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We’ve all heard of “safe spaces,” but that’s not fully possible in the arts. Instead, my hope is to create “brave spaces!” If there’s one thing theater lovers know, it's that creating art isn’t easy—it’s bold, beautiful, and messy work! Often, we must dive into and share emotionally-charged material. And that’s because the best art is telling stories that involve challenging and maybe triggering material. Because then, we’re able to use art as a way to learn about and reflect the world around us.
Brave spaces aren't a luxury in the arts. They’re a necessity for theater lovers and professionals. Without them, we can't push the boundaries of art and storytelling in a way that's healthy and sustainable. This may surprise you, but there's a lot of wisdom we can take from stunt performers! Join me as I share the 5 specific things we can begin doing now to create brave spaces for theater professionals.
In this episode, we cover:
Why the arts require brave spaces more than safe spaces
High-profile examples of the emotional toll of sharing intense and dark stories
How we can create brave spaces using the analogy of stunt work
How to build mental resilience for emotionally challenging material
Professionals to call on to help create brave spaces in arts organizations
Remember always—you're not alone in this work, whoever you are, however you engage in theater, you are not alone. So keep asking questions, keep creating boldly, keep building these spaces where everyone feels brave enough to feel safe, to perform, and lead brave rooms and brave performances! I’d love to hear any feedback you have from this episode—come say hi on Instagram.
Connect with Kira:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Inclusive Stages! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help me reach even more theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone.
Thanks to our music composer, Zachary McConnell, and our producer, Leah Bryant.
More about the Inclusive Stages Podcast
Welcome to 'Inclusive Stages' -- the go-to weekly podcast for theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone. We'll chat with actors, directors, designers, scholars, and more about the current landscape of the theater scene and get their thoughts on how we can do better.
Host Kira Troilo will also give you a sneak peek into live EDI coaching sessions and offer actionable tips for creating more equitable, inclusive, and empathetic theater spaces that support and value the diversity of artists and audiences. Join the conversation, and let's collectively shape the future of human-first theater, one stage at a time.
This post may contain affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on my site at no additional cost to you.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Inclusive Stages podcast follows:
Kira Troilo (00:02.734)
Are you a theater maker, theater artist, or theater lover who wants to make the theater industry better for all of us? You're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Kira Troilo, a theater artist, creative professional, and mom who quit her job and devoted her career to equity, diversity, and inclusion for the arts. Through decades of work in theater spaces, I couldn't help but recognize a gaping hole in our industry, the shocking lack of care and support available for creatives.
Since 2020, I've become obsessed with creating actual human resources for the humans who create theater in community. Enter the Inclusive Stages podcast, a shame-free zone where we put my framework for inclusive theater spaces to practice. Here, we'll build bridges through curiosity and conversation, and we'll never shy away from real talk. Join me as I break down relevant, hot-button topics of our day.
and chat with fascinating industry professionals about their experiences in the theater world. Plus, I'll even show you how I help actors navigate identity differences to tell brave and compelling stories, all while maintaining psychological safety. Ready to start building care-forward creative spaces where humans and art can both thrive? It all happens one stage at a time. Places, everyone. This is the Inclusive Stages Podcast.
Kira Troilo (01:35.118)
Hello, theater friends. Welcome to another episode of the Inclusive Stages podcast. You're here with me today, so you probably love the arts and theater as much as I do. And if there's one thing we know, we know that creating art isn't easy. It's bold, it's beautiful, and it's messy work. And sometimes we have to dive into really challenging and emotional material. Oftentimes we have to do that when it's the best work, right? So that's why today I want to chat about something that's
really essential in this work of EDI for theater for me. It's just at the pinnacle of everything that we do in performance, and that's creating brave spaces. Now, I know we've all heard a lot about safe spaces, right? And there might be some things that come up around that. You might have a visceral reaction to the word safe spaces or the words safe spaces. I always go into environments and say, I can never tell anyone that this is a safe space.
you know, walking in somewhere and saying, is a safe space for you. We can't really do that anywhere because we can't dictate as individuals what feels safe for another individual. I know that the idea behind safe spaces is it's a place that people can share without fear. But in theater, in the arts and entertainment, we're engaging in fear on a regular basis, right? We're telling stories.
And the best art is telling stories that involve challenging and maybe triggering material because we use art as a way to learn and reflect about the world around us. So for a variety of reasons, right, safe spaces aren't really fully possible. Not only can we not avoid difficult conversations or intense material, that's usually where the magic happens. We dig deep, we explore these tough themes and we push boundaries and that takes courage.
