By Mona Mansour, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group
Maybe it facilitated Tahrir Square. It’s not facilitating you writing your play.
That’s my thesis. I’m not sure how blogs work, or if they need a thesis, or frankly if I’m even capable of demonstrating a thesis, this many years out of college. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, I’m going to try and write this all in one sitting. I’m not going to go on the internet at all. Except to email two writer/teachers I respect to ask them what they think of all this. I will do that right now, brb.
And I’m back. I was gone for about three minutes. And I really did just send those two emails, nothing else.
Anyway:
Anyway.
Well shit, now I want to go on some other site. I need a sort-of chaser. Just one minute on some site, and then back to the task at hand. You don’t care, right?
The Guardian UK is good for this kind of light trolling; I can still feel moderately good about myself because they cover world political shit. You LEARN stuff! And if a pop culture story happens to be on the site—really, what is the deal with Lana Del Rey?—I can read it, by which I mean scan the HEADLINE of course, and not feel icky about myself.
I didn’t go to the Guardian. I am thinking about it, though. What’s ‘on’ you now, Guardian? What am I missing? Has something happened in the 20 minutes since I checked nytimes.com?
When I first started writing, it was dial-up all the way, pay by the minute. You had to keep track of your time. Unless you did the $25.99 AOL unlimited package. That shit was great. You’d go on, check your email, MAYBE do a chat room for a few minutes, and then sign off. My point is, going on the internet was an event. And then it was back to writing. Now it’s not even worth saying you’re going “on” the internet. It’s not “on” or “off.” As I type this in Word, my gmail window is open the background. If somehow the number goes from 947 to 948, I will have to, yes HAVE to, leave this task and click on gmail to see what’s come in. What if Sabon has another free shipping offer? What if Branden wrote me back, sending me back an emoticon-only reply to the emoticon-only email I sent? [I just tried g-chatting him to see if it’s okay if use his name in this post. Let’s see if he gets back to me.] What if that literary manager wrote back and loves my play?
All right, I’m overstating my point. But rather than retract anything, I’ll overstate it again: The internet is fucking up writing.
Now when I start on this tear, people often say, look at the world: The world being more connected is good for all of us. It’s good for democracy. Tyranny can’t go as unnoticed as it did. Tyrants can’t behave without repercussion anymore. The Arab Spring/Uprising might never have happened if it weren’t for the internet. And look at Russia. Putin is finally getting it from people! Fine. Maybe the internet is facilitating global change. It’s not facilitating you writing your play.
Some teachers are well aware of this and ask you unplug all your stuff in their classes. Karen Hartman does. It was a relief, the last time I took her daylong writing workshop, to just shut everything off. That was about six months ago. The truth is, I don’t know right now if I could hack that. I really don’t. Nothing, for six hours? What happened to me since then? [Follow up: Branden did chat me back. Wanted to know what this was all for. Asked that I don’t use his last name. I won’t. I’ll keep you posted if there’s follow-up.]
Here’s what I think it is. There’s this excitement threshold all of us as artists have. The excitement of finding a new character, of writing a page of dialogue, of seeing the person you have a crush on. There’s that thrill that happens, the adrenalin rush. I think most everyone in theater has some kind of addiction to this in some form or other. Some people get dropped out of helicopters to ski down a mountain; we write plays. Why else would we engage with this strange process of leaping into the unknown again and again?
And I think when we’re writing well, we make those discoveries, get those little bolts of thrill, as we’re just sitting there (or standing, whatever), it’s – well, it’s divine, etc. etc. Many other people have covered that act of creation/creativity quite beautifully, so I don’t think I need to. But here’s why I think the internet is bad for writing: because instead of waiting, sitting, accepting those moments as they come, we click away from what we’re working on. We go into another room, as it were. It’s not hard to see why. Any time of day, far more interesting shit is going on than you writing in your room: Qaddafi sympathizers are taking over a village. Seal is getting divorced. A head is found in a paper bag near the Hollywood sign. Why wouldn’t you want more and more and more of that? Fine, I’ll point the finger solely at myself: Why wouldn’t I want more and more and more of that?
And something gets lost. The ability to sit with, and wait. Jane Campion, who made BRIGHT STAR and THE PIANO, said in an interview: “What I am trying to do is to keep space for the unknown….The unknown is frightening. If you spend all your time in front of the TV or on the computer, you can avoid your mind.”
