If You've Just Come To This Blog From The Guardian

I'm always pleased when the Guardian's online blog includes me in a recap of one of the theater-sphere's rolicking debates. Earlier today, they posted a recap of the debate around race sparked off by Thomas Garvey's response to RVCBard.

I just wanted to say two things, if you're just arriving now and missed it:

1. I responded to Isaac's charge, quoted at the end of the piece, that I was taking Thomas Garvey in good faith here.
2. One odd omission from the Guardian piece is RVCBard's stance on the issue, since after all it was her comments that Garvey latched onto and started the whole thing, and without her the issue would probably have died away much quicker and been less interesting. Anyways, this is her biggest response to the debate, and this is her last one. They're crucial to understanding what happened.

Diversity XXI: Race in the Theater. Or rather, Race in Conversation

Not much I can say on the subject except:

Part 1 - RVCBard

Part 2 - Thomas Garvey

Part 3 - 99 Seats

There's a lot of rage out there. A few brief thoughts:

1. Thomas Garvey says: "But please, try to skip the temptation to continue the "ongoing dialogue." Let's not "dialogue" anymore - let's just bring city services to Roxbury instead, okay? Let's just pass national healthcare. Let's improve education. Let's move forward."
   
   
   Sorry - you can't stop a dialogue, unfortunately. There will always be a dialogue about race. That's just the way it goes.
   
   
2. 99 Seats says: "Did I mention fuck you? Because, if I didn't, hey, pal, fuck you."
   
   
   It's a tough conversation we're having, and I believe you're pissed. And you make some good criticisms of Mr. Garvey. Imagine how much more powerful that post would be if it wasn't lost in a sea of fucking.
   
   
3. The part of RVCBard's original post that start all of this: "In contrast, my experiences with White people have been confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting in this regard. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I always feel a kind of pressure to perform around White people. It's like I have to prove I'm worthy of their presence. It's proven very difficult to get a White person's attention, especially a White man's. It's even harder to maintain it for more than about 15 minutes. And if you're White, and you met me in person, I'm probably talking about you."
   
   Time for some carefully chosen words.
   
   Well, as someone who I guess is white (half-African doesn't count for me because it's Jewish African... anyways) sometimes it is confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting for the White People too. That's what Chris Matthews was talking about. NOT THAT I AGREE WITH WHAT HE IS SAYING. But Matthews has been told a lot that he's racist (because sometimes he is), and he doesn't want to be, so he's relieved for a moment to escape that confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting feeling.
   
   If you've read good books on this subject like Blink or a million others, you understand that there's a difference between what I usually call hard racism, where like Strom Thurmond you actually believe that one race is better than all others and it should be raised to the top, or soft racism, which can either be stupidity/ignorance like Chris Matthews or institutional and unconscious.
   
   There's a study that shows that blind auditions can greatly improve the diversity of an orchestra. This is not a proof of hard racism -- it's a proof of soft racism. The problem is that seemingly open-minded people may, inadvertently, through tricks of their own unconscious mind, wind up mis-evaluating different applicants based on their race.
   
   The point is, we White Americans want to bridge this gap. But sometimes, we're going to screw up the way we screw up at a lot of things we want to do.
   
   Why am I rambling on this way?
   
   Well, from our half of the conversation, RVCBard, here's what happens. We show up to a meeting with someone who says that this is a White Supremacist country and is clearly on her guard to smell us out: are we the White man who's playing fair, or are we in the category of racists? And we know that we're open-minded, but we also know that
   
   So we want to be on our best behavior. We're nervous, and self-conscious. Like in sex, the more nervous we get, the less pleasant the experience is, and the more likely we are to screw up. It is, as you put it, "confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting." Then it becomes a Catch-22 -- we're confused, uncomfortable, frustrated, and you're confused, uncomfortable, and frustrated, and the chances we'll try it again are low.
   
   Does this mean I agree with Thomas Garvey, then, that it's Black people's fault, and y'all need to move on?
   
   NO.
   
   Thomas Garvey thinks the way to solve the difficulty of this conversation is to avoid it. It's irritating, and as all three players have demonstrated it can lead to incredible anger. But we can't avoid the conversation. I'm not so concerned about the frustrated/uncomfortable quality of the conversation as I am by the people who get up after 15 minutes.
   
   Part of it is we like to pretend that we're not having the conversation. White people meet Black people but they don't want to be talking about race. I don't like talking about it. And nobody wants our only dialogue to be "hey I'm black you're white let's talk about that" / "hey I'm white I don't really know what you're experience is like." And yet it may be necessary.
   
   

I don't know if I made the point I was trying to make (I thought I only had a few thoughts but it turned out to take a lot of words). I'm nervous to hit "Publish Post" because, well, it's so much easier for me not to post this and for me not to weigh in on this issue.

