Drill down to why many theater professionals got involved in the industry in the first place, and the story starts in elementary, middle or high school theatre. Many times, theater served as a haven for those seeking an inclusive, welcoming environment.

But how inclusive are the average hiring practices in the professional theater world at large? The answer is shocking, according to researcher Porsche McGovern. Over seven theatrical seasons, McGovern has been conducting a study called “Who Designs and Directs in LORT Theatres by Gender”—first published on the website of HowlRound Theatre Commons—that focuses on the organizations that make up the League of Resident Theatres and updates the percentage of women holding technical and production positions on a yearly basis. The latest results are eye-opening: Out of 3,690 scenic positions, 23.2 percent were filled by women; of 3,698 lighting positions, 20.9 percent were women; of 3,592 sound positions, 12.1 percent were women; and out of 680 projection/video positions, 16.1 percent were women. In only one area, costumes, do women dominate the field with 70.4 percent of the positions.

Breaking into an industry where your gender is significantly underrepresented is difficult—as are the challenges women face once landing a backstage job. Researcher Caitlyn Garrity spent two years interviewing women in theatre tech and production and found that there were two major obstacles these women faced: gender discrimination and lack of support for working parents.

“Of the 589 people who responded to the study, 533 (90 percent) reported having experienced a negative work environment, gender-based harassment, and/or pay disparity,” reads an American Theatre article about the study.

It’s in this arena that TheatreSquared is determined to buck the trend. A little over 50 percent of T2’s permanent production staff are women. Of course, gender parity is not the only area where T2 strives to make advancements. Its recently launched apprenticeship program aims to give opportunities to underrepresented voices, and its website is clear about its hiring objectives.

“The company’s goal is to remove barriers to employment that are faced by racialized groups and encourage applicants of all genders, abilities, and ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, and educational backgrounds,” the language reads. “TheatreSquared believes that a team with a variety of perspectives and skills is critical to our growth as an organization, and we seek to recruit, develop, and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.”

“In general, I think T2 has a great record of having women in a range of positions across the organization,” says T2 General Manager Shannon Jones. “It’s very rare that my male colleagues outnumber the women in a given space. I think our production team in particular feels really balanced in terms of gender. It’s important to honor that in any space because it means that you have a richness of ideas and perspectives that can be shared. It also means that less people feel like they are alone in a space or have to speak on behalf of whichever group they represent.”

Jones herself is an example of a woman who has risen to a position that is traditionally male-dominated. Trained as a stage manager, she had an impressive career in that field until being promoted two years ago to general manager at T2. Stage management, she points out, is one of the backstage jobs where women actually outnumber men in the field.

“At any rate, because of the makeup of the field, I often had to work with all male design/creative teams while being at a level of positional power in the space,” she says. “While many teams were understanding of the role and authority of the stage manager, there were times I had to fight to have my insights taken into consideration. Early in my professional career, before I even started on a project, I had a colleague say to me ‘This person doesn’t respect women in authority, so you’re going to have a hard time on this production.’ That was incredibly disheartening and frustrating because I felt as though I hadn’t even been given a chance to show my capabilities before someone made a judgment. I come to my work with my whole identity—which includes being young, black, and female—and I’m capable of the job I’m there to do. Having to fight unnecessary roadblocks is such a waste of time and doesn’t serve the individuals or the production.”

We wanted to know more about the path taken by the women on T2’s production team—what inspired them to pursue a career in theater, how they got here, and what their experiences have been like so far. Read on for a series of profiles that will prove that talent is what has propelled these theater professionals to where they are today.

Kat Wepler

Director of Production

“I think in production, with it being like a male-dominated field, if you’re a woman in this field you used to have to fit yourself into a certain box,” says Kat Wepler, T2 Production Manager. “When it comes to interests, things that are traditionally feminine versus masculine interests, or how you dress, or how you behave, or what your sense of humor is. Those stereotypes are becoming less and less [prevalent].”