The unknown is frightening. But that’s where we have to be willing to visit, over and over and over, as writers. I won’t say anything pithy about ‘facing the blank page,’ and all that shit, but you know what I mean. What I’m saying is the kicks we should be getting from engaging in our own work, frankly, we’re getting from outside. From clicking on whatever and whatever and whatever. Javier, a fellow EWGer, told me that just quitting Facebook allowed him to write a play with rhyming couplets. It took him “many, many hours” over three months, he said, and for him, Facebook’s fatal flaw lies in “the constant checking, messages, tagging (like a glorified email) that I find distracting to writing... Because writing needs our full attention, no?”
Yes. Lest we think I’m some sage here, let it be known I am on that f*cking Facebook every day still. Only for a few minutes, total. But still. I’ll end with another quote from another writer. In an article for The New York Times about the perils of teaching in academia while also writing fiction, David Gessner said:
“We must concede the possibility that something is lost by living a divided life. Intensity perhaps. The ability to focus hard and long on big, ambitious projects. A great writer, after all, must travel daily to a mental subcontinent, must rip into the work, experiencing the exertion of it, the anxiety of it and, once in a blue moon, the glory of it.”
I think if all we do all day is stare at a screen 16 inches away, we lessen that small chance for glory, you know?
[By the way, Branden update: He hasn’t gchatted me back to tell me why he’s concerned about me using his last name. But he has changed his gchat status to “eat, pray, Chihuahua.” I like that.]
Mona Mansour lives in Brooklyn. Her play THE HOUR OF FEELING, written during her time in the Emerging Writers Group, will have its premiere at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays.
This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.
I am in mourning for a gesture; a full-body motion that begins in thelegsas they take a couple of steps toward the edge of a Subway platform—sometimes reaching the very end. The gesture then moves mechanically to the torso as it leans into the tracks, twisting, lifting the body’s weight off the rear leg, almost balancing on the front leg, and finally triggering the neck to extend all the way out as the eyes focus—again, mechanically—on that dark inscrutable tunnel, in expectation. Its intention is— in appearance— always the same: to check (often double check) if the train approaches and if so, to know how near or how far it is. Its intensity on the other hand varies, like any gesture, on its doer – on his or her agenda or circumstances.
With the arrival of the platform screens that tell you how many minutes until the next train, passengers have started staring at a ceiling-height, backward-counting monitor instead of at a dark tunnel. We stare at it in total stillness, seeing the future approach in that expectant way that only a backwards count can trigger. Eventually, there will be no need to approach the tracks, to bend, twist or balance, and there will be no need to stare at the dark. I first became aware of this gesture in the Utica Avenue station in the winter of 2003, as I stepped, lost, out of a subway car in “any station” just to look at a map, (unaware that there are at least two maps in each car). There, I got to see and perform this gesture multiple times, in shivering cold expectation. Months later, my directing professor Brian Kulick asked us to take on a Greek chorus, and my classmate Pavol Liska did a short piece from the Bacchae in which people reclined against a wall, occasionally looking at their watches; then, one by one, sometimes overlapping, they performed the subway gesture as they delivered their lines. (My apologies for not doing the piece enough justice.) Since then, I have seen the gesture performed again and again, in plays, especially of the dance-theatre variety, in movies, and of course in real life. Eventually, it would become the catalyst for a play of mine about a woman who considers continuing the same motion past the platform edge and onto the tracks. The gradual obsolescence of this gesture can instigate many conversations, from how theatre takes from life to post-modern dance; from how we’ve become a screen-obsessed generation to 1984; from the inside versus outside tension of a gesture to the need for less yoga. It makes me think of reading plays. I was asked recently during an interview for a directing job to propose three projects. The one at the top of my list was a new play by this fantastic playwright I know. I only needed to describe the very basics of the play to get the attention of the interviewers, who were instantly charmed by the idea. Then I asked, “Would you like to read it?” having diligently brought along a copy. Silence. Looks to the ground. More silence. I think one of them looked out the window? It was up to me to keep the conversation flowing with, “It’s ok. You don’t have to.” I sense a general disdain toward the act of reading plays, accentuated by how project descriptions and video clips have come to replace full scripts in applications – though perhaps I am naïve and believe that there was a time long before ours when plays were read more. There has been a lot of talk in the emerging writer community about theatres not reading blind submissions anymore, augmented by rumors about artistic directors never reading plays but having them read to them. Yet my interest here is not accusatory and least of all to complain, since as part of the EWG I am very lucky to have people (and not only people, but experts) read my plays, the good and the bad. I for one have always found it hard to read plays, and can even say I don’t generally like it. It is often unpleasant and