The Standard Training Production Readiness Contract Protections Case Study Field Notes Speaking For Performers Scope Your Production →

The Textured Hair Standard for Stage & Screen

Is your production
Texture Ready™?

Textured hair protections are already in your union agreements. A contract does not create the staffing plan, budget, performer intake, qualified vendor pathway, maintenance plan, or escalation process needed to deliver them. Texture Ready™ does. We train your people and build the production system behind the work, with your team.

Now scoping 2026-27 productions and 2027 seasons

Scope Your Production → See what's already in the contracts

Built for theaters, opera, film and commercial production, unions, and training institutions. First case study: Hairspray at Umbrella Arts. Featured in American Theatre Magazine.

Kira Troilo leading the Black Hair Is Hair workshop in Cambridge, with a full audience of theater professionals seated facing the stage.

Black Hair Is Hair · Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge · 2023

The problem

The stylist can't fix a production
that wasn't built for the work.

You can hire a talented hair professional and still fail. Not because of who is in the chair. Because of what the production did not plan around them.

When any of these are missing, the gap lands on the performer.

  • No time in the schedule
  • No budget for maintenance
  • No performer intake before design decisions
  • No way to verify the expertise you actually need
  • No plan for understudies and replacements
  • No escalation path when something goes wrong

Texture Ready™ moves that work back where it belongs: into the production. See the standard →

The contract-to-production gap

The agreement can set the obligation.
It can't run Tuesday.

Hair protections are written into the agreements most productions already work under. Reading them is the first step. Meeting them takes a system.

Actors' Equity Association

LORT and NEAT agreements

If a hair style requires services that may alter or harm hair or skin (the agreements name chemical permanents, relaxers, weaves, braids, and bleaching), the theatre identifies a licensed and qualified technician. Under LORT, the actor receives the technician's name and qualifications at least 48 hours ahead. Under NEAT, the technician is mutually agreed. Upkeep and maintenance are determined in consultation.

Color and style changes require written agreement, with the theatre paying for the change, its upkeep, and restoration.

2023-27 LORT Agreement, Rule 12(G)(3). NEAT Rulebook 2023-26, Rule 13(I)(3).

SAG-AFTRA

TV/Theatrical and Commercials

The hair and makeup equity provisions added in 2023 carry into the ratified 2026 agreement, effective through June 30, 2030: reimbursement for performers who source their own hair and makeup services, a paid minimum for that time, and a consultation. The word they use: "qualified." Still undefined, now through 2030.

The 2025 Commercials contracts go further on process: producers make commercially reasonable efforts to give performers contact information for the qualified hair stylist or makeup artist for consulting, at the fitting or 24 hours before the first work day, whichever comes first.

SAG-AFTRA 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement (ratified June 2026). 2025 Commercials Contracts, Makeup, Hairdress, Wardrobe.

AGMA

Opera and dance employer agreements

Requirements are set company by company. Current agreements include provisions that management provide wigs, hair coloring, and makeup with awareness and sensitivity to skin and hair color and type, and that oversight be provided by a staff member experienced in working with artists of various skin tones and hair textures.

Grooming changes requested by management are reimbursed, including restoration at the end of the contract.

Example: AGMA and Seattle Opera, 2023-26, Article 42. Terms vary by employer agreement.

Somebody still has to operationalize it.

  • Who verifies the technician is qualified?
  • When does performer consultation happen?
  • Where is consent documented?
  • How much time and money go into the production budget?
  • Who holds maintenance?
  • What happens when casting changes?
  • What's the escalation path when the plan isn't working?
  • Who knows these lines exist before something breaks?

Specific requirements vary by agreement and contract cycle. Texture Ready™ provides production infrastructure and education, not legal advice. Plain-language summaries; read the agreements you work under.

Read the current protections →

Two ways to get Texture Ready™

Train your people.
Equip your production.

Two parts, one standard. Your people, trained. Your production, built. We coach, your team executes.

Train

Texture Ready™
Private Cohort

Train Your People

6 hours. 6 domains. A credential your people carry forward. For producers, general managers, production and stage managers, costume, wig, and hair leadership, faculty, union staff, and the people responsible for making the work possible.

