Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards announce a "hiatus" after 2022 online ceremony
The society cites a lack of engagement and involvement by the theatre community on its juries, committees, and board
VANCOUVER’S LARGEST theatre-awards event is putting its prize process on pause after May 1.
The 2022 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards will still take place online on June 27, celebrating productions mounted since theatre’s live return in November 2021.
But after that, the future is unclear. In a statement posted on its website and social media yesterday, the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards board cites a lack of involvement, especially from diverse members of the local stage scene.
“One of the biggest challenges faced by the Jessies has been the engagement and involvement of the theatre community on our juries, committees, and Board of Directors,” the announcement reads. “To that end, the Board of Directors has made the difficult decision for the Jessie Awards to go on hiatus and pause all jurying as of May 1, 2022.”
The board suspended the awards during the 2020-21 pandemic year, due to closures of theatres. It has also been in the midst of a large-scale review of its structure and awards categories, with an eye to being more inclusive.
The announcement pausing the awards suggests that building that inclusivity into the organization through recruitment of volunteers has been challenging: “Year after year, volunteers on the Board of Directors and Jessies Review Committee have to reach out through personal and professional networks to try and add enough folks to diversify our juries. We feel that we cannot continue in a paradigm where the time commitment that jury service demands is not available to every community member that the Jessie Awards aims to serve.” The statement also cites several calls put out for board members.
“All the while, we are not succeeding in getting the industry-wide buy-in needed to change the Jessie Awards into something more equitable, more representative, and more sustainable for the future,” the official post reads.
As part of a review process over the last several years (it launched an inclusivity mandate back in 2016), the Jessies circulated surveys in 2020 about future changes to the awards, inviting representatives from professional theatre companies in the Metro Vancouver area to meet about the Jessie Awards in March 2021, hosting an open town hall the following month.
Some of the changes that emerged from that feedback included the revision of guidelines for the Jessie Richardson Awards in July 2021, requiring anti-bias, anti-racist, anti-oppression training for anyone affiliated with the group; changes to performance award categories to be gender inclusive; and creating a division to better support emerging artists.
The Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards are four decades old, with a nonprofit charitable society formed in 1997. The awards are named for a woman who was actively involved in Vancouver theatre for 40 years since the 1930s, acting, directing, and designing costumes.
The year's last live awards were held in July 2019 at the Bard on the Beach main stage, where they had moved in 2018 from the longtime Commodore Ballroom venue. The awards then transferred online for 2020 after pandemic shutdowns interrupted the theatre seasons in March of that year. The organization has said it needs to go online with the 2022 ceremony due “to budget constraints and the ongoing pandemic.”
Back in July 2015, REAL Canadian Theatre circulated an open letter to the president and board of directors of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards Society. Bearing the signatures of more than 150 members of the stage community, it cited a lack of diversity and representation on Jessie boards and juries. "We believe that by bestowing awards and nominations overwhelmingly to white theatre artists," the letter stated, "the Society is—unconsciously but implicitly—sending a message that it is primarily white theatre artists and white theatre productions that are 'excellent'.”
In its announcement yesterday, the Jessies board acknowledges the history of these issues may be part of the problem moving forward: “We know it’s possible that folks who have been historically excluded from the Jessie Awards may not feel called to give their energies to its future,” it reads. “We know that upholding the Jessie Awards might not feel like the right avenue for community involvement. We know that asking for a wider range of Vancouver theatre makers’ participation in making the Jessie Awards happen is complex and loaded. But, as the current Board of Directors, we also do not want to uphold existing power structures by pretending that the buy-in for the Jessies is diverse and representative enough for it to continue as-is.”
You can read the full statement here and below:
It has been a difficult few years for everyone, and the performing arts have faced unique challenges during this time. One of the biggest challenges faced by the Jessies has been the engagement and involvement of the theatre community on our juries, committees, and Board of Directors. To that end, the Board of Directors has made the difficult decision for the Jessie Awards to go on hiatus and pause all jurying as of May 1, 2022.
