COMMUNITY COMMITMENTS
At Cutting Ball, we recognize that United States history and culture are rooted in the stolen lives, labor, and land of Black and Indigenous people. We recognize that our nation is steeped in a dominant culture of white supremacy and racial inequity. And we recognize that the United States theater industry has long served to uphold oppressive power structures. At Cutting Ball, we recognize that we ourselves have contributed to this legacy of injustice.
As a collective, we are committed to dismantling white supremacy within our organization and community, decolonizing our artistic spaces and practices, pursuing liberation for all people in the form and content of our work, and championing the values of justice, equity, and respect in all that we do.
We maintain this Community Commitments page as a transparency and accountability resource. Here, we share our values statements and our action plans. We welcome the engagement of accomplices and allys in this vital work to reshape our institution, our industry, and our nation.
VALUES STATEMENT
At Cutting Ball Theater, we are cultivating an anti-oppressive creative and collaborative culture. We believe that extraordinary art is made by thriving people and that our collective is made stronger and smarter by its diverse composition. Recognizing that our work is enriched by people of all races, genders, nationalities, sexual orientations, abilities, ages, economic backgrounds, religions, sizes, and ways of life, this workspace is a creative home where everyone belongs, and where everyone is equitably entitled to respect, dignity, and liberty.
INDIGENOUS LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Cutting Ball's performance venue and offices in the Tenderloin occupy the traditional lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. The Ohlone, a collective group formerly referred to as the Costanoan people, are the original residents of San Francisco, living within the Bay Area and surrounding counties for over 10,000 years. The Ohlone are composed of over 50 separate tribes, categorized together under a shared name by Spanish colonizers.
As occupants of stolen land, it is our responsibility to educate ourselves in the land's pre-colonial history and to recognize the enduring rights of the land's original caretakers. “There have always been Indigenous peoples in the spaces we call home, and there always will be.” - Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Mutsun Ohlone activist
BLACK LIVES MATTER
STOP ASIAN HATE
EVOLVING ACTION
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- Cutting Ball is currently in the process of identifying and onboarding a consultant specializing in diversity, equity, and inclusion to work with leadership, staff, and board of directors on an ongoing basis to foster greater institutional equity.
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- In August 2020, Cutting Ball engaged a third-party Human Resources firm to develop and implement systems for safe reporting for all staff members, artists, and technicians: formalizing feedback systems, accountability check-ins, and misconduct management to create safer administrative and creative workspaces.
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- Cutting Ball is currently in the process of reviewing the demands of We See You, White American Theater and the Living Document with leadership, staff, and board of directors. To comprehensively address these demands and to steer Cutting Ball in the creation of an equity-lensed strategic plan, Cutting Ball formed its Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, a subcommittee of the Board of Directors and Staff, in November 2020.
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- By December 2020, Cutting Ball will contribute its first annual installment of Shuumi Land Tax through Sogorea Te' Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led land trust facilitating the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