  • The complete curriculum across six competency domains: Literacy, Fluency, Architecture, Consent, Care, Escalation
  • Delivered as three 2-hour virtual sessions, two 3-hour sessions, or 1 full in-person day
  • Content tailored to your roster, your agreements, and your productions
  • Texture Ready™ Standard Credential, valid two years
  • Available for institutions, peer organization groups, and pre-production teams

Investment

$8,500

Up to 10 participants. $750 per additional seat, 16 maximum. Peer organizations can share a cohort and split the room. Film and TV teams scoped in conversation.

Bring Training to Your Organization See the six domains →
Equip

Production Readiness
Engagement

Build Your Production System

We build the infrastructure your production keeps, with your team. Built once. Owned by your organization. Reused production after production.

  • A scoping assessment of your production against the six domains
  • Your custom toolkit: performer intake and consent, per-performer hair plans, budget reserve and line build, vendor pathway, scheduling and staffing, dressing room standard, continuity log, escalation card and pathway, post-run debrief
  • Three sessions with your team: intake, check-in, handoff
  • Film, TV, and commercial configured for that cadence, with documentation suitable for legal and HR sign-off

Investment · Theater

Tier 1 · Emerging (under $250K) $9,000 to $11,000
Tier 2 · Established ($250K to $750K) $13,000 to $16,000
Tier 3 · Flagship ($750K+) From $18,000

Production budget thresholds. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped to your production.

Scope Your Production What the system includes →
Train + Equip

The Full
Standard

Both, In One Engagement

Your team learns the standard while we build the operational infrastructure underneath it, with them. Your people and your infrastructure, sequenced so the trained team runs the system you build together.

  • Private Cohort training for your team
  • A full Equip build of your production system
  • The fastest path to Texture Ready™ Equipped, the organizational mark
  • Bundled below the cost of buying the two separately

Investment · Starts at Tier 2

Tier 2 · Established ($250K to $750K) From $19,500
Tier 3 · Flagship ($750K+) From $24,500

Film, TV, and commercial scoped. Emerging productions can scope Train and Equip individually.

Scope the Full Standard

Theater pricing scales with production budget. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped in a discovery call. Need to bring this to your organization? The one-page overview and internal case are here.

What production ready looks like

Hairspray at Umbrella Arts.

25 performers. Multiple textures, styles, maintenance needs, and production variables. 30 to 40 hours of design, consultation, fitting, and run support across rehearsal and tech. The first production to run the Texture Ready™ system start to finish.

A qualified Hair Lead from the Texture Ready™ team braiding a performer's protective style at the Umbrella Arts Center production of Hairspray, with Kira Troilo observing.
The hair station setup at Umbrella Arts Center's Hairspray production, with wig stands, named station tags for each performer, and the production's stage feed visible on the monitor.
The Texture Ready™ team with the Umbrella Arts Center production team, including producing partner Brian Boruta.

Before the work became urgent, the production had:

  • Performer intake and consent for all 25
  • Individual hair plans
  • Staffing needs named
  • Product and equipment planning
  • Time requirements on the schedule
  • A budget sized to the run
  • Maintenance responsibilities assigned
  • Stations and chain of command
  • Escalation in place before a crisis

"Texture Ready™ gave us the information, the resources, and the tools we needed to make a roadmap and individual plans for each actor that met the needs of the production, respected the budget, and cared for the actor both on stage and in their daily lives away from the show."

Brian Boruta · Producing Artistic Director, Umbrella Arts

Published · May 2026

Budget, timeline, domain-by-domain evidence, and producer and performer testimony from the production.

"Best-selling production in the theater's history to date."

Umbrella Arts

See how Hairspray became Texture Ready™ →

The Standard

Hair is a production department.
Not a specialty. Not an afterthought.

Like lighting. Like costume. Like sound. Every other department has a lead, a budget, a timeline, and documented protocols. Hair doesn't, and the labor falls on Black performers and performers of color to fill that gap.

Texture Ready™ is the Textured Hair Standard for Stage & Screen. A specialist can't produce documented consent, a budget line, a maintenance schedule, or an escalation pathway. The standard builds the infrastructure so textured hair is planned for, regardless of who is in the chair, before the first rehearsal, before casting is complete, before tech week.

A production is Texture Ready™ when the system works. Not when one exceptional person made it work. The system has six domains.

Six domains. One standard:

LiteracyUnderstand textured hair well enough to make responsible production decisions.
FluencyHave the language, and the real costs and feasibility, to communicate clearly with performers and professionals.
ArchitecturePut the real time, labor, products, maintenance, expertise, and vendor pathways into the budget and the schedule.
ConsentLearn what performers need early enough for that information to shape the plan, and document it.
CareCommunication and collaboration that puts performers in chairs, not in the position of educating their own production.
EscalationKnow who holds maintenance and what happens when the plan isn't working, before the first rehearsal.

