Changing Space: A Conversation on Inclusive Dressing Rooms

Insights – Feb 2025

The theatre industry is often ahead of the curve when it comes to inclusivity.

As conversations about gender have become more prevalent in American culture, the industry is evolving towards greater inclusivity through new policies, methodology, and, increasingly, the physical spaces within theatres. This trend is reflected in the architecture and theatre consulting fields, with increased attention to creating inclusive spaces that serve everyone more equitably.

For planners and architects, the gender conversation has raised many questions. How can architects and theatre planners design traditionally gendered spaces to serve the needs of artists and casts of all genders? How do we ensure safety and comfort in spaces where safety has historically been assumed to have a primary correlation to gender? And what’s the square footage?

Henry Golden-Starr sat down with Schuler Shook Partner Todd Hensley to talk about how dressing room layouts can support greater inclusivity for all genders. Todd has been a Theatre Consultant for over 30 years and in that time has seen a movement towards empathy in an industry known for the phrase “The show must go on.”

Henry Golden-Starr: So, Todd, traditionally dressing rooms have been a space for getting into costumes, putting on make-up, and that’s it. Now they’re starting to be seen as a second home for actors, which they’ve always been, but why is this shift in thinking and its impact on theatre planning occurring now?

Todd Hensley: Well, people are more attentive to taking care of a wide range of folks who are backstage. In the “bad old days,” sometimes the entire cast was in a single room, and it was a bit of a badge of honor that you were okay with getting down to your undergarments in order to prepare. It reflected how far you’d go to serve the show. Now, I think we have grown up a bit. We are recognizing that people deserve better treatment.

Henry: When did you first see the conversation of gender inclusive dressing rooms pop up?

Todd: I think this first cropped up when we did a big community theatre maybe 20 years ago. The artistic director said, “We have some people who just aren’t comfortable, so let’s do a little separate changing zone for them.” We thought, “That’s a great idea, why in the world would we not?” In that case I think we did it with just a little simple little partition. These things can be as simple as, I always say, a department store dressing room. It’s no more than that.

Inclusive Dressing Rooms ISU Wonsook Kim CFA 1800x1200

Room-dividing curtains are a simple solution for creating private changing areas in a communal dressing room. The changing areas become a part of the larger room simply by opening the curtains. This allows for flexibility while providing safety and comfort to the users of the space.

Rolling costume racks live in the center of the room. The third rack is removed when productions utilize the private changing areas.

Inclusive Dressing Rooms Peninula Players 1800x1200

This design is for a professional summer theatre with three-day turn-arounds between show closings and openings. With multiple shows in production at once, the theatre needed a dressing room that would accommodate multiple casts and provide private changing areas.

A combination of room dividers and private rooms allows both flexibility for varying cast sizes and personal comfort for the theatre’s very busy actors.

Henry: In some of the designs I’ve seen from Schuler Shook, there’s an all-gender communal space for makeup stations, costume racks, Equity cot, what have you… and then single occupancy changing rooms adjacent to the main area.

Todd: So, the performer’s sequence can be, you know, you change into the basics of your costume in the changing area, you come out, take care of your makeup in the group area, you put on your topcoat, your hat, whatever it is… grab your musket.

Henry: Ah yes, muskets.

Todd: Whatever the show needs, and then you’re out the door. That way, lots of people can use these rooms. The whole place becomes busy and occupied and equal and inclusive for everybody…the intent matters.

I think of all this as a design challenge… we’re achieving an inclusive end, but we have to think through, “What does it mean if we put a room here or a door here? Is there a blockage?” It has to be made accessible.

And what about the, I’m going to call it, “antagonistic use?” If we put fully private spaces into a school, well, that becomes a supervisory problem, right? The director’s not seeing into that room. So, what if there’s something going on in that room that shouldn’t be going on?

Henry: I imagine the school setting brings up a number of unique factors to consider when designing these spaces.

Todd: Some drama teachers would say “I can’t even think about dealing with all the backstage drama… I need to be able to at least separate people in some fashion into dressing room A and dressing room B.” Those things have to be carefully considered, and generally it’s the staff that picks up that challenge. For high schools, we’re often double purposing these rooms, because how often is it truly an active dressing room? Maybe six times a year? So, most of the time it’s really a green room or even a classroom.

Inclusive Dressing Rooms MAPS HS 1800 X1200

In many high schools, dressing rooms are uninhabited for the majority of the year. This multi-purpose design allows dressing rooms to be used for classes throughout the school year and provides the support needed for productions with varying cast sizes.

Larger rooms become communal dressing rooms, with a retractable divider allowing for greater flexibility in one room. Individual changing rooms give students options for various levels of privacy.

Inclusive Dressing Rooms Wells HS 1800 X1200

This solution for a high school’s black box dressing room uses both walls and curtains to create private stalls for changing, similar to dressing rooms found in department stores.

In educational settings, student supervision and safety is a factor in design. This combination of curtains and walls allow greater supervision while ensuring privacy and personal comfort for students when they are dressing.

Henry: We are living in a very socially charged time. Is gender inclusion something you bring up as a benefit in adopting these design concepts? Or does the idea of inclusivity come up in planning conversations with clients?

Todd: The idea of inclusivity still might make some clients uneasy. The art of it is to just keep pointing out the positives. Those positives might be multiple uses. It might be efficiency on the square footage, so you don’t always have to separate people into “Men’s Dressing” and “Women’s Dressing” rooms only.

But, even yesterday, working on another community theatre, they had already come up with some ideas. They said, “We’ve got a private room inside each dressing room because we’re a community theatre and some people are new to this game, and they just want some privacy.”

And that company also had only inclusive washrooms out front.

Henry: That’s amazing.

Todd: Yeah, thumbs up. They had already kind of gone down that pike and committed to it. It was great.

Many of our clients are already attuned to this, and it is simply a question of, “How do we make the best accommodation?” Every project is different. Every staff group is different.

But we are definitely seeing more attention paid to these rooms. They are more than just an afterthought. To my mind it is such a simple and logical head-nodder. Right? Of course, we should do that!

As it becomes accepted and understood intuitively it doesn’t stand out as “Ah, here! Look at our secure private place to go dress.” I think it’s such a great idea that it just becomes a part of the scheme immediately.

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