Refracted is striving for more transparency. Before even auditioning for us, we want to make sure you have every question answered about what working with us will be like.

The 2025 season, and the cancellation of Dream Hou$e, caused real strain within our artistic community. Artists experienced confusion, frustration, and a loss of trust in our processes and leadership.

We heard from collaborators that aspects of the experience did not fully align with expectations around clarity and communication. The “Lessons Learned” document linked below is an effort to take responsibility for that gap. It reflects what we heard from artists and collaborators, how we responded in real time, and the changes we have made to ensure this does not happen again.

We are sharing this publicly because accountability requires transparency, not just in what went wrong, but in how we are choosing to move forward.

Contracts

Read through the contract you’d be signing if working on a show of ours! This has been annotated by our General Counsel to better clarify what each clause means.

REfracted’s culture and Collaboration guide

Our leadership and collaborators undertook a comprehensive review of nationally recognized standards for ethical theatre-making, including the Chicago Theatre Standards, the Actors’ Equity CAT Contract, and the We See You White American Theatre Demands and grounded these principles in legally sound business practices to create a Culture and Collaboration Guide, which all collaborators will be asked to sign.

& the rest

We spent time documenting our policies, expectations and processes for all current and future collaborators to read through and understand. From audition policies to post mortem policies, you can find it all here.