The differentiator

Training the stylist is not the same
as preparing the production.

Without the standard

Hair is a side problem.

  • Costume designer or ASM informally inherits hair work mid-rehearsal
  • Hair budget is leftover from costume. Eaten by week 2
  • Performers buy their own products and arrive early to maintain styles
  • No intake, no documented consent, no record if something breaks
  • The hair obligations in your agreements have no one responsible for them. Nobody reads those lines until something breaks
  • "Just let us know" is the escalation plan. There is no plan.
  • Performers stay quiet because there are no solutions in place

With the standard

Hair is a department.

  • A qualified Hair Lead is named before casting closes
  • Hair budget is built before the cast is set, sized for all hair types
  • Maintenance time lives on the call sheet, paid and accounted for
  • Intake, consent, and escalation are documented before the first hair call
  • Contract obligations are known, assigned, and met before first rehearsal
  • An escalation pathway is known by every performer at first rehearsal
  • Performers perform. The production carries the labor.
"We have costume designers. We have sound and lighting. Hair should be a design too."
Pearl Scott · Ensemble (the Dynamites), Dance Captain · Hairspray, Umbrella Arts 2026

Qualified isn't a person.
It's a production.

The stylist does the hair. Texture Ready™ makes sure the production around them is ready for the work.

Who this is for

Three ways in.

Producing Organizations

Theater. Opera. Film. Television. Commercial work.

You are casting diversely, your agreements already carry hair obligations, and no one on your team is watching for either. The labor is landing on performers and there is no documentation if something goes wrong.

Get your people and production ready →

Unions & Industry Organizations

Field staff, members, employers, and industry leaders.

The people enforcing or supporting the standard need the vocabulary and a practical framework to recognize problems earlier, before they become grievances.

Explore industry training →

Conservatories & Training Programs

Teach the production standard before it has to be unlearned.

Their first job will hand them obligations nobody taught them to meet, and the performers they work with will absorb the gap.

The Conservatory Standard →

Performer? This standard exists to protect you. Before you sign, you have the right to ask if a production is Texture Ready™. We built the questions for you.

5 Questions to Ask →

From the cohorts

Two cohorts in.
The room keeps agreeing.

Cohort 1 convened in April 2026: producers, casting directors, agents, employment attorneys, union leaders, theater critics, conservatory leaders, and performers. Cohort 2 followed in June and July. Here is what the rooms said.

25
Industry Leaders
Convened in Cohort 1
9.7/10
Cohort 1 Average Rating
From Feedback Respondents
8
Sectors Represented
Theater · Film · Casting · Education · Legal · Union · Press · Tech

The Cohort 2 Room · June & July 2026

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company · Stratford Festival · IATSE Local 798 leadership · professional freelance Hair Leads and stylists

"This is not just an added, nice-to-have thing for productions, but actually critically necessary, and easier and more practical to implement than I would have thought."

Robert CaseyMaggie Agency

"Texture Ready™ has shown the skills and experience needed to move things forward in the entertainment space. These conversations have gone in circles for years. It's great to see an executable framework and a standard."

Zena CollinsFounder, naha

"There is so much I need to understand, and Kira's presentation was an honest, knowledgeable, and passionate way for me to learn about this important topic that affects so many actors in our community."

Julie KnowltonCasting Director, Slate Casting

"The level of intention required is important, but it is not hard if people do just a little of the work they would do for anything else critical to a production."

Kristan BushCEO, Performance Paradigm

"The shift is action. It's encouraging and empowering to witness the work happening for textured hair. It's not just a conversation."

Rachelle GauthierDirector of Marketing, Performance Paradigm

"I'm much more tuned into nuanced issues around Black hair, and how NOT mainstreamed this topic is, but how 'othered' it is."

Joyce KulhawikPresident, Boston Theater Critics Association

For Conservatories & Brands

Beyond the single production.
Texture Ready™ in the curriculum.

For conservatories training the next generation before they graduate, and brands funding access to the standard across the field.

The Conservatory Standard

Faculty Cohort, $8,500. The Private Cohort, delivered for your faculty and production staff. Same standard, same credential, no education discount.

