“The show must go on” has been a popular, almost nostalgic phrase among show people for decades. It means that no matter what adversity an artist encounters on the road to opening night and beyond, any promised performance simply must be carried out at all cost. We say it like it’s a badge of honor for an actor to rise above any injury, sickness, indignity, exhaustion or even abuse because, after all, people have paid good money to see the show. So just suck it up and get through it.

It’s a terribly toxic way of thinking that can put already overworked and underpaid artists in physical, emotional and financial danger.

“That phrase has been used as an excuse for bad behavior for as long as theater has existed,” said Jacob Welch, Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Metropolitan State University of Denver. And the Rocky Mountain Artists’ Safety Alliance is trying to meaningfully change that by developing a 32-page

working document called “Community Standards for Theatre.” It’s a voluntary code of conduct for creating safe spaces as Colorado creatives go about the often pressure-packed and emotionally intense task of creating art.

The group took its cue from a 2015 movement called “Not in My House” that rose up in Chicago after a series of sexual-harassment claims against a prominent artistic director who turned out to be just the tip of a rotten iceberg.

But does the Colorado performing-arts community have a similar backstage safety problem?

The short answer is yes, says RMASA co-founder Angela Astle. And Colorado Theatre Guild president Betty Hart. And more than a dozen respondents after I posted that very question to my Facebook page.

The problem might not be as systemic here as in Chicago. “But we do have the problem in Colorado,” Astle said. “It’s just that not as many people are coming forward because they simply don’t feel safe speaking out for fear of both reprisal from the abuser and blacklisting from the larger community.”

Working in the arts is just different from working in any other field. The hours are insane, the pay is low and the creation process is short. So the issue of safety can cover a wide variety of behaviors, attitudes and working conditions. For example, you might walk into an audition and immediately be asked to kiss a complete stranger. That just doesn’t happen in a bank.

The subject matter you are tackling might involve raw, violent or sexual, high-risk material with no procedures in place for processing or communicating what that might trigger. You might be berated for your work performance in front of your co-workers as part of the daily dialogue. The closer you get to opening, the more hostile the environment can become. Too bad if you have a family crisis, and good luck getting hired back if you ever stir the pot. After all, who do you report bad behavior to when the bad behaviorist is the (often) man in charge?

The bottom line: Your business probably has an H.R. Department. And most theater troupes do not. The vast majority of performances in Colorado are created by small, non-union organizations that typically do not have protections in place where a working artist can safely report a concern without fear of reprisal. Equity, the professional actors union, has some safety policies in place, but that hardly makes them immune.

The pandemic shutdown brought some recent examples to light, thanks mostly to the power of social media. Suddenly, companies were being held accountable like never before, not only for their programming choices, hiring practices and power imbalances, but for their sometimes toxic work environments. And there have been consequences.

For example, after the venerable Bovine Metropolis improv-comedy theater was called out in a scathing social thread, the company vacated its 20-year downtown home and moved to fully online. The Bug Theatre severed ties with its primary theatrical tenant for 13 years when allegations of off-site sexual misconduct were made against the group’s sometimes music director. Just last month, an education employee at one of the state’s largest professional theater companies resigned, stating in their written notice: “From the moment I arrived, I seem to have entered a toxic environment where everyone is conditioned to deal with (the artistic director’s) temper, sexism and gaslighting behavior.”

The RMASA is trying to put practices in place that make it safe to talk about these problems before someone feels compelled to resign. Co-founder Tamara Meneghini, a veteran actor and associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, believes the time is now, as companies are coming out of their pandemic slumber, to make meaningful change by creating an entirely new language and mindset for how they approach the making of art so that when problems arise, there is a system in place for how to healthily deal with that.

“This Community Standards document offers guidelines for theater companies to create safer work spaces and environments while challenging the status quo of how theater gets made,” said Meneghini, who is moderating a free online panel discussion on the subject at 7 p.m. Monday. “This panel is a call to action,” Hart added. “Our sole hope is getting people to become activists and start to become part of the solution.”

In its statement of purpose, the Community Standards recognizes that in the U.S., live theater production has been a space traditionally dominated by a white cultural identity group and, consequently, has been historically imbalanced from an equity standpoint. It also recognizes that theater artists from non-dominant identity categories navigate the industry and the art form differently than the established, dominant white culture.

There are exceptions and early success stories. RMASA officials praise the Arvada Center, Boulder’s Local Theater Company and the new ForgeLight Theatreworks, among others. Local has adopted a multistep harm-reduction process. And “ForgeLight has created the position of Artist Experience Liaison to combat any and all of those issues within our organization,” said Artistic Director Keith Rabin Jr. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts is one of the only performing arts organizations in the country to hire an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Director (Lydia Garcia) at the Executive Team level. Partnering organizations also include The Catamounts, IDEA Stages, Phamaly, Athena Project and the Stage Managers Association. And the RMASA standards already are being taught as part of the curriculum at both CU-Boulder and MSU-Denver. “We are trying to make the change at the college level so the people we send out into the world are part of making this the normal way of doing things,” Welch said.

Meneghini hopes that’s just the beginning.

“Our hope in offering these standards is that it inspires meaningful dialogue and discussion in a world where hierarchical power is the norm,” she said. “And that it gives our community ways of accessing tangible methods to empower artists to work, free from harassment and unsafe conditions.”

Denver Gazette contributing arts columnist John Moore is an award-winning journalist who was named one of the 10 most influential theater critics by American Theatre Magazine. He is now producing independent journalism as part of his own company, Moore Media.