BACKSTAGE: HOW THE THEATER LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED FOR BIPOC ACTORS

Lin-Manuel Miranda should be proud. According to Actors’ Equity Association, “Hamilton” has led to a sizable increase in jobs for actors of color. This is one of the findings in Equity’s second ever diversity report, which tracks the demographics of its 51,000 members that received Equity contracts from 2016 to 2019, and how much they were paid.

The study measures race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, and veteran status across 93,957 contracts. It finds that based on the previous study, released in 2017, contracts for BIPOC actors increased, from 15.3% to 23.3%. Though that is still lower than BIPOC representation in America, which is 39.6% according to the 2010 U.S. Census Community Survey. White actors were represented 63.95% of the time. And according to the study, “much of the increased representation of people of color can be attributed to multiple productions of ‘Hamilton.’”

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