Conservatory Embedment, $22,500 per year. Two-year minimum. Faculty Cohort in year one, curriculum integration into existing coursework, advisory on two student productions per year, and a graduating pathway that leaves students credential-eligible. Capped at three partners through 2027.

Brand & Sponsorship Partnership

For brands funding access: sponsored training, full Equip engagements for productions that cannot afford them, or sponsored cohorts that open the standard to practitioners across the field. Specification is merit-based; brands cannot buy default placement.

Conservatory Embedment capped at three partners through 2027. Brand partnerships scoped to engagement.

Scope a Conversation

The Path

How organizations move
through the standard.

1

Train

Your Hair Lead and the people around them train on the standard and earn the Texture Ready™ Standard Credential. They return with the language, knowledge, and authority to lead the work.

2

Equip

We build your production's system with your team: custom toolkit, intake and consent, budget, vendor pathways, escalation. Then we hand it over.

3

Your team runs it

The system is yours. Your Hair Lead leads the work, your production carries the standard, and it travels to every show after this one. We coach. Your team executes. No permanent middleman.

Origin

Built from what performers
said they needed.

Texture Ready™ grew from research with Black artists about their experiences with hair on stage and set, and from years inside production rooms where performers were routinely asked to absorb labor the production had never planned.

In 2023, the Black Hair Is Hair workshop gathered Boston regional theater leaders for a single afternoon. That afternoon became an eBook. The eBook became a toolkit. The toolkit became a standard.

The conclusion wasn't find nicer people. It was build a better production.

Read the field notes →
Kira Troilo teaching the curl pattern chart at the Black Hair Is Hair workshop, with a screen showing hair textures from Type 2b to Type 4c.

Teaching the curl pattern chart · Black Hair Is Hair, 2023. Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge.

Kira Troilo speaking at the Black Hair Is Hair workshop, with a slide showing her childhood photo behind her.

About Kira

The work behind
the standard.

Kira Troilo is the founder of Texture Ready™ and the architect of the standard. Three years ago she started translating what performers already knew from lived experience into documents productions could actually use: intake forms, budget tools, a curriculum. Texture Ready™ is that work, formalized.

She's led hair departments herself, most recently as Hair Lead on Hairspray at The Umbrella Arts Center, the production that tested every piece of this system start to finish.

2023 Workshop"Black Hair Is Hair." Boston regional theater leaders, Multicultural Arts Center
2024 eBookBlack Hair on Stage. Practical guide adopted by theaters and conservatories
2026 StandardTexture Ready™, the Textured Hair Standard for Stage & Screen
May 2026American Theatre Magazine. National feature on the Texture Ready™ standard
April to July 2026Cohorts 1 & 2. Producers, unions, conservatories, and casting trained to the standard
PressThe Boston Globe. "Prevention is not mysterious. It's operational."
October 2026Lincoln Center Day of Learning. "Textured Hair Is a Safety Issue"
Live EngagementUmbrella Arts · Hairspray (case study)

Build it before you need it

Tell us where your production is.
We'll tell you what's missing.

If you're planning a season, a production, a training program, or an industry initiative, one scoping call determines what is already in place, what's missing, and the right level of support. Bring your agreements, your cast size, and your current hair plan (or the honest absence of one).

One scoping call · Your production mapped against the six domains · A real number, not a range

Scope Your Production →

30 minutes with the Texture Ready™ team. You leave with the gaps named and a scoped path to close them. Not sure where to start? Bring what you have.

Training your team this season?

Private cohorts. Custom-scheduled.

The full curriculum, delivered exclusively for your organization: three 2-hour virtual sessions, two 3-hour sessions, or 1 full in-person day, scheduled around your production calendar. $8,500 for up to 10 people, $750 per additional seat.

Bring training to your organization →

Looking for the next sponsored cohort?

Cohorts 1 and 2 convened in 2026. Cohort 3 opens when a named sponsor is confirmed. This list hears first.

I'm representing (select all that apply)

Questions answered

Before you book.

What do our union agreements actually require around hair?

More than most productions have read. The AEA LORT and NEAT agreements require a licensed and qualified technician for services that may alter or harm hair or skin, with notice or mutual agreement, and consultation on upkeep. The SAG-AFTRA hair and makeup equity provisions, carried into the ratified 2026 TV/Theatrical agreement through 2030, add reimbursement and consultation for performers who source their own hair services and use "qualified" without defining it. The 2025 Commercials contracts require producers to make reasonable efforts to connect performers with the qualified stylist for consulting before the first work day. AGMA employer agreements increasingly require awareness of hair texture and experienced oversight.

