Thursday, September 30, 2021
The Visitor, A Week Before Starting, Pauses to Reflect and De-Center Whiteness
Playbill: The Visitor, a new musical by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey, and Kwame Kwei-Armah, has delayed its start date at The Public Theater, with the Off-Broadway venue citing a need for additional development time in light of “conversations and commitments around equity and anti-racism.” Performances will now begin October 14 (instead of October 7).
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2 comments:
“Take a week to de-center whiteness” is a load of crap, honestly. If the Public was committed to anti-racism they would have analyzed these problems with the plot before even deciding to put it on the production schedule, not a month before the show is due to open. How are they going to change how race is represented in the show. The main plot is of a white professor coming to New York and meeting immigrants and learning about immigrant struggles. It is inherently centered around whiteness and how white people interact with immigrants. It doesn’t tell the rich and unique stories of immigrants from how they should be told: through their own eyes. This does not mean I’m against putting public pressure on theatres when they mess up. I’m proud that a reaction from theatre goers made the company reconsider what they’re doing and take action. However, I don’t think this week of “de-centering whiteness” addresses that problem, it just gives more time for the PR to die down. We’ll see how the previews go.
If members of the company have expressed concerns to Public leadership surrounding depictions of race and representation in The Visitor, why has it been left until so late to be addressed? Considering that The Visitor is the first production since the pandemic to open at The Public Theatre, one would think that they would put more conscious care and empathy into the development into this new show. Now, they are in the position where they’ve chosen to delay the debut by a singular week to address these very large issues--issues that cannot be solved in one week, as the story is inherently problematic. A middle-aged white man is centered as the protagonist in a story about the experiences of immigrants. That is not something the creatives can fix in one singular week. While the gesture is nice, that is all it is. This is not change, this is not action, this is simply a performative gesture.
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