awkward. There is always a sense that depending on the actors (miracle workers), the director (that charming man or woman who makes everyone feel good), and the space (that elusive variable on which the entire success of the production lies), this thing I hold in my hands that reads kind of terribly could (maybe) make sense; this monster, this tedious bundle or PDF, at times dramatic, often not, quotidian-sounding yet stilted and hard to follow, is a burden. The problem is, that’s kind of the point. A good play can, though I wish to say should, be hard to read as many wonderful plays indeed are. I once tried to do an apartment reading with friends of Mourning Becomes Electra and we didn’t finish. And we are really into reading plays out loud. Eduardo Machado once pointed this out in a writer’s group and it has never left me. Of course the obvious reason is that plays are meant to be performed, but I think as significant is the fact that many scripts contain not only what is to be performed, but how. A stage direction can define a scene (and in the case of The Cherry Orchard, a play), yet in order to understand that definition I have to read the italicized, cold, mechanical, descriptive, funny-looking sentence. Then I have to imagine, a skill granted to all but maintained by few, how directions such as They stay in silence for three minutes or She picks up the tray with her eyes closed mean something completely different when performed live. Can’t I just read what they say, skipping ahead of the stage directions? Many do. I have heard of design professors who tell their students to ignore all stage directions. I had a wonderful teacher in undergrad who told me he only read the dialogue, without even looking at who’s talking. He said if he could tell who was talking depending on what they said, this was the factor that distinguished good plays from bad ones. He’s an extreme case, but at readings don’t we cut stage directions to a bare minimum, letting the dialogue flow in a snapity-snap ping-pong verbal routine that either ends in a punchline, a button, a cliffhanger, or a blackout? Stage directions aside, plays are also awkward things because typically they are about human beings relating to each other (or not), expressing their feelings (or not), and thinking (or not) with enough difficulty to be put in front of an audience of, some would say, primarily white, bourgeois strangers who heard about it from a friend or the press or know someone in the show, and now they get to watch him or her and they wonder if the other people—those who don’t know the actor the way they know the actor—like him or her, and if in fact if they themselves actually like him or her. Add the intention of audience interaction, broken walls, occupied spaces, devised theatre—in my eyes, not necessarily at odds with written scripts—and the awkwardness of reading plays only grows. Lastly, there is that intrinsic dialectic that most great plays carry with them: the hazy zone that links or divides good from evil. At the heart of this lies that duality that makes us care for and disdain Antigone and Creon at once, or take sides with a different character each time we see or read (back on Chekhov) The Seagull, a play that is like a child or a city that we visit every so often, growing more strange as it grows more familiar. To make people argue about political, social, human, moral or artistic ideas is a social threat, more so when in public. To examine in depth our relationship to love, work, death, revolution, to self-reflect is intrinsically political. No wonder a play is hard to read. Then there are those days when the subway platform screens don’t work properly, when construction, an investigation or even a suicide has made the train schedule malfunction and we are stuck without a clear countdown. On those days I look into the tunnel and wait. I see one or two people dancing their way in and out of this dying gesture, while others stare at an empty screen.
Javierantonio González is the Artistic Director of Caborca. For information on past or future projects, please visit www.caborcatheatre.org
This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.
By Sukari Jones, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group
One day in our Emerging Writers Group meeting, Suzan-Lori Parks—the beautiful, dreadlock-having, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Topdog/Underdog—came to talk to us. I’d looked up to her for a while, and when she said we could ask her anything we wanted I was very excited because it was her, and also because I love questions. I raised my hand, then felt silly (everyone in EWG is too cool for hand-raising so no one does it but me, because I always forget) so I then I put my hand down quickly and asked, “As a Black Female Playwright, when you walk into a room, do you feel like people just assume stuff automatically about you? And if so, how do you manage those expectations?” She nodded her head for a moment and then said “I’m just myself. Mannerless, ‘bad.’ You have to let people think what they’re going to think. It’s not my problem. And it’s not yours.” Then she asked if that answer was helpful and proceeded to eat salad with her fingers as I furiously jotted down her answer while wishing I was cool enough to eat leaves of baby spinach like potato chips.
Actually though, it was a helpful answer, but one I think I’m going to have to grow into. I don’t know what other writers do, but when I go to see plays by other black female playwrights, I invariably ask myself if what I want to write about and how I want to write it are good enough to be on a stage like this play I’m seeing here right now. And then I realize later that what I’m subconsciously asking myself, at least in part, is: “Is my play black enough? Am I worthy of being known as a ‘Black Female Playwright?’”
