02/12/2025
From the Board of Sisters Freehold:
At Sisters Freehold, all staff, board members, and collaborating artists formally agree to abide by the Freehold Theatre Standards, a voluntary tool for self-governance that seeks to nurture communication, safety, respect, and accountability of participants at all levels of theatrical production. These standards specifically prohibit harassment on the basis of gender.
As such, we were surprised and dismayed to learn of a social media post made on Wednesday, January 22, 2025 by one of our founders and artistic directors which was disrespectful in nature toward the transgender community. The post was not reflective of the values of Sisters Freehold or of the Freehold Theatre Standards, which may be reviewed in full at www.sistersfreehold.org/fts.
Sisters Freehold does not tolerate harassing or hateful speech and has formally parted ways with the author of the post. With understanding that the post caused injury to a community we are striving to honor and serve, we express our profound apology and reiterate our commitments to safety, respect, accountability, and inclusion. As we value transparency we would like to share that Sisters Freehold is currently pausing our operations to reexamine how to best honor our values, serve our community, and bring down barriers in theatre in a lasting way, and this process may take some time. Questions or feedback about this matter may be directed to members of our board, Justyne Paxton at [email protected] and Daniel Adegbesan at [email protected].
