Cohort 1 Convened · April 2026
One standard for hair across every production. Qualified, budgeted, and protected before the first hair call. Built for theater, film, TV, and commercial. Cohort 1 convened April 2026 with 25 industry leaders. Featured in AEA Employer Resources. First case study published with Umbrella Arts — Hairspray, read it here →
Black Hair Is Hair · Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge · 2023
"Prevention is not mysterious.
It's operational."
How we got here
In 2023, Kira Troilo gathered theater leaders from across the Boston regional ecosystem for a single afternoon at the Multicultural Arts Center. The session was called "Black Hair Is Hair." Its argument was simple: textured hair is not a specialty. It is hair. The people sitting in production rooms had been trained to treat it as exceptional, and that training was costing performers their hair, their time, and their safety.
That afternoon became an eBook. The eBook became a toolkit. The toolkit became a standard, used in productions, taught to leads, and now built into the operating systems of a growing number of regional theaters and conservatories.
Texture Ready™ is the formalization of three years of work. Not a new idea. An overdue one.
Teaching the curl pattern chart · Black Hair Is Hair, 2023. Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge.
The Standard
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™ changes that. It is not about finding the right specialist. It is about building 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:
What changes
Without the standard
With the standard
"We have costume designers. We have sound and lighting. Hair should be a design too."
Qualified isn't a person.
It's a production.
In Practice
25 performers. All hair types and textures, including protective styles. 30–40 hours of design, consultation, fitting, and run support across rehearsal and tech. The first production to test the Texture Ready™ toolkit start to finish, and the first published proof point of what the standard looks like in motion.
From Cohort 1
Cohort 1 of Texture Ready™ convened virtually on April 28, 2026. The room: producers, casting directors, agents, employment attorneys, union leaders, theater critics, conservatory leaders, and performers. The standard was on the table. Here is what they said.
"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 Casey·Owner, Maggie Agency
"Art & Soul Consulting have shown they have 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."
"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."
"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."
"The shift is action. It's encouraging and empowering to witness the work happening for textured hair. It's not just a conversation."
"There are ways to standardise this for productions."
"I'm much more tuned into nuanced issues around Black hair, and how NOT mainstreamed this topic is, but how 'othered' it is."
How we work together
Two parts, one standard. Your people, trained. Your production, built. We coach, your team executes.
Part One · Train Your People
The professional standard, taught directly. Your Hair Lead (costume designer, ASM, wardrobe supervisor, or stage manager) learns the standard and earns the credential to prove it.
Investment
$997
Per seat · Cohort 2: June 24 – July 8, 2026 · 5 of 25 seats already claimed
Part Two · Build Your System
We build your custom toolkit and stand up your production's hair system, so your team can run it on this show and every one after. You are equipped, not just advised.
Investment · Theater
Production budget thresholds. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped to your production in a discovery call. Equip credits forward toward an ongoing Retainer if you continue.
Part One + Part Two Together
Train your Hair Lead to the standard and have us build your production's system at the same time. Your people and your infrastructure, in one engagement. The choice most Broadway, tour, off-Broadway, and film productions make.
Investment · Starts at Tier 2
Bundled below the cost of buying separately. Film, TV, and commercial scoped. Emerging productions start with the public Cohort and Equip individually.
Sustained Support · Follows Equip
Six advisory sessions across the production cycle, scheduled at key milestones (pre-casting, first rehearsal, tech, opening, mid-run, post-close), plus written check-ins and Priority Response between sessions.
Investment
Scoped
Scaled to your production cycle, scoped in a conversation.
Theater pricing scales with production budget: Tier 1 under $250K, Tier 2 $250K–$750K, Tier 3 $750K and above. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped in a discovery call. Production and HMU budgets vary too widely for a published floor to be accurate. The Retainer always follows Equip. Train and Equip can be scoped together as a single engagement.
For Institutional Partners
For institutions running multiple productions per season, conservatories integrating the standard into curriculum, and city or government partners building Texture Ready™ into the cultural infrastructure they fund.
A year-long partnership for institutions making the standard part of how they operate. Includes Cohort seats, up to six Equip engagements, quarterly leadership reviews, advisory hours, and Texture Ready™ Member designation. Capped at six annually. Founding pricing reserved for the first three 2026 commitments.
Multi-year integration into a conservatory or training program. Faculty cohort, curriculum integration, and student production advisory, co-developed with grant teams where appropriate. Annual review, multi-year commitment.
Project-scoped partnerships with municipal arts and culture offices building Texture Ready™ into grantee requirements, public-sector productions, or workforce development programming. Boston-first.
For brands funding access: sponsored seats, full Equip engagements for productions that cannot afford them, or full Cohort access for peer organizations. Specification is merit-based; brands cannot buy default placement.
The Path
Your Hair Lead trains on the standard and earns the credential, in a public or private cohort. They return with the language, knowledge, and authority to lead the work.
We build your production's system: custom toolkit, intake and consent, budget, vendor pathways, escalation. Your team runs it on this show and every one after.
Sustained advisory across the production cycle. Six structured sessions at key milestones, plus written check-ins and Priority Response. The relationship that protects the work end to end.
Who this is for
Producing Theater
You are casting diversely and your hair infrastructure has not caught up. The labor is landing on performers. You have no documentation if something goes wrong, and the industry just watched what that costs.
Film / TV / Commercial
The SAG-AFTRA contract uses the word "qualified" with no legal definition. On a commercial shoot, one bad hair day is a brand crisis your client calls you about. Texture Ready™ defines qualified, and documents that you met the standard.
Production Staff
You are holding the hair work but you do not have the framework, the language, or the authority to do it right. You are improvising around a gap that should not be yours alone to fill.