Recently, I saw Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop and Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly. The former is a rich new work recounting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night on earth, interweaving spoken word and magical realism and amazingness. While watching this smart, super-producible two-hander, I found myself equally aware of the plot’s progression as I was of the audience reaction: from wall to wall, the crowd basically looked like my family reunion. There was earnest bellowing laughter, “aaaaww!”s that marked astonishment at a daring line of dialogue, and lots and lots of pondersome “Mm”s. My whole family is from Alabama and the churches sometimes have members of the congregation write plays and put them on there and this audience’s reaction to The Mountaintop was not wholly dissimilar to that for me. I’m a huge fan of awesome last dialogue lines of plays, as well as historical adaptations and smart, “live” writing, so I loved the play for my own reasons. But I feel the audience loved the play because it was unabashedly black. I had to fight my way to buy the last “The Baton Passes On” T-shirt from a feisty, well-to-do out-of-towner, and as I moseyed away, I had two thoughts: “Wow, Katori Hall is so cool” and, “I wonder if any black people will come to my plays ever or like them at all.”
Then I saw Stick Fly: a well-made comedy about an upper middle class black family and the fault lines that lie beneath class and race in America erupting when a family secret is unearthed. I saw this show because both my husbands are in it: Mekhi Phifer and Dule Hill. Also my friend Condola Rashad was in it. I met her at The Public Theater, when she played the lead in my EWG Spotlight Series play “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!” I found myself comparing Stick Fly’s audience to The Mountaintop’s and with Stick Fly, it was a weird and wonderful blend of brown and beige faces and also of classes. All of us in the audience seemed to love it for the same reasons: we were relating to class-stratification and caste tensions within the black community and having a satisfying laugh at a play geared towards people who can relate to being not quite black or not white in the right way because of money. It was an utterly new experience for me, and one that I can only describe as…encouraging. I went to see Stick Fly because I wanted to see a well-made play, and I was extra excited that a Black Female Playwright wrote it. Now having seen it, I feel encouraged because now I know there are other black female playwrights out there who fall, like me, within the nether regions of the spectrum of what is assumed a black female playwright should be.
Seeing The Mountaintop and then seeing Stick Fly taught me a lesson about myself: when it comes down to it, I feel like I’m not worried about being cool enough or who will see my stuff that I eventually somehow get produced; I’m worried about if I’m being true to this myth of the Black Aesthetic that may or may not even exist. August Wilson, Tyler Perry, Octavia Butler—all are great black writers, and no one can or should be able to negate that based on any construct of “authenticity” or choice of subject matter or audience choice or whatever. I am an emerging playwright, and what I find I am emerging from is this fear that there’s nowhere I belong on either end of the black writer spectrum. What I’m emerging into is the strength to get out what’s in my gut onto paper and worry about who’s with me way later on. I do see that there are A and Z, but now I also see there a place for me somewhere in between.
I actually don’t believe I’m just a “writer,” just “American.” I’m an African-American female playwright. I want all the adjectives. They matter to me. And whether I’m writing “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!” about a pill-addicted single black mother and her daughter who create a puppet-filled universe that only they are allowed to live in or my time-travel/Auschwitz play Toy Box with Joseph Campbell-eqsue heroic journeys and magic emblems, I will no longer be looking over my shoulder, worrying I’m about to be kicked out of the “real black girl club.” Because when I walk into a room, all you really know is that my name is Sukari Jones, I’m fine, and anything else you want to assume about me is not my problem, but yours.
Sukari Jones is an award-winning lyricist, an emerging playwright, and a member of The Public Theater's EWG 2011. Upcoming projects: “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!”, Toy Box, and [Zombie Play].
This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.
Not long after the theatrical firestorm on the Arena Stage blog between Hal Brooks and David Dower comes another theatrical showdown. Tom Loughlin, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Theatre Arts/Acting and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the SUNY-Fredonia, responds to The Broadway League's 2010-11 Demographic Report in a post on his blog that examines what he thinks is the problem with a still-majority white theatre audience. His comments, which partly place the blame on colored audiences, caught the attention of Ron Russell, the executive director of Epic Theater Ensemble who responded via his own post that tears down Loughlin's rhetoric. This topic hits home for many of the EWG playwrights who are artists of color who write for a variety of audiences, including those of their own ethnic and racial background. We've decided to weigh in on the topic from the "other" perspective.
