Monday, November 28, 2016
Seeking Equity In Theatre, Fighting Wrong With Wrong Won’t Go Right
Arts Integrity Initiative: Anyone claiming that there is equity or equality – by gender, by race and ethnicity, by disability – in the American theatre would have to be willfully ignoring the evidence. The Dramatists Guild’s The Count showed that only one in five plays produced in the U.S. is written by a woman. The annual survey of performers on Broadway issued by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition most recently showed that only 22% of Broadway performers in 2014-15 were people of color. The executive summary of a study of leadership in LORT theatres by gender states that at no time have more than 27% of leadership roles been held by women. Define your universe, choose your metric, and it seems quite clear that whites, particularly white men, remain in the majority.
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This article points to the equally frustrating and saddening realities of trying to fight against discrimination: the act of trying to equalize opportunities also means that people feel like they are losing their jobs to those minorities. While the statistics are undeniable that there are less women and minority groups in positions of power in theatre, it is hard to tell someone that although they are perfectly qualified for the job, they did not get it because it was given to an equally qualified candidate who was a minority. Even worse, what happens when you decide to cast gender and ethnicity-consciously? It is such a double-edged sword because theatre companies have been casting and hiring in a way that is subconsciously discriminatory for so many years, it is hard to pinpoint what the actual cause of the discrimination is and what we can do to move forward from this point without alienating the people who are already in positions of power. Although there is something to be said for taking groups who have not yet discovered that discrimination is a problem in hiring practices and forcing them to look at the cruel reality of theatre in America through a complex hiring system that does take away the metaphorical handicap that they have received so many years to date. (When I say handicap, I mean the golfing term not a physical handicap.)
This article makes a great case that the numbers are there and that something needs to be done about them. The lack of diversity in theatrical productions leads to multiple assumptions for artistic image that are ultimately misrepresentational of multiple cultures and identities. I had never heard of The Jubilee, and while it seems a little reaching, I definitely appreciate the sentiments surrounding the initiative. I can only imagine how much more genuine theatre would become if it had people of all representations filling the roles of these identities both accurately and passionately. I find it easier to play a role or believe one if the actor has some weigh in it, like an impoverished character played by someone who grew up struggling with poverty. Experience is the driving force of art, and the results are often much more brilliant when this is the case. In the end, diversity will greatly improve theatre.
This is an interesting situation. It is important to try to increase diversity in theater in order to be able to more accurately tell a wider variety of stories, especially stories from perspectives that are less commonly heard. That being said, it would be absurd to have anti-discrimination laws that allow discrimination against certain groups. I think the simplest way to get around this is to not publically announce that you want to exclusively hire people in a certain group (ex: hiring women to fill open director positions) but instead just do it. Additionally, you could try to publicize the fact you are looking for someone to fill those positions through methods/ in locations that are more likely to be seen by the group of people who you are looking for to fill those roles. In theory, I do think it should be okay for a theater company to publicly decide they want to increase the diversity of their staff and be looking to hire people within certain groups, but in practice I can’t think of a way to blatantly do that without violating anti-discrimination laws.
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