Anti-Oppression

Land Acknowledgement

Step1 Theatre works, gathers, and produces on the unceded ancestral land of the Munsee Lenape. While indigenous peoples are often discussed as if they are extinct, they are still here and experiencing ongoing violence and oppression. Step1 stands in solidarity with the Land Back Movement and encourages all of us to explore ways we can each learn about, support, and advocate for local indigenous communities.

Background image: A recreation of Mannahatta circa 1609. Credit: Markley Boyer/The Mannahatta Project, via Wildlife Conservation Society

Our Commitment to Anti-Oppression

When considering the many burdens we are all carrying as artists and human beings, it can feel overwhelming to find our place in healing these wounds. “But what can I do?” is a common and understandable question. Inherent in our theatre company’s name is the reminder that we can start small. Throughout 2020 & 2021, our team learned and reflected on how to name our beliefs and start integrating them into how we operate as a company and collaborate as artists. In order to develop policies and practices that push back against white supremacist and capitalist culture, we gathered to identify what anti-oppression means to us as artists and collaborators:

  • “We seek liberation. We seek to remove the oppressive systemic barriers to equal access to art. Step1 is a place to begin the process of art-making as liberation, and our goal is to support artists in doing so.”

  • “Anti-Oppression means recognizing the cost of speaking up while working to dismantle what put that cost there in the first place.”

  • “We are a group of artists uplifting community, creativity and celebration in our theatre-making. These are diving rights—we are seeking to remove as many barriers to them as possible.”

  • “As artists, we will actively meet, contend with, and push back against all forms of oppression that are made manifest in our world. We do this by creating works that challenge audiences to think critically about our world and simultaneously uplift voices and stories that have not been heard often.

    In the work of creation and collaboration, we uplift unheard voices by providing mechanisms of support that include, but are not limited to: connecting you (the artist) with multiple collaborators of diverse backgrounds, providing remuneration for your works, and facilitating spaces that support your journey as an artist.”

Our team is small and operating on a small budget, but we are committed. Though we are not as well-resourced as larger institutional arts organizations, we are still able to start by taking small, practical steps to push back against oppressive cultures and practices. Here are the ways we’re starting:

  • We are currently creating archives of our operating & project budgets and will continue to disclose our spending. We are also looking forward to adapting the practices of the New York City Theater Standards, which are currently in development. Implementation of these Standards will include harm reduction and conflict resolution pathways.

  • We center rest, community care and trauma-informed practices in our work. These are all spiritual and community-based concepts we are slowly learning and integrating in an attempt to push back against individualism & hyper-productivity.

  • We commit to continuous collaboration with leaders in our local independent theatre community to discover and practice cultural shifts toward anti-racism & anti-oppression. We also aspire to help build systems of mutual aid and community care with the support and insight from folks in the community.

  • We commit to crafting collaborative practices that center anti-racism and anti-oppression at all levels. From the imagining & ideation phase through the post-production phase, we commit to pushing back against capitalist culture and white supremacy culture.

We will not be perfect along our anti-racism & anti-oppression journey because we acknowledge that white supremacy and capitalist culture have pervaded all the systems we operate in and all ways we have been socialized. This is a long-term journey of gradual deprogramming, reimagining, and embodying. We will do our best to commit to our values along every step of collaboration.

In Solidarity,

The Step1 Theatre Team

Jazmyn Arroyo
Janelle Zapata Castellano
Benjamin-Ernest Abraham
Ashley Lauren Rogers