The Players are an in-demand resource with limited staff capacity. Reaching out as early as possible increases the likelihood we will have availability to support your community. While we consider every inquiry we receive, we typically cannot accept bookings for off-campus programs without at least 6 months advance notice. Similarly, we typically cannot accept bookings for on-campus programs within the same term as the inquiry. 

Please fill out our online inquiry form. We will do our best to send an initial response to your inquiry within a week. 

Our Company Manager will contact you to set up a meeting with one of our program facilitators. During this meeting, the facilitator will explore with you whether the Players would be a good resource to support your community’s needs. You should be ready to discuss your target audience, your goals for the event, and possible dates/times for the performance. You can find questions to guide your prethinking on this page. If you are interested in booking the Players as part of a joint venture with another group or institution, it is important for a representative from all parties to participate in this initial exploratory conversation.

The CRLT Players provide sessions applicable to faculty, graduate student instructors, and university leaders. As our expertise and capacity allow, we will also offer programs for medical professionals and staff working in higher education. We do not perform for undergraduate students, community organizations, or corporations.

While The Players’ primary mission is to serve the U-M community, we also provide sessions for other universities and scholarly professional organizations as staff capacity permits. You can explore places where we have presented sessions via the map on this page.

The Players can accommodate most audience sizes, depending on the venue. We have worked with in-person audiences up to 900. We do not recommend providing sessions for fewer than 10 people, however, because it can make conversation challenging for participants.

All of the sessions in the Players repertoire have been designed to support members of the higher education community in advancing equity in their professional/educational spaces. You can see a full list of sessions available during the upcoming/current academic year here. Clicking on any session will direct you to a page that includes the session’s description, learning goals, and audience testimonials.

All Players sessions are created to meet a need identified by the higher education community. To create accurate and specific sessions, program staff consult academic research, conduct qualitative interviews, and draw on ethnographic observation of relevant settings. In the development process, material is previewed by clients, focus groups, and/or the CRLT Faculty Advisory Board before being added to the repertoire.

New work creation is primarily driven by the needs of our key campus partners, but in rare instances, we do create work based on requests by other groups. Session development is a lengthy and often costly process, however, and new programs cannot be created with a quick turnaround.

The length of a Players session varies, but will most often be either 90 or 120 minutes. You can find the exact length of any session by navigating to its specific page.

We are able to present our work in a wide variety of spaces. Many of our sessions can be hosted in a classroom with minimal tech support, although some do require larger venues and a more complex technical set-up (e.g microphones, projections). Our Company Manager will consult with you to ensure that the space selected for your event meets the needs of the session you have booked and your anticipated audience.

The Players and our clients have developed a number of helpful strategies for advertising performances and recruiting audiences.

• Videotaping a Players performance is not permitted because of the contracts we hold with the Actor’s Equity Association, the national union for stage performers.
• We do not currently offer livestreaming for our performances because of the interactive nature of our session facilitation. We have, though, performed for in-person audiences of up to 900, and have some fully virtual sessions that are also available to serve larger audiences if you do not have adequate physical space.
• Clients can photograph the Players facilitator and session attendees (in accordance with your organization’s policies). Because of union regulations related to compensation and the potential to distract performers and audience, we do not allow photography during Players performances. You can find images of most performances on their session page that you can use to document your event, though those images may not feature the same cast that performed for your event.

Costs vary based on a client’s relationship to the Players/U-M, the number of performers required, and– for external clients– travel and per-diem charges. Once we have a sense of the factors that will influence pricing for the event that you are interested in, our Company Manager will provide you with a detailed estimate of applicable costs.

When you book a Players session, we commit to offering:

• One to two planning meetings with a session facilitator (following our initial intake conversation), to support session success
• Logistical consultation with our Company Manager 
• One 90-120 minute facilitated session
• One debrief meeting to reflect on the session and discuss possible next steps in your organization’s changework in this area

The Players have been written into many grants, including ADVANCE and NSF grants. We do not offer assistance in grant writing or administration; however, we are happy to provide your organization with the information necessary to complete your grant applications and/or reports.

Our scripts are not available for purchase, nor do we offer rights of performance to external groups. Players scripts are the copyrighted property of the University of Michigan Board of Regents.

While we will not identify specific performers for your project, we are happy to circulate a casting notice to our company members. If you are interested in us circulating such a notice, please email our Casting and Directing Practitioner with the information below.

• A brief description of the project for which you are seeking performers
• Any information about the identity characteristics needed for the project you are casting (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, age range, etc…)
• The number of performers you are seeking
• A list of dates/times performers would need to be available for rehearsals, performances, and/or filming sessions
• An indication of the payment range performers might expect for participating in your project (As a point of reference, performers are paid $22-$25 for stage work. Performers are typically paid at a higher rate for videotaped performances. Industry standards for educational videos range from approximately $450 per performer for a half day and $670 for a full day.)
• The name and contact information of the individual with your group who will be interfacing with performers and making casting decisions.

Please note: We will not circulate a casting notice with incomplete information. Once our Casting and Directing Practitioner has received all required information, she will forward this email to our company members, and they will contact you directly if they are interested and available. We will only circulate a casting notice for a project once, and cannot guarantee that performers will respond to your call.

We love to connect with people who have a commitment to advancing social justice in and through the performing arts! Our company welcomes individuals with varying levels of experience and are able to offer paid opportunities for Equity and Non-Equity performers, as well as those with little to no performance background. We are occasionally able to offer paid opportunities for composers, musicians, playwrights, and dramaturgs. If you are interested in learning more about our company and how you can be a part of our work, please fill out the form on our “Get Involved” page, and we’ll be in touch!