Friday, October 29, 2021
Facing Our Failure: The Power of Acknowledging Racism Within the American Theatre
AMERICAN THEATRE: As Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT) learned when we began our own internal antiracism work in 2017, you can’t fix something that you cannot—or will not—name. American theatre is not immune to the racist, oppressive practices baked into other industries, but too often we are resistant to holding up the same mirror to our own institutions that we hold up to society through the work on our stages. We must stop leaning on radical art to justify oppressive art-making, and start talking about radical hiring, decision-making, budgeting, and power-sharing.
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7 comments:
I love the idea of AROW and the change that they're attempting to bring about. Creating an anti-racist theatre environment is not an easy or small task as I think the entire industry has become acutely aware of in recent times but especially the last 2 years. Racist practices are woven so tightly into the fabric of our institutions that it takes a lot of time, effort, and care to really deconstruct the current systems and come up with effective replacements. The addition of AROW is exciting for me because it provides a forum for many companies with the best intentions to speak openly and honestly about the trajectories they've tried and their failure or success with them. Allowing for the acknowledgment of failure allows all of these cooperating companies to not make the same mistakes and therefore move forward, hopefully, faster than if each went down an anti-racist road alone. In times of great change, it's imperative to feel the support and advice of a like-minded community and that seems to be what they're attempting to do.
I think that this article does a really good job of highlighting the urgency of fighting oppression in theatre. “We must stop leaning on radical art to justify oppressive art-making, and start talking about radical hiring, decision-making, budgeting, and power-sharing.” really hit close to home. I’ve worked in multiple places where activism theatre is touted as so important to the values of the company, then seen discrimination and exploitation in the same space. Even here at SoD, where I’m working on a beautiful socialist piece that is a commentary on our current society, there are still oppressive practices in place and racists working in this building. It is shameful that the administration doesn’t see racism as an urgent problem in need of working towards resolution, but rather a PR and marketing move to make them seem not racist. Also, taking the big step of openly and frequently talking about racism is something huge that needs to happen in the culture of this department. Even when it happens in front of our face in a public forum, we don’t talk about it. It’s ignored in the group dialogue. Just as is said in the article, this work is urgent and must be addressed now, not just when harm is done.
There is a deeper discussion surrounding diversity and inclusion happening in the theatre industry right now than ever before. The part that resonated with me the most was talking about pushing through resistance and questioning your own resistance. Especially at CMU Drama, when there is resistance to new initiatives, good or bad, hands just kind of get thrown up in the air from the coordinators. Also the conversation of prioritizing these initiatives is starting with the students/staff/crew/administration, not the productions themselves. If we are having honest conversations amongst the people of the organization/school, the following things won’t feel as difficult. Prioritizing the experience of BIPOC individuals should be the first step in the endeavor. White people have no idea what rhetoric they are perpetuating against these individuals unless they surrender their pride and become a true listener. Less and less black and brown students are coming to schools like CMU Drama because of this prideful narrative that perpetuates stereotypes, prejudice, racism, ableism, homophobia, etc.
The desire to change and amend racist practices in the entertainment industry starts with acknowledging its flaws. This article stood out to me because of its name “Facing Our Failure.” The title is assertive, yet encourages the reader to undergo a process of self-reflection in, in this case, acknowledging the inherent institutional racism from which extends the concept of American Theatre. An idea, which as the article suggests, has exploited members of the global majority since the beginning of American Theatre as we know it. It is heartwarming to see relatively high-ranking members of the industry discussing these issues. For again, how can we expect change to occur if not by starting with dialogue and conversations? I will say, however, there will come a moment in which action (as a second step) is required. Otherwise, we live in a never-ending conversation where instead of taking action, we continue to discuss and arrive at the same conclusions.
This article reminded me of a reading we had an anti-racist theater class where it talked about Krages conversation on both parts of white teachers and BIPoc teachers. That article talked about how we both need to have a open dialogue in which racism isn’t a topic that should be tiptoed around but instead some thing that should be talked about openly and naming what’s wrong and then changing it as this article has stated. And I feel like the reason why it works both ways is that both white Theatre makers have to Talk about these issues in order to route out their own ignorances and be better. BIPoc people can’t mind read and it is impossible for white theater makers To become better people and truly achieve equity and anti-racism in the places that they work if they don’t speak up and never fix those stereotypes or racist thoughts they may have
I haven’t had to talk about how racist American theater is in a while so I figured I would torture myself with the performative anti-racism in this article. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t too performative, or it at least acknowledge that “anti-racism” work can sometimes be hollow and performative. I don’t know what it is about theater-makers, but when they talk about anti-racism work they use the most flowery bullshit language and it’s just a hot load of crap from mostly white people about the “work” they are doing, and I’m just over here like,
“point me to one concrete, measurable change you have made.” Like great you all redefined your values and philosophies, what does that mean? Does that mean your values up until included racism? That is the most bullshit we didn’t actually change anything answer I have ever heard. We had an independent consultation with AROW about “operationalizing” our new values (that must have been the word of the day that day). Great, what does that look like? What did you actually change? Which racist staff/faculty member that refuses to change, because I know every theater has at least one, actually got fired?
It’s really no surprise that theatre, like everything else in America, has a lot of problems with racism. I mean, Musical Theatre was literally born from minstrelsy. Articles like this sometimes raise my suspicions since they are often made to point out obvious things that BIPOC people have been saying for years, and then only offer surface-level solutions. At least, that’s how it’s felt for a while. It was especially like that when I took the Anti-racist Theatre courses last year. It was mostly white people talking about how racism is a problem with pretentious words and exaggerated emotion, seemingly patting themselves on the back for acknowledging that racism exists.
I don’t think that we’re ever going to be able to really start working on racism as long as the only people in decision making positions are white. Or if the only teachers of theatre are white people who can’t seem to make any changes over the last 40 yrs. There is only so much they can do or say before either going right back into racist patterns. White leaders will never implement the kind of radical change necessary. We do not need white saviors to help us.
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