Beyond the Stage: Diversity, Leadership, and the Future of the Performing Arts

The performing arts have long championed diversity on the stage. But who gets the opportunity to lead behind it?

In Beyond the Stage: Diversity, Leadership, and the Future of the Performing Arts, Brian Keith Davis examines a question that reaches beyond representation: Who has the power to lead?

Drawing from original graduate research, published scholarship, and years of professional experience in performing arts and entertainment leadership, Davis explores the barriers that continue to affect access to senior-management positions for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. He examines the roles of mentorship, professional networks, internal advancement, organizational culture, hiring practices, and leadership pipelines-and why public commitments to diversity do not always result in meaningful institutional change.

But Beyond the Stage is not simply an examination of what has gone wrong. It considers what performing arts organizations can do differently.

Davis explores how organizations can move beyond symbolic commitments by developing talent from within, creating meaningful pathways to advancement, connecting employee voice with organizational influence, holding leadership accountable, and building systems capable of sustaining change over time.

At its heart, Beyond the Stage asks the performing arts industry to consider not only who is represented, but who is given the opportunity to influence, advance, and lead.

Because the future of the performing arts will be shaped not only by the people who appear on its stages, but by those entrusted to become stewards of the industry itself.