For my own part, I think both men touch on some interesting points. Though Loughlin somewhat mentions the economics of theatre, it IS the more important factor for why theatre audiences are not diversified. Weak general marketing outreach aside (and not knowing how to connect to "those people" or 'those communities" just smacks of absurd racism), the fact is that theatre is nearly unaffordable. I am speaking, of course, of mainstream theatre and some off-Broadway and not-for-profit houses. We’ve started to treat theatre like some kind of elitist activity that can only be enjoyed by the 1%, who are indeed statistically white. Theatre used to be for the people - for all people - regardless of class and race. It was about real life, it was about criticizing establishments, it was about the nitty gritty zeitgeists of the given moment. ANYONE could connect to it because they were living it. It used to be FREE. Does anyone REALLY think the 99% can afford paying more than $100 for an evening of theatre when they have bills to pay and food to put on the table? Believe me, Latinos, African Americans, Middle Easterners, and all "others" WANT to entertained, but not at the cost of their livelihood. I understand it's called show BUSINESS for a reason, and I am not trying to be a Pollyanna about my solutions, but even having ONE free night for "those audiences" would go a long way in reaching out to untapped communities. Or, you know, we could stop with the overproduced spectacle shows thereby reducing production costs and allowing for cheaper or more deeply discounted ticket prices.
On the flip side is the notion of what stories attract which audience. Look, a good story regardless of race and ethnicity will drive ANYONE into a seat (look at Slumdog Millionaire). There is great theatre being produced outside of the Great White Way (which is not the penultimate haven for theatrical experiences) that is viable for and accessible by any kind of audience, but the problem is still that the outreach is lacking. Why assume that "colored audiences" can't appreciate "white stories"? I can assure you that African-Americans do enjoy non-Chitlin' Circuit shows (some don't even like them!). Latinos do watch more than zarzuelas and telenovellas. Chinese people, I am sure, can take a night off from Peking entertainment to cross over to the other side. It becomes a mess of circular rhetoric when you say "those audiences" don't come see our shows but you make no effort to try and get them into your seats. I assure you they don't need a special marketing scheme - they need a modicum of respect and information that doesn't make them feel like they are some kind of piteous community outreach effort to increase funding. I can understand the argument working for remote regional theatres where the demographics are still heavily balanced towards a white majority, but in New York City, among other metropolitan areas, it is a crime that audiences are still not hugely diverse in 2012.
Sevan K. Greene is still a Brown actor and playwright but is enjoying confounding people with his racial and ethnic ambiguity. NYTW will be producing a reading of his play NARROW DAYLIGHT on March 5 @ 3PM with a stellar cast he has to be hush-hush about for now. www.sevangreene.com
ANNA MOENCH, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group
Statistics can be manipulated to "prove" all kinds of things. Yes, trends are apparent in statistical data, but causation is famously difficult to prove with percentages and averages--as my middle school science teacher once said, "correlation does not imply causation." For instance, if you look at the ethnic makeup of immigrants in the 1880s, you'd find no Chinese folks were immigrating. Zero percent. Weird, considering the waves of immigrants who had come over to build the railroads for us throughout the 1800s. You could take that piece of information and conclude that all Chinese people must have gotten into a spaceship to fly off and explore uncharted galaxies. But actually, Congress instituted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the only law in our great nation's history to prevent immigration and naturalization based on race, which was firmly in place until 1943. Ah. That could have something to do with it.
It's possible that Tom Loughlin's conclusions (that theater is a medium for white people as evidenced by the greater percentages of white producers who mostly produce white playwrights who write most of their plays about white people which are then cast with white actors and are seen by predominently white audiences) are correct. It's entirely possible. But if we are to follow his logic in interpretinganother bullet point in the report, if 65% of audiences are female, then theater is for (and likely, about) women more than it is for (and about) men. Why, then, are 74% of scripts written by men, and of those scripts, why do 81% feature mostly male roles, according to Emily Glasstone Sands' now-famous paper about gender bias in the theater? Things are more complex than they may seem.
There are many ways to skew data, and even more ways to interpret it. Immediately concluding that people of color do not see theater because they inherently don't like the medium, rather than because there are fewer wealthy people of color than wealthy white people, or because there are fewer plays written and produced that are about people of color than about white people, or because there is a hard-to-eradicate stink of elitism that lingers in most established theaters, or because most people of color blast off into space on Russian spacecraft at 8:00pm, Tuesday through Sunday (with a matinee orbit at 2pm on Sunday) is just bad middle school science. One more thing. Although Ron Russell's rebuttal is heartfelt, and his company's work and experiences valuable, unfortunately he relies on anecdotal evidence. In defense of Loughlin, he does state that he is speaking about the trends of the majority, and he acknowledges repeatedly that exceptions do exist. Stating that one company's experience refutes on a broad scale the very real trends that Loughlin cites is just as incomplete an argument.
