written by James La Bella. @james.la.bella.
BROOKLYN, NY - Artistic Director of SPEED Theatre Company Blake Stuckley announced this week that the theater would be continuing its push towards equity and justice by hiring a diverse class of underpaid summer interns.
“In the summer of 2020 we came to the difficult conclusion that we didn’t want people to tweet about us,” said Stuckley, who created the now-internationally-esteemed theater ‘just for kicks’ in the 70’s. “We’re thrilled to begin this effort by diversifying the employees we pay the least.”
Mamie Pender, SPEED’s H.R. Head and mastermind of the company’s "Do You Hear the People Sing for Ukraine" initiative, cited financial reasons for the decision to work “bottom up” in their diversity efforts, and to publicly decline pressure to reduce leadership salaries in favor of a larger intern stipend.
“Are you kidding? There’s a global pandemic,” said Pender, reverently placing a "Reform Gun Laws" sticker on her MacBook Pro. “It’s part of our twenty year accountability plan to eventually pay the people who work for us. In the meantime, many of our interns find it possible to live on MetroCards. You can eat them in a pinch. Did you know that?”
Consequently, reports show that applications from white Ivy Leage legacies have nearly doubled in really ‘playing up the whole gay thing’ since the announcement.
“I’m queer in the Neil Patrick Harris sense of the word, but I think it could be enough,” claims Skip Vanderbilt, trust fund twink and perpetual intern. “Technically I own a baseball team and I don’t really believe in ‘accessibility’ as a concept - but I’m gonna mention Stonewall so many times they forget that. This could still be about me.”
“In a way it helps prepare them for the real world. There’s no money and no space in American theater, except for…um... for people like me and my friends,” Stuckley concluded. “We think it’s kind of cringe to hire poor people anyway.”
He added that the company was looking forward to continuing its social justice work with a Nestle-sponsored “Room Where it Snack-ens” food bank this Fall.