“I’m trying to get a little more context about the piece, particularly the level of diversity of the names presented. Are you interviewing any writers or showrunners of color?” her agent wrote the reporter by email, before listing some writers that immediately came to mind, including Carla Ching, Tracey Scott Wilson, Tanya Barfield, Dominique Morisseau, Tanya Saracho and Christopher Oscar Peña.
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The last quote of this article is what stood out the most to me: “I’m holding the door open telling my playwright friends and writers of color who might not have other opportunities to get in here. It feels like the vibrant right time to sneak in as many new voices as possible.” I feel like this quote is very applicable to CMU SOD. In regards to our some of our shows this year, yes, we are sneaking in a new voices in the case of “Loves Labors Lost” as well with our Raugh shows, “How to put on a Sock”, “Medea/ Shulie”, “Smitten”, plus “How to Die Fast”. I think that that a step in the right direction. But I still think that we are falling at putting diversity in the mainstage shows in regards to putting on shows written by people of color or women; all of the shows are written by white men (except one of the co composers of “Drowsy” was a woman, but we don’t emphasize teaching musical composition here). I think this is sending a bad message to students. A prestigious university that is one of the top theater training programs in the country choses to put all shows by men. A university that tries to be on the leading edge of inclusion and equal representation in theater. There are plenty of amazing pieces of theater written by woman an people of color, Why couldn’t we put on one of those shows?
This article is extremely relevant today as not just T.V. writers call for representation in who is writing television scripts but also as theatergoers and practitioners are a call for representation and diversity in their scripts. Clearly even at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, they need this article as all of their mainstage minus the composer/lyricist for The Drowsy Chaperone is a white male. It was interesting how the author of the article brought up the Emmys and how the wins were so diverse but that is just a snapshot of Hollywood. Just because there are several non-white males winning awards doesn’t mean that Hollywood as a whole has become diverse. I’m not saying it's not a good thing that there is diversity in the Emmy winners, I am just saying that has little indication of how diverse Hollywood really is. I agree strongly with Schreck’s line that “The fact that TV feels more diverse is a testament to how shamefully monolithic it's been up until this moment”. This article highlights that Hollywood is changing but also shows that it has lots of room to improve. I think this lesson is directly applicable to live theatre as well.
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