Anna Moench's short play, PULL!, will be produced in the Red Fern Theater Company's upcoming festival later this month. For details on that and other Moench-related things, visit www.annamoench.com.
Some food for thought from someone on the “outside” perspective:
1) Tyler Perry is not the only kind of theater that Black audiences will pay Broadway money for. Black Broadway and the urban theater circuit are an often overlooked part of the industry. The numbers these tours do could kill some Broadway shows on a good night.
2) Storytelling and its traditions are as old and varied as people ourselves. Nonetheless, good strong narratives resonate with all audiences, including people of color. It just simply isn't true that we don't appreciate linear stories on and off the stage. Our settings may be different, but the impact is the same.
3)Most theaters are puzzled about how to approach “audience development”. They haven’t figured out quite how to crack the code (i.e., reach the audiences of color). The answer isn’t because these audiences aren’t interested in theater. In fact, many people of color come from cultural traditions ROOTED in theater. Theater is in their blood. Start with the Performance traditions of West African, Yoruba culture. Then spread it out across the Latin and Afro-Caribbean diaspora.
4) This is the code cracker. Why aren’t audiences of color overwhelming Broadway houses? It’s simple. No one invests in something that doesn’t invest in them. Lack of audiences of color is a DEVELOPMENT failure. Developed relationships come from respecting a people, and earning their trust. That takes a greater effort than mailing and marketing. That takes community involvement and investment. How can you ask a people to come to you if you aren’t ever willing to go to them? You drop a random flier on my Brooklyn stoop and expect me to come to see your random play? I’ve never seen you in my community, but you want me to all of a sudden LEAVE my community, come all the way out to YOUR community, spend my disposable income and then I’m not even going to see anything from my community reflected on that stage? Who’s idea of marketing is that? If you want the people to come to you, you have to go to the people. (But there’s the rub, isn’t it. Do they even really WANT the people to come to them? Or, much like Loughlin, is there some obscure sense of pride and upholding of race privilege that comes from the idea that theater is only for White people? Does that not satisfy some hibernating feeling of superiority? Is that not some racist, classicist, supremacist thinking?)
5) Loughlin mentions Hip Hop and Jazz, birthed in Black culture and how White audiences enjoy it. Similarly, he says that there are some non-Whites who enjoy theater. But a flaw: Unlike Hip Hop and Jazz that are legitimately traced to the Black community, theater is not exclusively traced to White and European communities. There was a time when the commercial viability of both Hip Hop and Jazz was grossly under-estimated by the music industry. They were given a short life expectancy because they were thought to have no audience. The break in traditional music form was considered inferior art and therefore the practice and its audience were deemed temporary. But alas, both art forms and their audiences are here to stay. These styles have made our music catalogs better, re-shaped the world of music, and been imitated and co-opted by continuing generations. And just like Hip Hop and Jazz, Playwrights and Audiences of Color are grossly under-estimated and here to stay. They may be under-represented, but their life will be long and they will make our theaters better. If they are currently missing-in-action from the party, the failure is not theirs, but rather the party-planner. Nonetheless, the artists and their audiences dance on, with or without an invitation.
Dominique Morisseau is alumni of the 2011 EWG, a current member of the Women's Project Playwright's Lab and a fellow in the 2011-2012 Lark Playwrights Workshop. She is currently developing a three-play cycle on her beloved hometown of Detroit. The first of the three, DETROIT '67, received a reading in the Public's EWG Spotlight Series and the 2011 Lark's Playwrights' Week. She was also a runner-up for the 2011 Princess Grace Award. dominiquemorisseau@yahoo.com / or catch her on Facebook!
Let me say this: the idea expressed in Tom Loughlin's article isn't anything new under the sun. In fact, it's a common stream of "logic" used by oppressors around the world.
The physical form of Black people was used as an excuse to keep them out of ballet, with the Black body as a supposed affront to the European aesthetic. Black people have a long history of discrimination in classical music – another rarified art form that may be considered "for white people." Mr. Loughlin took his turn at the wheel, loosely wrapping an old idea in new statistics. And though he's gotten some flack for it, the simple fact is: he's not alone in his opinion.