Reading the lines is not the same as being able to meet them. That is the gap Texture Ready™ closes: Train builds the knowledge. Equip builds the system. Read the current protections in plain language, then bring your agreements to a scoping call.

Our season is already underway. Is it too late?

No. The best time is before the season budget is locked, so hair gets planned as a department. The second-best time is now. A mid-season Equip engagement is built around your production calendar instead of ahead of it, and the system you leave with runs on every production after this one.

For 2027 seasons: scope now, train and build before first rehearsal, and your team runs the system from day one.

What is the difference between Train, Equip, and the Full Standard?

Train is the Private Cohort: your people learn the standard and earn the credential. 6 hours of curriculum across 6 domains, delivered as three 2-hour virtual sessions, two 3-hour sessions, or 1 full in-person day. $8,500 for up to 10 people, $750 per additional seat.

Equip is the build, in three sessions with your team: an intake that scores your current state against the six domains, a mid-build check-in, and a handoff where every artifact is walked through and an implementation plan is signed. The toolkit (intake and consent, hair plans, budget reserve and line build, vendor pathway, scheduling and staffing, dressing room standard, continuity log, escalation card and pathway, post-run debrief) is yours and runs on every production after. Theater pricing: Tier 1 (production budget under $250K) $9,000 to $11,000; Tier 2 ($250K to $750K) $13,000 to $16,000; Tier 3 ($750K+) from $18,000, scoped. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped.

The Full Standard is both together, sequenced so your trained team runs the system you build together: from $19,500 at Tier 2, scoped from $24,500 at Tier 3. It costs more than either floor because it is both offers: at Tier 2, bought separately, Train plus Equip runs $21,500 or more.

A core principle across all three: we coach, your team executes. We are not the labor in the room, and you do not need us there once the system is yours.

What is the credential, and what does it actually mean?

The Texture Ready™ Standard Credential is issued to individuals who complete the full curriculum and the assessment. Holders are Texture Ready™ Credential Holders. It is a defined professional standard, not a certificate of attendance, built around six named competency domains: Literacy, Fluency, Architecture, Consent, Care, and Escalation. The credential is valid for two years, with a renewal pathway in the third year.

It is the language productions can use to say: this person has been trained to the standard. Where an agreement uses "qualified" without defining it, the credential is the answer a production can point to.

The credential verifies completion of the curriculum and demonstrated knowledge across the six domains. It does not independently certify hands-on hairstyling proficiency, and it is not meant to. The credential travels with the individual. It does not, on its own, make any production Equipped. Organizations earn a separate mark, Texture Ready™ Equipped.

What is Texture Ready™ Equipped?

It is the organizational mark. The Standard Credential is held by people. Equipped is held by organizations, and it says your production has both the system and the trained staff to run it.

Six requirements: completion of Equip or the Full Standard, an accepted toolkit and implementation plan, a named internal system lead, at least 2 active Texture Ready™ Credential Holders on staff (1 minimum for organizations under 10 staff), a published scope, and annual attestation with a full review every 2 years.

I'm a stylist. Can I get the credential?

Yes, through a sponsored cohort. Productions get Equipped. Practitioners get credentialed through cohorts funded by unions, institutions, productions, or brands, not open enrollment. Organizations can also share a private cohort with peers and split the cost. The cohort trains the six production-environment competencies, not hands-on technique. Join the notify list above and you will hear first when the next sponsored cohort opens.

Is there sponsored or funded access?

Yes. Brand and institutional sponsors fund access across the standard: sponsored training for teams that could not otherwise afford it, full Equip engagements for emerging productions, and sponsored cohorts that open the standard to practitioners. If your organization wants the work and the budget is the barrier, email us with a short note about who you are and we will tell you honestly what is possible.

Do you work outside the Boston / Providence region?

Yes. Private cohorts are virtual and global. Equip engagements are delivered remotely with the option of in-person presence for tech week, production meetings, or pre-production planning. We have active engagements and pipeline in New York, Chicago, and London.

Build it before you need it.

Tell us where your production is and we will tell you where the gaps are, including the ones already written into your agreements.

Scope Your Production Email Us

Questions? hello@textureready.com

Need to make the case internally? Bring Texture Ready™ to your organization →

Scope Your Production →