At least I'm not the only Jew who feels this way:

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Diversity XII: Old Dead White Guys

99 Seats goes off on folks like Thomas Garvey who bring up Shakespeare in every argument about diversity. Basically, it's the equivalent of Godwin's Law: You bring up Shakespeare, you lose. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as making it the Godwin's Law of theater, but the point is very well taken.

The argument is better phrased that there is no danger that Scott Walters, 99 Seats, or anyone is ever going to drive Shakespeare out of existence. (I'm producing Shakespeare right now!). So there's no danger in having Scott Walters, 99 Seats, or anyone pull as hard as they want to against Shakespeare. On the other hand, there is a very real danger that the diverse, vulnerable playwrights who aren't getting produced might get further trampled. So really, the concern for Shakespeare is far out-weighed by the concern for diversity.

The only reason I'm hesitant is because the Nth degree of this pull is David Byrne's belief that opry is so dead that we shouldn't teach anything but pop music. There's a lot of diversity that can come through even productions of the classics: maybe the playwright is old and dead, but The Classical Theatre of Harlem certainly fits one definition of diversity.

Still, 99 Seats' post just makes me smile because of:

Because no one ever says, "What about Rutherford B. Hayes?!?" Why? Because he kind of sucked. So didmost of the old dead white guys.

Damn straight, 99 Seats. Give mediocre Presidents the tongue-lashing they rightly deserve.

Diversity IV: Ways That Work

Those who support Isaac Butler's "sue the theaters" idea (which I don't think he was honestly advocating) or Scott Walters' "numbers out of a hat" idea (which was serious, if ill-received), do have one sharp retort to those of us who criticize: If not these ideas, which ideas?

Well, I certainly don't want to sit around sniping all day, so... some ideas that work.

Firstly, Thomas Garvey (who I stopped reading the same day I stopped reading Clyde Fitch) reacted last Monday to the Butler/Walters proposals in a post that goes between putting forward the same criticisms I made and some other points I don't know if I agree with. But it ends with:

To be fair, when "diversity" is the problem, maybe real diversity is the answer. But that doesn't mean chance is the answer. So count me unconvinced, although if Scott Walters can dream up more ways to undermine the system of privilege in this country, I'm all ears.

I want to repeat something I said at the time, which is that I think Scott Walters has discovered one of the better methods of encouraging diversity in this country, which is his attempts to decentralize our theater industry with the project formerly known as the Less Than 100,000 Project (I forget what it's called now -- sorry Scott!).

1. The only way in which it is possible for 7 MFA programs to be the gatekeepers of success is because playwrights are all fighting tooth and nail to break into NYC. There's a limit of number of theaters, which are all being absolutely inundated by submissions (as we've seen by the behind-the-scenes looks at literary departments).
2. It is much harder to get your work seen in a community that isn't yours, that doesn't share your background and your history. Many of the best works of art surface locally first, before they break-out in a wider realm. If there's no local market, it's much harder to take that first step.
3. If we developed local-grown theater, then those under-served communities would have a lot more theater-saturated audiences, which in turn develop more artists to begin with.

That's why I felt comfortable dismissing the names-out-of-a-hat idea -- because this idea seems so much more likely to work! I'm a firm proponent of that idea.

Secondly, there's a post by a blogger Ian Thal (who I hadn't read before, but now I will follow) on the subject which puts forward another proposal:

So now for my mischief: I challenge you critics, producers, and artistic directors who should be advocating for great theatre. Find an underappreciated, underproduced, perhaps unknown playwright who should be appreciated, produced and known. Better yet: find six, eight, ten, and advocate for them.

Obviously, this only works to a certain degree if you're inside the gates -- after all, I would love to give a diverse number of playwrights beautiful prizes for their work, but I'm still working on paying my rent with theater myself.

But on my theater company's blog, I authored a post about how producing is about love:

It turns out that a producer is just someone who falls in love with projects that aren't their own -- falls in love so hard that they have to fight to make the project.

If you put diversity in your mind, and prepare to fall in love with a diverse range of productions, and fight for others as hard as you'd fight for yourself, you can make things happen.

I have two projects for that company commissioned (for no money -- I said I was poor); I don't want to talk about them until they're done, but it happens that both are from playwrights of communities whose voices are missing. I didn't select them because of that, but at the same time, they had a voice that I couldn't possibly provide, something new that I knew no one but them could give to the world. It would break my heart not to see it on floorboards soon.

Anyways, that's the post: solutions that I think work. There are almost certainly more, but it's good to hat tip when you see them.

(Updated: I keep mis-numbering my own series. Fixed.)