That's what I find most troubling about Mr. Loughlin's essay. I don't care that he said something that's not true to anyone with a working frontal lobe. Clearly, theater is not just for white people. What I find disturbing is that he (and those who think like him) just want everyone (read: other Caucasians) to sign off on it, so they don't have to be bothered with the uncomfortable truth.
If theater is only for white people, then theaters don't have to worry about cultivating more than two audiences (old and young white people ... with money). Those pesky artists of color will have to resign themselves to writing stories with which the white audience is comfortable, e.g. writing about slavery or the Civil Rights movement if you're African-American, or penning a hot, passionate, sexy play about immigration if you're Latino, or if you're of Middle Eastern descent, well, then, if your play isn't about terrorism or Muslims, hang it up. Oh, and those artists of color can have their battle royale over the one spot available for a non-white play because ... you know ... that one Black/Asian/Latino play did so poorly 20 years ago.
However, if theater isn't only for white people, then a lot of theaters have done a really bad job of reaching out to other communities. If theater isn't only for white people, then institutional racism and a lack of minority representation in arts administration is a serious problem. If theater is not only for white people, then artistic directors of quite a few theaters are going to have to make new kinds of friends. Oh, the implications!
That's a scary proposition to a lot of theater makers who just want to "concentrate on telling good stories, regardless of race." (I put that last part in quotes because that's often the first response to mentions of racism in theater, as though people of color don't tell good stories.)
American theater will not become more inclusive unless there is a political will to do so. And, here's another truth: white folks who run theaters do have to buy into the idea of being more inclusive. Perhaps white audiences need to be educated about all the other types of theater out there. Maybe, though, they don't. Maybe they only go to see the same types of plays over and over again because that's all they're given.
Pia Wilson is a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group. She will be participating in the New Jersey edition of The One-Minute Play Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m., at Mile Square Theater Company at the Monroe Arts Center in Hoboken.
Sometimes, to want something we cannot have is too painful. So instead we say we don't want it, don't need, could care less about it. The price of going to decently produced theater -- especially the price of seeing something on Broadway -- is astronomical. (Translation: So far beyond your budget, don't even bother.) People are not buying tickets to the theater because many cannot possibly afford it.
And because to discuss this properly, we would need to have a much larger discussion about generational oppression, race and economics, who has privilege, and hope (or the lack of it), I will start by saying the following courses are required before we can continue:
Race and Economics in the US - 101 White Privilege - 101
Okay, so let's assume you've now taken those courses. Then I will continue this way: Tom, to say non-white-non-rich people aren't interested in the theater is a bit like saying, "Only rich people are interested in having fabulous health care and winter homes in Tahiti." Certainly, if you look at the evidence, you won't find many poor people purchasing homes in Tahiti, nor will you find many poor people purchasing the gold star health insurance that members of Congress are given -- but one could scarcely say that was because the poor of this country aren't interested in those things. (Then again, maybe they aren't interested in those things -- if you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to make it to your next mortgage payment or how to put food on the table, you may not give a damn about going to the theater. You can't afford to.)
(And because you've taken the required course load, you understand that not having the cash to afford it is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg: We're talking about institutional, systemic disenfranchisement which means everything from a lack of expendable cash, to the lack of educational opportunities, to the lack of exposure to theater and art, all the way to the lack of hope for a better future. It's quite a wide swath. And this is part of White Privilege -- the luxury to be oblivious to this.)
And to take it further, it's a vicious cycle isn't it? There aren't a lot of stories about brown people on the Broadway stage, are there? But if more plays about brown people were produced, who would be able to afford to see them?
But do not mistake me, Tom Loughlin's article is valuable: It brings to light White Privilege in the theater. And though Ron Russell rails against it, I think it's better that White Privilege rises to the surface where we can see it for what it is. Tom is quite right -- the majority of Broadway theater goers are rich white people (you'll forgive me for the gross generalization, won't you?). It's important to see that fact and ask, Why is that appalling? In my opinion, it's appalling because it does not reflect America's actual ethnic diversity. It does, however, reflect the concentration of wealth that exists in our country. And if it is indeed so appalling, how come it hasn't changed? Maybe it's not so appalling to many, many people. (And that, truly, is appalling.)
(Occupy Broadway, anyone...?)
And in Ron's scathing response to Tom's article, I sense some White Guilt. Tom's research is flawed and lacking, but it strikes me as honest and sincere. The problem with White Privilege (the luxury to be oblivious) and White Guilt (the constant burden of feeling responsible) strikes me as similar -- though they are radical ends of the spectrum, both find it difficult to look at what is actually there. And both are a bit self-centered: It's all about you, isn't it? (Trust me when I say, both White Privilege and White Guilt are burdens on those of us who aren't white, though if I had to choose, I'd prefer you feel guilty to oblivious.)
