Now Booking the 2026–27 Season
Your union agreements already carry obligations around hair. Most productions have never read those lines, and even the ones who have don't have anyone on staff who can meet them. Texture Ready™ builds both: the knowledge and the system, in place before the first hair call. Built for theater, film, TV, and commercial. Featured in AEA Employer Resources and American Theatre Magazine. First case study: Hairspray at Umbrella Arts →
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. A specialist can't produce documented consent, a budget line, a maintenance schedule, or an escalation pathway. 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 the Cohorts
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. The standard was on the table both times. Here is what the rooms said.
The Cohort 2 Room · June & July 2026
IATSE Local 798 · SpeakEasy Stage · Commonwealth Shakespeare Company · Stratford Festival · 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 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 full Texture Ready™ curriculum, delivered exclusively for your organization or team. Your Hair Lead and the people around them learn the standard, learn what your agreements actually require, and earn the credential, scheduled around your production calendar.
Investment
$8,500
Up to 10 participants. $750 per additional seat, 16 maximum. Larger configurations and film/TV teams scoped in conversation.
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.
Built once. Runs on every show after.
The system doesn't expire when the run closes. Every future production runs on it, meeting the obligations in your agreements as they stand and positioned for the language that's coming. Any Texture Ready™ Cohort graduate, trained here or elsewhere, can step in as your Hair Lead and run it end to end. Your infrastructure no longer depends on one person staying.
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 can scope Train and Equip individually.
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. Train and Equip can be scoped together as a single engagement.
For Conservatories & Brands
For conservatories training the next generation before they graduate, and brands funding access to the standard across the field.
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.
For brands funding access: sponsored training, full Equip engagements for productions that cannot afford them, or sponsored public cohorts that open the standard to the whole field. Specification is merit-based; brands cannot buy default placement.
The Path
Your Hair Lead trains on the standard and earns the credential in a 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. Then we hand it to your trained team.
The system is yours. Your Hair Lead owns the work, your production carries the standard, and it travels to every show after this one. We coach. Your team executes. No permanent middleman.
Who this is for
Producing Theater
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, there is no documentation if something goes wrong, and your season opens in a few months.
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.
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 union contract language that requires "qualified" hair support and never defines the word. That gap is where liability lives, and it is structural, not personal. 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 hand them obligations nobody taught them to meet, and the performers they work with will absorb the gap.
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. 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.
The 2026–27 Season
Most theater seasons open in a few months. The productions that will be Texture Ready™ on opening night are training their people and building their systems this summer. Tell us about your season and we will tell you exactly what it takes to be ready before your first hair call.
30 minutes with the Texture Ready™ team. You bring your season, your cast size, and your current hair plan (or the honest absence of one). You leave with the gaps named and a scoped path to close them.
Training your team this summer?
The full curriculum, delivered exclusively for your organization: custom scheduling around your production calendar, retreat-style full-day formats, and content tailored to your roster. $8,500 for up to 10 people, $750 per additional seat. This is how teams get trained before the season starts.
Scope a private cohort →Looking for the public cohort?
Cohorts 1 and 2 convened in 2026. The next public cohort will be announced to this list first.
Questions answered
More than most productions realize. Depending on your agreements, obligations can include consultation with the performer, notice requirements, reimbursement for hair services, and responsibility for a performer's hair after a run closes. The language has been tightening for several years, and the direction of travel is toward more protection, not less.
The honest answer is that most teams have never read these lines, and reading them 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. Bring your agreements to a scoping call and we will walk them with you.
Before first rehearsal, ideally before your season budget is locked. The whole point of the standard is that hair gets planned as a department, and a department gets budgeted before the season starts, not discovered during tech.
Practically: scope in the summer, train and build in late summer, and your team runs the system from first rehearsal on. If your season is already underway, a mid-season Equip engagement is still possible; it is just built around your production calendar instead of ahead of it.
Train is the Private Cohort: your people learn the standard and earn the credential. $8,500 for up to 10 people, $750 per additional seat, scheduled around your calendar.
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, and access to our vetted textured hair stylist and product discovery network) as a system your team reuses on every production. Theater pricing: Tier 1 (production budget under $250K) $9,000–$11,000; Tier 2 ($250K–$750K) $13,000–$16,000; Tier 3 ($750K+) from $18,000, scoped. Film, TV, and commercial are always scoped. The system doesn't expire when the run closes: it runs on every production after, and any Texture Ready™ Cohort graduate can step in and run it.
The Full Standard is both together: your team trained and your system built in one sequenced engagement, from $19,500 at Tier 2, scoped from $24,500 at Tier 3. It is the choice most larger productions make.
A core principle across all three: we coach, your team executes. We build the system and train your people. We are not the labor in the room, and you do not need us there once the system is yours.
The Texture Ready™ credential is issued to participants who complete the full curriculum 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.
Cohorts 1 and 2 convened in April and June–July 2026, bringing producers, casting directors, agents, attorneys, union leaders, conservatory faculty, and working Hair Leads to the standard. The next public cohort has not been dated; it will be announced first to the notify list above.
If your team needs the training before then (and if your season starts in the fall, it probably does), that is exactly what private cohorts are for. They run year-round, scheduled around your calendar.
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 ranges by tier so you can see where your production lands: private cohorts at $8,500 for up to 10 people, Equip at $9,000–$11,000 (Tier 1, production under $250K), $13,000–$16,000 (Tier 2, $250K–$750K), from $18,000 scoped above that. The Full Standard starts from $19,500 for Tier 2, scoped from $24,500 for Tier 3. 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. 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 public cohorts that open the standard to the whole field. If your organization wants the work and the budget is the barrier, email Kira directly with a short note about who you are; we will tell you honestly what is possible.
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 NYC, Chicago, and London.
Every path to Texture Ready™ begins with a conversation. Tell us where your season is and we will tell you where the gaps are, including the ones already written into your agreements.
Questions? Reach us at kiratroilo@artandsoulconsulting.com
Brand or institutional sponsor? → Texture Ready™ Brand Partnerships
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