When Kat Wepler was in fourth grade, she was the star of a made-for-elementary school play that was called Over the Rainbow. Her character, Andy, had traveled over the titular rainbow and traipsed from village to village, meeting a variety of people. Those people, she says, played by fellow students, had one or two lines. Wepler had scads, and, not being that great at memorization, she spent long hours meticulously memorizing every one. Decades later, this still stings: Her fellow students were not moved to equal her dedication.

“I remember going off stage, and they’d skipped a bunch of lines on stage, and I just went off,” she says, laughing. “I was like, ‘No! We skipped that whole thing! Literally skipped to the end of the scene!’ And there was a stage mom backstage, and she said, ‘It’s okay! It’s fine!’ I was like, it’s not okay!’”

The experience was a portent of things to come: As a production manager at T2, Wepler oversees a wide swath of departments critical to the day-to-day operations of T2.

“I like to say that everything that you see or hear on stage is within the production department,” says Wepler. “Except for the actors, though, sometimes the actors, as well. Largely, it's scenic, light, sound, costumes, props, projections—all of those elements outside of specifically the acting part of the creation, so everything else that goes around, supporting the actors. Also within the department is stage management. And they're the ones who are actually managing what's happening artistically, managing what's happening in the rehearsal room and transitioning it to the stage and carrying the show out. I also manage the shops—the scenic shop, the costume shop, prop shop—and I work with designers and coordinate the communication between designers and shops to realize their designs.”

Wepler spent years acting in community and school theater when she realized her talents were better suited off stage.

“I saw what the stage manager was doing, and that looked interesting,” she says. “And I found when I was onstage, I was always really jealous and wanted to do what the stage manager was doing. But if I was offstage and doing what the stage manager was doing, I wasn’t jealous, and I didn’t miss being onstage. So I honed in on that. At some point in high school, a junior or senior let it slip that you could make a career in technical theater I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I want to go to college for. But I can go to college for this! Great!’ Someone said something at the exact right moment.”

In college, she switched her focus to production manager and officially found her niche. Prior to T2, she worked at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Berkeley Playhouse before earning her MFA from Yale School of Drama. Now at T2, hiring decisions are part of her regular routine.

“For sure, we want to be a welcoming department to anybody that comes in,” she says. “And I think you also can't speak about just having gender diversity, but diversity also when it comes to race and culture and lifestyle. Those are all factors that we look at when looking at how we're building our department, as well as at TheatreSquared [in general]. You want the team working here to be an accessible and welcoming team to all of the different points of view that come in from our guest artists.”

Jamie Bray

Associate Technical Director

“I really did love mentoring students and helping these students reach their potential and help keep them in the field,” says T2 Associate Technical Director Jamie Bray. “I think that's how the theater stays alive, as we keep the younger generations interested. Keep letting them know that, ‘Hey, you have a skill set that would be very unique and we need you.’”

If you ask T2’s Associate Technical Director Jamie Bray to walk you through what her typical day at T2 looks like, she pauses for a moment.

“There are a lot of different days, depending on what day it is,” she says with a laugh, and then follows up with an astonishing litany of duties and processes. At the start of the design process, Bray might find herself studying design renderings and researching the supplies it will take to bring them to life in order to budget the show. She has to look at particularly complicated pieces required by the design—like Tiger Style!’s giant rotating door—and plot out how to achieve the affect. This is followed by drafting in AutoCAD, the drafting and design software, as Bray plots out how the T2 scene shop will build the set pieces the designer has drawn.

Then it’s time to get up from the computer.

“It becomes more of a shop management position, as we move into the load-in process, where everything is built, and we start to install things in the space,” she explains. “That’s where it’s boots on the ground, because I’m not behind a computer any more—I’m actually in the space, making sure everything was built the way I drew it to be built, and problem-solving as things come up. And they do, in every show.”

