OnStage: When riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray last year, we were once again reminded of the deep-seated racial tensions still alive in the United States. Indeed, with voter ID laws now sanctioned by the Supreme Court and the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, this has been a subject of much contention as of late. More often than not, opinions are split along racial lines (see this recent article in the Wall Street Journal). While African Americans defend the Baltimore protests as necessary, whites have been shocked by the ensuing violence.
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This is why I want to do/ do theater; to start a dialogue about the things we need to talk about. I have seen the power of theater first hand when I was an actor for a company that would go into schools and give performances about bulling and other issues in schools using live theater to convey the messages. Seeing the students reactions and their interactions about the subjects we were discussing in scenes like body image, healthy relationships, bullying issues, and sexual assault, made me realize how important theater is to starting a dialogue about somethings that may be hard to talk about. As our nation is seemingly getting more divided I think it is becoming more important to start coming together to talk about the things that are trying to divide us. I’m really proud of my classmates that used art as a political and social outlet in their line and form project. They used what we are here to do to make a statement and hopefully start a dialogue among the people who get to experience their art. Art is a tool, whether it is theater or visual art or music, it needs to be used to talk about the hard things because sometimes those discussions fall between the cracks because they make people uncomfortable or it creates tension, but those are the conversations we need most right now. If we ever want to change anything in our country whether that be racial tensions, or gender roles and equal pay, or rape culture, we need to start a dialogue about these sensitive topics and that is, in my opinion, why art is here and why I am making and learning to make art.
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