So instead of aiming for safe spaces, I believe what we need is a brave spaces. And these are spaces and environments that are intentionally set up to handle those challenges, head on and heart first. Okay, so let's paint a picture using something that might seem totally unrelated, but a colleague of mine, Zena Collins, shout out, brought something up to me that really just lit me up and I felt compelled to talk about it, stunt work.
Kira Troilo (03:57.548)
Yes, that's right. I'm talking about people who jump off rooftops and crash through glass windows, right? It sounds extreme, but it's really not that different from what we ask of actors and artists who are diving into that intense emotional material. In the arts, when we deal with budgets specifically, we tend to prioritize physical safety and resources over mental and emotional well-being. That happens everywhere, but definitely in the arts as well.
We will make sure a stage is secure and stable, a harness is secured, all of this, right? But how often do we intentionally budget for mental health support or emotional wellbeing? Let's be real though, we would never send a stunt performer to jump off a building without the right gear, training, and safety measures. Everyone understands the risks involved in stunt work. That's why I felt compelled to use stunt work as a way into this work of creating brave spaces.
When it comes to actors and artists having to deal with heavy emotional material, we don't always give the same level of attention to preparation and care. And the emotional toll can be just as significant, if not more so. Okay, some high profile examples. I know there are so many examples that I can think of personally, but a couple that we probably all know about. Let's look at A Star is Born, the movie with Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper. Gaga.
openly talked about how emotionally intense filming was and how they both felt really raw after certain scenes. And the emotional toll of these performances can be significant without intentional structures of support in place. Or, I mean, we can look at, you know, a really extreme situation. Look at Heath Ledger's final role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. It's widely known that when actors dive deeply into dark characters,
It can have serious psychological consequences as it obviously did for Heath Ledger. And it sparked countless conversations about how we care for performers dealing with intense material. These are just actors, but think about directors engaging in this material, stage managers who watch it over and over and over again. It's not just actors, it's all artists who work on shows. We need a level of support and preparation and care. And we need to equip these spaces to make them.
Kira Troilo (06:19.224)
brave spaces. So let's break it down. How can we create brave spaces using the analogy of stunt work? Go with me here. I really think there's something to this. Okay, so first off, stunt performers spend a ton of time on physical conditioning. And this isn't just about lifting weights. It's about building strength, yes, but also cardio fitness, for example, to have the endurance and stamina to
continue in that line of work. It's about building flexibility, so things like yoga and Pilates so that you can reduce injury. It's about training in certain skills. know, literally as a stunt performer, you're doing these physical skills like gymnastics that you have to train in to be able to hone. So you're doing all of this preparation work to make yourself
physically strong enough to perform these steps. In the theater world, that means developing different kinds of skills. These are still skills aimed at strength, you know, maybe a different kind of strength, endurance, flexibility, and certain skills that we need as artists to be able to engage in that challenging work. So we are also building the muscles that we need to handle these complex conversations and emotionally charged scenes.
with care. Next, there's injury prevention. Stunt folks, they don't skip basics like this. In order to keep your body in the shape that it needs to be in to do these crazy stunts that people do, they need to warm up. They need to do safety checks, and they need to make sure they're wearing protective gear. It's the same with brave spaces. Truly, when we dive into challenging material, we can't just go. Before we do it, we need to warm up.
We do that with trust building exercises and we do that by setting clear communication agreements and expectations. That is going to prevent emotional injury. That's what we hope. We built these skills so that we can reduce the risks of emotional harm. So just like those harnesses or crash pads, we as artists have our own protective gear.
Kira Troilo (08:43.374)
An example of this is something that I like to use in rehearsal rooms is the word hold. Okay, so physically in a rehearsal room, we might use the word hold, know, an actor might call hold or a stage manager might call hold when there's a physical or technical issue that prevents the production from continuing or rehearsal from continuing. I like to use hold for emotional and psychological concerns as well, because it gives everyone just a second.
to breathe, to pause, to check in, to take five minutes. So we don't need to use tools like hold just for physical safety reasons. These can be used in order to prevent emotional harm as well. And hey, things don't always go so smoothly. Sometimes stunts can lead to injuries. No matter how careful we are, people get hurt.
even under the best of circumstances. So that's why stunt performers often have to focus on rehab and recovery to get better when they've gotten hurt. So they push themselves too far and they need to go see a chiropractor. Their muscles are tired, so they need to get a massage. They're just physically exhausted, so they need to rest. And when we're dealing with emotionally intense material,
Recovery practices like this are just as crucial. If you're an artist or even if you're an audience member, someone who loves art, how many times have you felt burnt out? How many times have you just pushed yourself too far or engaged in material that was just too much? I think we've all been there. So after a tough rehearsal, we may need certain rituals that we develop that help us let go of the heavy stuff we've been carrying.
