Director and Playwright Kareem Fahmy Launches BIPOC Directors Database

Kareem Fahmy, a director and playwright, has launched the BIPOC Director Database, American Theatre reports.

Thus far, the list contains the names and details for 227 directors who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color. To create it, Fahmy surveyed artistic directors about what they would like to know about prospective hires, as well as his directing colleagues about what information they would be willing to share.

The spreadsheet includes personal information such as name, pronouns, and location, as well as contact information and career experience. In the latter category, fields include degrees honors, specialties and interests, and years in the business.

“Ideally, it can be many things to many people,” said Fahmy. “So if an artistic director is like, ‘I want to search this database to identify a BIPOC director based in the Bay Area and who has at least five years of experience and is an SDC member,’ it can be that granular. Or it could just be, ‘I want to know who the Latinx directors are,’ or, ‘I want to know who the Indigenous directors are.’ It is searchable through a lot of those parameters.”

The open-source Google spreadsheet is now available here, and the form to qualify for listing on it is here.