There is one theater that I know of which has been truly inspiring in it's desire to make a change. Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, MN, under the leadership Jack Reuler, has declared theater free for all -- they call it Radical Hospitality.
That is truly revolutionary, and yet I can't help but think that it's a shame that I think so.
Deen would like to acknowledge his privilege as an educated, seemingly cis-gendered man, as well thank his immigrant parents for being in the place to give him both opportunities and hope. His solo play, DRAW THE CIRCLE, will be produced at InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia) in April. For more info, please visit deentheplaywright.weebly.com.
By Jerome A. Parker, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group Recently I sat with a director friend and producer friend over dinner as we performed the ritual of a post-mortem for a show we put up togetherin New Paltz, NY. This show had a very healthy rehearsal period, though a very short run, and featured talent from actors and designers from Off-Broadway and Broadway. Everyone involved was paid... Let me say that again - everyone involved was PAID for their time and work. When will we be able to do something like this again together? I hope soon. Because we ended our dinner with a HUGE feeling of accomplishment and pride at what can be achieved when you have ambitious and talented people in your corner.
And in this business, which depends upon a lot of waiting – waiting for an “in”, waiting for an artistic director to schedule your play in their season, waiting for a space to open up - it IS very possible to create your own opportunities and have your play produced with quality now.
There are some things you can't get around. A producer IS necessary - especially if you want your artists and artisans to get paid. The good news is – playwrights can make good producers. As an artist who has self-produced a lot in the past, I've also been lucky enough to work with some great up-and-coming producers. Andre Lancaster who recently headed the production in New Paltz, went above and beyond the responsibilities of a producer - raising money, organizing, booking spaces, hiring crew, artistic staff, getting press, etc... – to help bring my three character play to life and share it with a community starving to see black characters on their stage.
Though he’s young, Andre is a veteran and self-made man in this industry. He’s not only the founder, artistic director and manager of Freedom Train Productions, but he also just finished interning in the literary offices of the Public and is now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a spell. This past fall, as he finished his degree, he wanted to bring a story to the SUNY, New Paltz campus that would respond to racially charged incidences that occurred there.
Working under the guidelines of union rules, and starting the process with the intention to honor all the artists monetarily for their work and time, the amount of money that needed to be raised seemed astronomical. Still, Andre pressed forward and saw us all through to the end. It was his vision and hard work throughout that carried us.
New York is filled with the Andre's of the world, who are not only passionate about their theater and giving with their time once they find something to get behind, but also creative with solutions to the problems that come with the territory of producing.
I was so excited to see the emergence of not only the New Black Fest, but also the igniting of the Harlem 9, and the continued growth of the Fire This Time Festival. Each of these entities is composed of creative producers who find the time, energy and money to invest in the plays and artists they believe in. They are a blessing in that they show us what is possible when we take our artistic destinies into our own hands.
I challenge you, playwrights and fellow theater makers, to seek out these rogue producers. Andre is one. Our very own Pia Wilson and Jesse Cameron Alick, both playwrights, also belong to this bunch. As a Public Theater EWG alum, Pia runs the Ghostlights, a semi-annual festival of plays by EWG members; and Jesse, an Artistic Associate at the Public, heads the Subjective Theater Company. So, you may find these independent producers inside more established places like the Public, Roundabout or at Arena Stage. But you may also find them at your local church or bar, people ready for a more independent model of putting on plays. You may find them at a young, emerging theater company in your neighborhood whose rules and methods are created as they create.
But I challenge you to not only see that play (it may or may not be your own) come to life but to also have an active role in making it happen. Have the audacity to demand means and the tenacity to raise those means. Seek out non-traditional spaces/venues and make the effort to find audiences to fill those spaces. Take your art into your own hands. Occupy your own space as a theater maker and set high standards for yourself and for those in your circles. See your play as it was meant to be seen.
Jerome A. Parker is an award-winning playwright, a lyricist, and a member of the Public Theater's EWG 2011. Upcoming: DIG (with the Fire This Time Festival), BLISS, STRANGE FELLOWE, SUITES FOR SAD MEN, THE DINAH SESSIONS and MIRACLE ON MONROE.
This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.
Maybe it facilitated Tahrir Square. It’s not facilitating you writing your play.