We also may need things like rest and sleep and hydration and nutrition. Yes, these things are important for physical rehab and recovery, but they're just as important for emotional rehab and recovery as well. Another key area is mental focus and resilience. So this will not surprise you stunt folks don't just rely on physical strength, they have to also train their minds. So
Kira Troilo (11:01.762)
They practice things like visualization and mindfulness in order to stay grounded and keep their cool under pressure. So they're jumping from a height that doesn't just require the effort of their body. For us, it's all about being intentional with self-care and mental preparation for engaging in that emotionally challenging material. So it's just as crucial for us as artists to
build that work-life balance in order to sustain our long-term mental health. We need to build mental resilience. We can practice visualization techniques as well. We can harness the power of meditation and breath work for focus. It is imperative that we take things like mindfulness and stress management seriously. So it's crucial for us to also just
take mental health super seriously so we can continue to perform and engage in challenging material. And lastly, there's a collaboration with experts that goes on when stunt performers are working. They aren't solo heroes. No one really is, right? They've got coordinators, safety teams, and specialists who back them up. In the arts, we have to bring in experts too.
That's where inclusion or EDI consultants come in, cultural consultants, advocates, mental health professionals, skilled facilitators. There are people like this who can come in and help to keep our spaces brave and supportive. And we can't do it alone. We can't expect people who have jobs like stage manager, like director, like choreographer to have
the special skills in order to create and maintain these brave spaces. They have their own jobs and they can also support these kinds of environments. But just like with stunt performers, there are different people who specialize in different elements of building the stunt and supporting the performer. Same thing with artists with emotionally challenging material. There are
Kira Troilo (13:23.786)
experts we can collaborate with to make these environments safer for brave work. Okay, so let's do a quick recap of our five key takeaways here. Number one, conditioning is key. Just like stunt performers build their physical strength and skills, we need to build our inclusion skills to handle the emotional and mental demands of brave spaces. Number two, injury prevention matters.
So we set clear expectations, we use tools like hold, and we have protective structures in place before we dive into challenging material. Number three, recovery is essential. So after intense work, we need to take the time to debrief, rest, let go of the things that we've carried. Emotional recovery is just as vital as physical recovery. And we need to put a focus on this in order to sustain what we do.
again and again and again without burning out. Number four, mental focus and balance and mental health. Practicing mindfulness and visualization isn't just for athletes. Stay grounded, stay balanced and create work-life boundaries to sustain yourself as an artist. Number five, collaboration with experts. Artists are not in this alone.
So it's helpful to bring in experts who can support artists and teams with specialized knowledge and care to create brave spaces that are ready for brave work. That's it for today's episode. Brave spaces, I hope you'll agree, aren't a luxury. They are a necessity. Without them, we can't push the boundaries of art and storytelling in a way that's healthy and sustainable. And isn't that what we're all here to do? Create art.
and theater that's daring and meaningful and makes a difference. That's why I'm so passionate about this because this isn't soft work. These aren't soft skills. These are crucial skills that help us to create theater that we want to engage with, that we want to make, that we want to do, and that we want to see. And we can't just dive into the work and expect everyone to survive it. That might seem...
Kira Troilo (15:43.81)
dramatic, but truly we need to be able to sustain. And to do that, there's a lot of things we can do and a lot of wisdom we can take from physical demanding jobs like stunt performers. So thanks so much for being with me on this episode. Remember always, you're not alone in this work. Whoever you are, however you engage in theater, you are not alone. So keep asking questions, keep creating boldly.
Let's keep building these spaces where everyone feels brave enough to feel safe, to perform and build and design and lead brave rooms and brave performances. So as always, I'm interested and excited to hear what you think. So let me know, what do you think? Is this a good analogy that we can use? It really makes sense to me and I hope that it can be helpful in some way for you. Until next time.
Take care, and we'll see you on the next one.
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