Parity Productions Works To Double Its Women and TGNC Artists Database

Theatre production company Parity Productions, a producer of new work that ensures they fill at least 50% of the creative positions (playwrights, directors, and designers) on their productions with women and/or trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) artists, is working to double the profiles in their Women and TGNC Artists Database and expand promotion to more artistic directors and theatrical producers looking to hire post-COVID-19 and beyond.

The industry-lauded Women and TGNC Artists Database hosts free online profiles for playwrights, directors, and designers working in professional theatre in NYC. Parity Productions uses the database to highlight the skills and resumes of these artists with fellow artistic directors and producers, and many featured artists have received job opportunities and offers through their profiles.

"When putting together a team for a new show, Parity Productions' Women and TGNC Artists Database is usually my first stop. They've made it very easy to find many qualified artists in just about every discipline," says Tony Award-winning theatre producer Cody Lassen. "It saves so much time to have one source to visit rather than spending hours Googling and asking colleagues for recommendations, and it has introduced me to some wonderful colleagues I might not have known about or found on my own."

"Organizations and theatre-makers all around us-our peers, our colleagues, bastions of our trade-are being forced to make difficult and sometimes heartbreaking decisions every day to preserve as much of our industry as possible. It's not only our art that's at stake-it's our art makers," says Parity's Founder and Artistic Director, Ludovica Villar-Hauser. "Our mission at Parity has always been based in support for our artists."

Parity is urging artists interested in having a profile in the database to complete the submission form as soon as possible. Artists submitting to the database must have been a part of at least one full production in NYC (with at least one designer distinct from director/playwright) and must be available for work in NYC (once in-person theatrical work resumes).

Parity Productions is the only New York Theatre Company that ensures they fill at least 50% of the creative roles on their productions-playwrights, directors, and designers-with women and/or TGNC artists, and offers a slate of free advocacy programs to encourage the rest of the industry to do the same. These popular initiatives have been profiled in Backstage, Playbill, Broadway World, and Broadway Briefing, and the company has been featured in the New York Times, American Theatre magazine, and TDF.