Stephanie Street: The industry cannot mark its own homework on behaviour anymore

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Sexual harassment complaint form. Photo: Shutterstock

For the past three weeks, I’ve been in rehearsals for The Inquiry for Chichester Festival Theatre, and our company has been sharing rehearsal rooms with the huge crew of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Christmas show, A Box of Delights. It’s such a treat, earwigging in a green room, covering everything from rage against celebrity casting to sure-fire assertions of who is going to take over the National Theatre. There’s nothing like it to get a clear view on the status quo.

The hardest-hitting line of conversation was the frank lunchtime chat about bullying and harassment. You won’t be surprised that the war stories came thick and fast – we all know someone, have worked with someone or sadly have been on the receiving end of the behaviour of someone who has crossed a red line in the workplace.
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In one actor’s words, the biggest problem facing our sector is the lack of any meaningful HR structure. What she meant by that, I think, was that even though producing houses have HR or people managers who handle contracting and pay, there are still no adequate structures through which people can seek help and support when they have experienced harassment. In this actor’s view, this lack of accountability, of holding – in a very human sense – responsibility for collaborators was at the root of all the problems confronting individual creative artists.

When the story broke last month about the allegations facing comedian Russell Brand, I’m sure there were many relieved people who felt they had at last been seen and heard after years of having their own unconnected complaints against industry figures swept under the carpet. For so long, ‘the talent’ has been protected by all kinds of force fields, and those in charge of making the work and holding the purse strings turned blind eyes to all sorts of transgressions to protect the revenue-earning potential of big-banking celebrities.

The responsibility of protecting individuals in the workplace, should be held squarely and openly by those who produce and make the work

We are now seeing the collateral damage of this approach, but it shouldn’t be the media to which we turn for a gory retribution. We shouldn’t have to expect a team of investigative journalists to spend months unearthing sources and information in order to be able to publish without fear of defamation. The responsibility of protecting individuals in the workplace, who are vulnerably employed, should be held squarely and openly by those who produce and make the work.

Another huge piece of news this month has been the launching of the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority, the independent industry body tasked with improving standards of behaviour at work. The fact that CIISA will be autonomous is a big positive; until now, organisations and producers have marked their own homework on workplace behaviour and nothing was ever addressed. We have to hold ourselves accountable as an industry and provide safe places to work where people don’t feel scared of being aggressed sexually, racially, physically or emotionally.