After spending 22 years in a cast of a Broadway show, one deserves a curtain call worthy of that achievement. It could be a standing ovation during the final bow. Or a backstage celebration. Or parting gifts from the cast, creative and producers. 

But instead of being recognized for a rare achievement in New York theatre, Jeff Loeffelholz ended his own life with a mixture of painkillers and alcohol. 

What led Jeff to this point is going to be the subject of investigations by multiple organizations and their results could lead to a complete reshaping of working conditions in professional theatre.

While Jeff's alleged treatment behind-the-scenes at Chicago is horrific, for many other performers, it's all too familiar. 

As adults, is it 'cool' to hate competitive theatre festivals and events? Is it in our moral DNA to say it's not right to judge art?' Does our stance change if we are also thrilled by it, and would we have a different point of view if we were the ones winning? 

Imagine you’re a chemistry or biology college student. You’ve spent weeks preparing your lab and have timed everything perfectly. You and your lab partner double checked the equations, and experiments are chugging away. There’s still a couple more weeks of monitoring to go before your work is finished, but you’re feeling pretty good. Now imagine being told that the lab is needed to host a special visitor and that your experiments must be removed. The “compromise” is that you can move to a smaller lab which doesn’t have the right equipment, so all your months of hard work will be lost. You have no say in the matter and nor does your faculty advisor- the college administration made all these decisions for you and without your knowledge or input. This would never happen, right? No one would dream of asking a science student to uproot their work at the last minute. Yet this is exactly what played out at Westfield State University (WSU) and their theatre students.