Bray’s confident recitation of her job duties belies how complicated it can be. Some of this confidence was born in her high school days, when she excelled at sports and became a consummate team leader. She chose theater as a college major, almost as a whim, thinking she would probably change it later down the road. Instead, she fell in love with every aspect of it, though she soon honed in on one particular area.

“I always liked what my mentor, a technical director was doing, which was being in charge and running the shop and drafting,” she says. “That more managerial position of having the plan and then helping everybody else execute the plan. I feel like that comes from growing up in sports. I guess I've always wanted to be the coach that has the plays and then helps the rest of the team get to the end goal.”

Bray was working at the University of Central Arkansas as both Technical Director for the University theater as well as an instructor before taking her current job at T2. She was already feeling the pressure of a grueling schedule when the pandemic hit. Like so many other Americans, she realized that life was too short to stay in a job that didn’t fulfill her—and the T2 job seemed to check all of the right boxes.

Bray notes that just last week she was speaking at a conference to fellow TDs and, looking around the room, was surprised at how few women there were in the audience—still, now, in 2022.

“I’m so happy to be a female technical director, so that others can look up and see people that look like them in these positions,” she says. “Especially with Kat [Wepler] as the Director of Production. That our production department is led by a woman is pretty great, and, hopefully, something for other individuals, other companies to look up to. I’m hoping we're on the cusp of the change happening.”

Kimberly Pukay

Lighting Supervisor

“I really just love the fact that there is so much diversity in the shows that we do and the people that we work with,” says Pukay. “That's something that you don't necessarily always find in theatre companies. It’s really great to see that we take chances on the newer shows and on the newer designers—that’s a little bit different than some of the older theatre companies that have been doing the same thing for the past 50 years.”

For TheatreSquared Lighting Supervisor Kimberly Pukay, the allure of stage lighting was the magic it could bring to a production.

“You can affect how people see, how people feel,” she says. “And, really, how a scene is portrayed, with just the help of a little bit of lighting.”

Pukay was in fifth grade when she was bowled over by a production of the musical Les Misérables.

“I just thought, ‘I want to be a part of that; I want to be a part of the theater,’” she remembers.

Pukay graduated from college in 2020 at the very beginning of the pandemic, when most theaters were cutting or laying off staff— but TheatreSquared was one of the few actually hiring for new positions.

“I really just love the fact that there is so much diversity in the shows that we do and the people that we work with,” she says. “That's something that you don't necessarily always find in theatre companies. It’s really great to see that we take chances on the newer shows and on the newer designers—that’s a little bit different than some of the older theatre companies that have been doing the same thing for the past 50 years.”

At T2, her job is focused on coordinating all of the lighting for T2 shows.

“I'm in charge of making sure any lighting needs are met for any of the shows that we do, as well as any events or special things that happen around the building. So my day to day is really making sure that the designers of the show have all of their needs met, whether that's fixtures that we have to order or hang in certain places. I also do a lot of the budgeting for the lighting department, making sure that we have enough of our spare lamps and all the odds and ends that we need in order to make the show work.”

Pukay says she knows very few women in her position in the industry. As a woman, she says, she has not experienced overt discrimination—but the frequent underestimating of her abilities chafes.

“The main experiences that I’ve had were men wanting to help me do things that I don’t necessarily need help doing,” she says. “Trying to be overly helpful when they didn’t need to be and taking over things that I can do on my own. It’s more of a, ‘Oh, you’re a woman, so you probably can’t lift this fixture, so I’ll do it for you.’”

Pukay she had several mentors in college who counseled her on to handle such workplace incidences.

“One of the main things that they instilled in me is to walk into a space with an air of confidence—that you are the capable person that they hired,” she says. “If I’m with a new crew and they say, ‘Oh, you’re a woman?’ I can say, ‘Yeah, but I still do the same things you guys do, and I’ve been doing that for the past seven years. It helps level the playing field.”

This is part 1 of a 3-part series—watch this space to learn more about T2’s production team.

Backstage Talent Brings Women to the Forefront at T2