The Irene Gandy Directing Assistantships
An opportunity for Early-Career Directors
Application Deadline: January 3, 2025
In an effort to remove barriers to access that disproportionately affect BIPOC/Global Majority directors in the early stages of their careers, The Drama League Irene Gandy Directing Assistantships partners with acclaimed BIPOC/Global Majority stage directors to provide assistant directing opportunities to early-career BIPOC/Global Majority and/or historically marginalized directors on their productions across the United States.
The goals of this program are urgent and necessary. First, the assistantships address disproportionate impediments to access that are pervasive and damaging to the field’s future viability. Secondly, they offer a rare opportunity for the passing of knowledge, skills, and experience from generations of BIPOC/Global Majority directors to the next, offering techniques to successfully employ against racism, inequity, and injustice in rehearsal, casting, and production procedures. Third, it ensures a multiplicity of voices in this important creative role, better serving the entire community.
The assistantships offer a peer-to-peer mentorship model. The Drama League provides each assistant director’s remuneration, travel, and pre-production preparation resources. Bridging theater and practice, this program offers an experience of the field when rooms are led by BIPOC/Global Majority directors.
Early-career directors are eligible to apply who have not held the position of assistant directors on more than three Broadway, Off-Broadway, or LORT productions.
This program encourages applications from early-career stage directors who self-identify as Global Majority, Black, African-American, Hispanic, Latine (Latino/Latina), AAPI (Asian-American/Pacific Islander), Indigenous, MENASA (Middle Eastern/North African/South Asian), Biracial persons, Mixed-Identity persons, Persons of Color, and/or people of historically marginalized communities, for whom this program was designed in mind. Directors must exhibit through their application materials professional experience as a director in the early stages of their career. Applicants currently enrolled in a program of higher learning will not be considered until after it is completed. Applications are welcome from directors whose paths to direction may have been nonlinear or nontraditional.
About Irene Gandy...
The recipient of the 2020 Tony Award Honor for Excellence, Irene Gandy‘s Broadway career began in 1973, as a publicist with the Negro Ensemble Company. She has worked on over 100 Broadway shows, including August: Osage County, Glengarry Glen Ross, Radio Golf, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Me and My Girl, Spring Awakening, Talk Radio, Speed-The-Plow, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Chinglish, The Heidi Chronicles, Thoughts of a Colored Man, American Son, Fiddler on the Roof, You Can’t Take It With You, and The Wiz, among others. She has worked with producer Jeffrey Richards for over three decades; their credits include Purlie Victorious, Our Town, Ohio State Murders, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day At Emerson Bar and Grill. She is the only Black female press agent in the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers. She is the recipient of the National Action Network’s Woman of Excellence Award, the Vanguard Award from Black to Broadway Productions, the Black Public Relations Society Award, the Black Pride NYC Pioneer Award, the Vivian Robinson/AUDELCO Pioneer Award for Excellence in Black Theatre, and the NAACP David Weaver Prize for Excellence in the Arts. In 2008, she became the first female press agent to be immortalized with a Sardi’s caricature.
Details
Program Duration
Pre-Production (varies, remote). Rehearsal/Tech (4-7 weeks, in person)
Program Frequency
Offered every year, number of assistantships varies.
Scholarship Prize
$850/week for in-person rehearsal duration up to opening night, not to exceed seven weeks (and may be less, depending on production)
Health Insurance Reimbursement
None.
Travel Coverage
City of rehearsal/production varies. Air travel to/from city of rehearsals/tech/performance provided from any major city in the continental United States. Airport transfers and baggage fees are the responsibility of the Recipient. If needed, up to $200 reimbursement for in-city transportation during rehearsal period.
Housing Coverage
For recipients living more than 25 miles from the metropolitan area of the city of rehearsals/production, an additional housing reimbursement is offered of up to $200/week for in-person duration. Acquisition of housing for this period will be the responsibility of the Recipient (theaters will advise).
Liability and Insurances
Recipient will not be an employee of TDL, instead a recipient of an educational program and will be considered as such under its insurance policies.
Other Benefits
VIP Pass to all publicly offered Drama League programming during the Assistantship period; access to alumni-focused programs and events; and a lifetime Drama League Membership.
Timeline
Click each month for program details
July (TBD, occasional, online/remote)
ASSISTANTSHIP PREP
Assistant directors begin with discussions of the practice, expectations, and evolving role of assistant directors, and early conversations with mentor directors.
TBD (varies by production)
PRE-PRODUCTION/PRODUCTION
Assistant directors then meet with their directors and explore pre-production meetings and needs as scheduled virtually. Assistant directors then travel to join the director for rehearsals leading to the opening night performance.
Why This Matters...
As the nationwide data in Stage Directors and Choreographers Union’s 2020 “Next Stage Report” revealed, only 11% of directors hired on Broadway or in stock theaters identified as persons of color, despite being 44% of the United States population in the 2020 Census. Among the country’s largest theaters, LORT A+, zero directing contracts were filed by BIPOC/Global Majority directors with SDC in the 2018-2019 season. Facing these barriers to equity, there is a wide call to center communities of color. The Drama League recognizes this call to action, and joins similarly-minded programs across the field, including the BIPOC Casting Fellowship, the TCG Theaters of Color Re-Grant, the SDC Foundation Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency, the Shubert BIPOC Artistic Circle, the Black Theatre Coalition Apprenticeship, and New Victory Theatre’s LabWorks, among others. The Drama League, however, addresses specifically the role of director-led learning via production, the first program to do so. The Irene Gandy Directing Assistantships were developed with the Drama League Directors Council, an advisory body of leading stage directors, leaders, educators, and film/tv professionals.
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About the Drama League
The Drama League is the preeminent creative development home for directors, offering access and opportunity to them, their collaborators, and the audiences they inspire across the world in theater, film, television, online content, and anywhere live performance is found. Launched in 1916, The Drama League is one of the longest continuously-operating arts service organizations in the United States. To be a part of supporting future generations of artists, please visit dramaleague.org/membership.