We truly believe that the Jessies bring value to winners, nominees, and the community at-large. However, we also know that many remarkable and worthy artists have felt marginalised, oppressed, and unrepresented by the Jessie Awards over its history. As the current Board of Directors, we take these concerns seriously, and have been working over the last few years to try and implement changes to prevent further misrepresentation. The work over the past 3 years includes:
• In January and September 2020, we circulated two surveys about proposed changes to, and the future of, the Jessie Awards;
• In March 2021, we invited representatives from professional theatre companies in the Metro Vancouver area to meet about the Jessie Awards;
• In June 2021, we held an open invitation town hall with paid facilitation by an experienced equity consulting group;
• From these community consultations, and with the support of the equity consulting group, we revised the Guidelines for the Jessie Richardson Awards in July 2021 to: Require anti-bias, anti-racist, anti-oppression training for anyone who represents the Jessie Awards in any way (board members, jury members, affiliated organizations or people who select Special Awards); Revise performance award categories to be gender inclusive, ensuring all LGBTQ2S+ community members feel free to participate without compromising their identities; Create a new Division to better support emerging artists and give them opportunities to win Jessie Awards and parlay that into more access and acknowledgement from granting bodies and the community; we also created this new Division to make jury service on the Small Budget Division less onerous and more accessible to a range of people.
• We have regularly sent out calls for new members for the Board of Directors, with the most recent formal call happening in September 2021.
We know that serving on a Jessie Awards jury is time-consuming and we are deeply thankful to so many for their jury service over the years. It’s also true that in our society, structured by white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, ableism, and patriarchy, the ability to offer that time is more frequently available to people who hold privilege in these systems. Year after year, volunteers on the Board of Directors and Jessies Review Committee have to reach out through personal and professional networks to try and add enough folks to diversify our juries. We feel that we cannot continue in a paradigm where the time commitment that jury service demands is not available to every community member that the Jessie Awards aims to serve.
We wish there were more immediate ways to fix these issues within the current structure of the Jessie Awards. Do we need grants and donations to compensate jurors? Could post-secondary programs support their students in jury membership through course credits? Could the number of productions jurors are required to see be reduced? Should voting be made more public? Should juries be made smaller, or larger, to allow for any or all of these changes? Addressing the next steps forward requires time, feedback, and, most importantly, involvement from a range of community members. We know it’s possible that folks who have been historically excluded from the Jessie Awards may not feel called to give their energies to its future. We know that upholding the Jessie Awards might not feel like the right avenue for community involvement. We know that asking for a wider range of Vancouver theatre makers’ participation in making the Jessie Awards happen is complex and loaded. But, as the current Board of Directors, we also do not want to uphold existing power structures by pretending that the buy-in for the Jessies is diverse and representative enough for it to continue as-is.
In addition to the juries, the Board of Directors and its committees are entirely made of volunteers. We produce the Jessies in our unpaid time, with shoestring budgets that barely break-even year-over-year. We balance the cost of expensive trophies while keeping ticket prices manageable with ensuring accessibility in spaces large enough to host our community while prioritising the costs of anti-oppression training with ongoing engagement to ensure that we are truly serving our community. All the while, we are not succeeding in getting the industry-wide buy-in needed to change the Jessie Awards into something more equitable, more representative, and more sustainable for the future. We love theatre and all the people who make it, but this love is not enough right now.
The future of the Jessie Awards needs to be assured by a diverse group of community members so that the Jessies might more fully represent the range of folks who make theatre in Vancouver. Do you, or your organisation, have some time and energy to make the Jessie Awards what it could be? Please reach out to us at info@jessieawards.com and we will work to connect everyone who is willing to take this on. If you have any other thoughts that you’d like to share, we would love to hear that as well.
We hope that there is opportunity in the future to transform the Jessie Awards into the inclusive community celebration we believe it should be; a celebration that is for the community, by the community. We look forward to a future where this organisation continues to evolve in honouring the diverse constellation of artists making theatre in Vancouver.
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