We, and others like us, have given Purple Rose Theatre Company every opportunity to listen to our voices, and to address our qualms quietly over the years. We have not been taken seriously. 

On September 14, 2020 nearly 70 former apprentices, actors, stage managers, designers, and artists sent a 22-page letter detailing grievances and a list of solutions to the board at the Purple Rose. These grievances ranged everywhere from manipulation, emotional abuse, and bullying, to discriminatory hiring practices, unsafe working conditions, homophobia, and racism. Many of these grievances centered on the long-time artistic director Guy Sanville. 

The letter was brushed off. After about 6 months of discussions with the Actor's Equity Association and repeated attempts by the PRTC to settle with us to buy our silence, AEA fought for us to arbitrate. 

The arbitrator ruled that all but one of our grievances would be dismissed because they happened longer than 30 days ago. 

This is unacceptable. Abuse has no expiration date. 

We've been patient and silent far too long, and we demand accountability from Guy Sanville and the Purple Rose Theatre Company. 

We believe in a bright future for the Purple Rose Theatre Company.
We envision a Purple Rose Theatre Company that will not only survive the pandemic, but thrive as a safer, more inclusive and more equitable organization going forward.

We envision an administrative staff that operates transparently and clearly, with measurable objectives, with adequate internal guidance, structure and support, and with a more diplomatic balance of power.

We envision a creative environment overflowing with differing perspectives and ideas, freed from ideas of hierarchy and pressures of overwork and unnecessary trauma, uniting to tell stories that capture the true diversity of all the myriad voices and lives – including those voices who have been so long unheard, and whose lives have been so long unseen – that find a home in the Midwest, and in the state of Michigan.

We envision future apprentice classes leaving the Purple Rose Theatre Company not merely as former apprentices, or as potential future Purple Rose employees, but as well-rounded, passionate, joyful theatre professionals, ready to make their mark and push the respective theatre environments into which they venture even further into a bright future.

We envision a Purple Rose Theatre Company that provides not just straight or straight-passing people, and not just white or white-passing people, but all people – Black people, openly gay people, Latinx people, Indigenous people, trans people – a fulfilling creative home.

What we cannot envision – and will no longer accept – is for the Purple Rose Theatre Company to return to the status quo. 

By signing this petition, we are saying that we want to see the Purple Rose Theatre Company take accountability for the past and to make positive choices moving forward.