bronx), Deadria Harrington, Producer of The Movement Theater Company; Hollie Klem, Producer and Director; Ari Laura Kreith, Artistic Director of Theatre 167; Luis Salgado, Salgado Productions and Revolution Latina; Tiffany Vega, General Manager of Hi-Arts/Hip Hop Theatre Festival.

Theater is a way to explore issues within a culture and between generations. However, the major theaters in the US, regionally, Off-Broadway, and on Broadway, largely produce plays and musicals written, directed, and produced by white men, starring primarily white casts. In the wake of Michael Brown and Eric Gardner, the discussion of minorities being marginalized has risen to the forefront on a national level. Theater and art offer opportunities to reshape the images of cultural diversity and re-educate audiences; but will art that relates a different experience and worldview, make it to the stages of our major theaters? If women are the majority of ticket buyers, why aren't more female playwrights, directors, decision-makers, and female-driven stories represented on Broadway and Off-Broadway? How do we bring the voices of people of color, women, and younger generations - voices that have been marginalized - into the mainstream theater, and how do we change the make-up of our theatergoing audiences?

Admission is $12 (free for TRU members). Please RSVP at least a day in advance (or much sooner) for reservations: 212/714-7628; or e-mail TRUStaff1@gmail.com. Doors open at 7:00pm for networking and refreshments, roundtable introductions of everyone in the room will start at 7:30pm - come prepared with your best half-minute summary of who you are, and what you need.

Built in 1907 and converted into a theatre in the late 1940's, the Players Theatre, host of the monthly TRU panels, has been a jewel in the midst of beautiful Greenwich Village, serving as a magnet for performing artists and their audiences. The mainstage theatre has been home to such long run productions as An Evening with Quentin Crisp, Psycho Beach Party and Ruthless starring an 8 year old Brittany Spears, Natalie Portman and Legally Blonde the Musical's Laura Bell Bundy. The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre, a 60-seat loft space on the 3rd floor offers an intimate home for TRU's panels, as well as a range of new works. For more information, please visit www.theplayerstheatre.com.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is a twenty-two year old 501c3 nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of theater. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, goods and productions; presents the TRU VOICES Annual New Play Reading Series and Annual New Musicals Reading Series, two new works series in which TRU underwrites developmental readings to nurture new shows as well as new producers for theater; TRU offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program whose mentors are among the most prominent producers and general managers in New York Theater, and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop the business skills they need. TRU serves writers through a Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, a Director-Writer Communications Lab and How to Write a Musical That Works; programs for actors include an Annual Combined Audition and quarterly Resource Nights and "Speed Dating" as well as free monthly actor workshops, in partnership with Weist-Barron Studios.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by public funds awarded through the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA); the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, 9th district Council Member Inez Dickens and Council Member Christine Quinn; and The Montage Foundation.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visitwww.truonline.orgor call (212) 714-7628.