Monday, October 18, 2021
Racism Shouldn’t Have to Be My Muse
AMERICAN THEATRE: Even as white America wakes up like never before to the realities of its biased and oppressive institutions, there’s a hugely traumatic aspect of the Black experience that remains largely unseen and undiscussed. The United States has placed its Black citizens in a form of emotional incarceration from which we desperately want to be freed. Black people learn from a young age that our very presence is seen as a threat, and our emotions, when they aren’t completely invisible, can be terrifying to our white counterparts. This conditions us to understand that self-expression is both dangerous and futile, like staring into the sun while asking to not go blind.
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A sentence from this article that especially resonated with me is “ In art, our trauma is fetishized and romanticized while our joy is dismissed,” which Scott says in reference to white american theater’s obsession with Black pain. It’s incredibly tragic and disheartening that the majority of the time, a Black playwright’s ability to find commercial success is dependent on not only their willingness to bare their trauma, but also on the outside world to keep these pieces relevant. It’s a vicious cycle that ensures white audiences only see Black stories that are traumatic and painful, rather than joyous. This cycle dehumanizes Black people in the lens of theater, and disenfranchises Black artists as they are limited to one type of story that will be published. Scott, in this article, demands that American Theatre expands and begins to produce more stories that show Black people in situations of power, peace, and joy.
The first bit from this article about looking for people who looked like you or were from the same places like you really stuck with me. The way he talked about having behaviors that translated well into a viable career for him also resonates with me, like being a kid with ADHD, I really needed things to do with my hands and that translated to carpentry which then translated into TD, but I digress. The main point of the piece was to talk about how one culture's racism does not have to be the story that you tell because it's not the only thing about them. You can't just keep talking about the same traumas over and over again, it's not capturing people holistically and it can be potentially harmful. The other crappy part is that this is all happening right now, there's no escape from the racial tension everywhere.
This article really resonates with me. I have always enjoyed theater including playwrights like Shakespeare and Ibsen. However, I also don’t see myself in much of the canon. There are not many mainstream plays with Mexicans as the protagonists. I always jump at the opportunity see my identity represented on stage in new works like Quixote Nuevo or Missed You Like Hell. However, as Scott points out, it can be exhausting when the only times you can see yourself on stage is through trauma (in my case centering the Mexican experience around deportation). An admittedly somewhat nuanced point that many white theater makers seem to struggle with is that POC want to see themselves on stage, but don’t always want the plays to be about their identity. At the same time, we don’t just want to be wallpapered over a white person’s story. We deserve complex stories with complex characters that can only be about POC, but that look at our experiences beyond the tragedies.
This article makes an excellent point, that POC writers should be able to tell stories about their experiences and their culture that are not just about racism and tragedy, but celebrations of their lives. It's very important to talk about the trauma and oppression that POC face every day through art, but those stories can't be the only stories we hear, because it's not the totality of their experience. As the author writes, "as much as the potent brew of suppression and oppression serves as the Black author’s loyal and faithful muse, it also confines the scope of our creativity". Unfortunately, stories about tragedy are what white audiences so often expect, making it difficult to break out of that mold. However, the author also expressed optimism about a future where that will be possible. Hopefully that day comes soon when we can have all types of media about all types of people in the mainstream.
This article was not what I thought it would be. Nevertheless, I am very glad I read it. For one, it served as an autobiographical note on Keenan Scott II, Frostburg State University graduate with a concentration in playwriting, acting, directing, and producing. What I found interesting, and what perhaps most resonated with me, was the phrase: “I find myself longing for a day when my play feels dated”. If we stop to consider what has been happening within the School of Drama, instances of racism, and the employment of racist practices from both peers and teachers alike, the affirmation could not come sooner. Racism should by now, be a thing of the past. And I’m quick to remark I don’t mean for it to be erased from our memories, instead, I advocate for humanity to move past racist practices– stereotypes, microaggressions, and (quite frankly) microaggressions, as the author suggests.
I think this article speaks to a problem experienced by pretty much every marginalized group. Any art coming out of those groups or that centers around them is about the suffering. When was the last time you saw a show where the main character was gay, but the show was not a coming out story? Progressive media in the 2010s focused representation by creating media where the main character was not white, or straight, or cis, but every single one of those stories centered around the oppression they experienced. There was a lot of resistance to having non-white non-straight characters in roles without “having a reason” as it was seen as forcing diversity where it didn’t belong, but diversity belongs everywhere. I hope as we begin this new decade we begin to embrace “shoe-horning” diversity into roles without the need for their entire arc to be about oppression, and I hope that people of all backgrounds get recognition for all kinds of stories, not just stories that depict pain and suffering for to teach white people empathy.
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