This article in its original form can be found on Stage Directions Magazine's website.

Porsche McGovern is a lighting designer and a Contributing Writer for Stage Directions magazine and its Illuminations section. She has been doing very important work over the past few years with her study Who Designs and Directs in League of Resident Theatres. She is expanding the demographics of the study and would appreciate anyone who has designed, directed, or been an artistic director in a LORT Theatre in the past 8 years to take this quick survey. It only takes a few minutes of your time but can really help expand this important study. Designers and directors, please add your stats and share with your designer and director colleagues.

UPDATE from McGovern: “An update on my study. The demographic survey has been out for a few weeks now. I figure I need about 30% of both the designers and directors working in LORT theaters, so I can put out stats on the social identity aspects surveyed. That means I need roughly 550 more designers and 275 more directors to take the survey, even if they pick prefer not to answer for every question except name and email. I’m asking all of you reading this to share this with your theatre networks, please.”

“I started working on a project about designers in League of Resident Theatres (LORT) because I wanted to know who gets hired to design in regional theatres in the United States,” explains McGovern. “I wanted to know about racial/ethnic and gender demographics amongst theater designers. As a person of color, I strongly believe in self-identification. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to gather enough self-identified demographic information to be statistically representative.”

“It took me five years, but I think I might’ve figured out a way. I’m launching this survey to look at a few more aspects of social identity. Please fill it out if you’ve designed or directed a LORT show, or been an artistic director at a LORT theatre, from the 2012-13 season to now. If you can share it with your networks, I’d really appreciate it. Having this Patreon and all of you supporting this work makes trying new ways to look more deeply and broadly at who designs and directs in LORTs possible. Thank you for everything.”

Take the Survey

This survey is to collect demographic information on individuals who work in LORT theatres as designers, directors, and artistic directors from the 2012-13 theatre season forward. This information will help give a more complete picture of who is working in LORT theatres and who continues to be underrepresented. The goal of this survey is to have enough self-identified demographic data to present statistics, with the hope of expanding the report to include race/ethnicity this year (2020), and other social identity aspects within the next few years. All information will be kept strictly confidential and securely, to HIPAA standards. This survey is voluntary, and you may stop at any time while taking the survey. All information gathered will only be used and presented in aggregate, large enough so no individual could be identified. Last year’s article can be found, here.