Production Operations
You own the call sheet. You know maintenance time for textured hair is not on it. You know there is no protocol when something goes wrong mid-run. You are improvising around a gap that belongs in the production, not on your shoulders.
→ Cohort
Casting & Representation
You are placing diverse talent into productions with no hair infrastructure. You have no leverage to fix it and no language to name it before your client signs. Texture Ready™ gives you both.
Legal
Your clients are operating under SAG-AFTRA contract language that uses the word "qualified" with no legal definition. The lawsuit referenced above shows what that gap looks like in litigation. Texture Ready™ closes it, and gives you something to point to.
Training & Education
You are training the next generation of production professionals and none of them are learning this before they graduate. Their first job will expose the gap, and the performers they work with will absorb it.
Performer?
Before you sign, you have the right to ask if a production is Texture Ready™. We have built the questions for you.
5 Questions to Ask →
About Kira
Kira Troilo is the founder of Art & Soul Consulting and the architect of the Texture Ready™ standard. A Black/biracial theater artist turned EDI consultant, she has spent the last three years building the knowledge, language, and infrastructure the field has been missing, translating lived experience and production reality into documents producers can actually use.
She is the recognized expert in textured hair needs in performance environments across theater, film, TV, and commercial production. Her work is rooted in the Boston / Providence regional theater ecosystem, with active reach into NYC casting and international film and TV.
Cohort 2 · Enrollment Open
The professional standard, taught directly. Three sessions. Six hours. Your Hair Lead leaves with the knowledge, the framework, and a Texture Ready™ credential they carry into every production.
Cohort 1 convened April 2026 · 25 industry leaders · 9.7 / 10 average rating.
The standard Cohort 1 trained on is now documented in production. Read the Hairspray case study →
Virtual · $997 per seat · Limited to 25
After payment, you'll receive a confirmation with prep details and Google Meet access within 48 hours. Full refund up to 14 days before Session 1.
Booking your full team?
For organizations sending four or more, a private cohort is often the right move: custom scheduling around your production calendar, retreat-style full-day formats, and content tailored to your roster. Pricing scales with team size.
Inquire about a private cohort →Cohort 2 dates don't work?
Get on the list for Cohort 3. First access, before public release.
Questions answered
The Cohort is for the person inside your production who is currently carrying (or about to carry) hair. That is most often a costume designer, ASM, wardrobe supervisor, or wig & hair designer who has been informally inheriting hair work without the framework, language, or authority to do it well.
If your organization is sending more than one person, look at the Private Cohort. If you are a producer trying to figure out whether your production is set up correctly, start with an Equip engagement, which builds your system against the standard.
The Texture Ready™ credential is issued to participants who complete all three sessions and the twelve-question assessment. It is a defined professional standard, not a certificate of attendance, built around six named competency domains: Literacy (foundational hair knowledge, cultural and historical context), Fluency (styles, install, maintenance, costs, feasibility), Architecture (production planning, budget, infrastructure), Consent (intake, boundaries, documentation), Care (communication, collaboration, relational practice), and Escalation (crisis protocol, named pathway, documented response). 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. As the standard is adopted across more productions, the credential becomes the answer to the question SAG-AFTRA does not yet define: what does qualified mean.
Cohort 1 convened April 2026. Cohort 2 runs across three Wednesdays (June 24, July 1, and July 8, 2026) from 1 to 3 PM ET each session. Two hours, virtual, six hours total. Sessions are recorded and made available to registered participants only, not publicly distributed.
Train is the Cohort: your people learn the standard and earn the credential. Public seats are $997. Private cohorts for a full team start at $7,500.
Equip is the build: we assess your production, then build and hand over your custom toolkit (intake and consent, hair plans, vendor pathways, budget predictor, call-sheet integration, escalation card) as a system your team reuses on every production. Theater pricing: Tier 1 (production budget under $250K) from $5,000; Tier 2 ($250K–$750K) from $7,500; Tier 3 ($750K+) scoped. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped. Their production and HMU budgets vary too widely for a fixed floor.
The Production Advisory Retainer is sustained advisory across the production cycle: six structured sessions at key milestones, plus written check-ins and Priority Response. It always follows Equip, and it is scoped to your production cycle.
A core principle: we coach, your team executes. We build the system and advise. We are not the labor in the room.
Pricing scales with your production budget, not your medium. A small regional run and a Broadway transfer are both "theater," and a single commercial and a streaming season are both "film," but they are not the same scale, so they should not be the same price.
For theater, we publish the floors by tier so you can see where your production lands: Cohort at $997, private cohorts from $7,500, Equip from $5,000 (Tier 1, production under $250K), from $7,500 (Tier 2, $250K–$750K), scoped above that. The Train + Equip combo starts at $13,500 for Tier 2. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped. A single commercial and a streaming series are both "film" but they have nothing in common budget-wise, so any published number would be wrong. Tell us your production and we will give you a real number.
Yes. We hold a small number of access seats per cohort for actor advocates, casting directors, and emerging professionals who would otherwise not be in the room. These are not publicly listed. Email Kira directly with a short note about who you are and what you do, and we will respond within five business days.
Brand and institutional sponsors can fund Access Seats, full Equip engagements for productions that cannot afford them, or full Cohort access for peer organizations. See brand partnership opportunities →
Full refund up to 14 days before Session 1. After that, your seat can be transferred to a colleague at your organization, or rolled to the next cohort. We do not refund after the cohort begins.
Yes. Cohorts are virtual and global. Equip engagements and Retainers 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 NYC, Chicago, and London.
Every path to Texture Ready™ begins with a conversation. Tell us where your production is and we will tell you where the gaps are.
Questions? Reach us at kiratroilo@artandsoulconsulting.com
Brand or institutional sponsor? → Texture Ready™ Brand Partnerships
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