Naming What Ails Us

Last week’s sudden departure of Hana Sharif from Arena Stage got me thinking and I haven’t been able to stop. There are so many layers to what I want to say about the current state of the non-profit theater industry in the United States. Where to start?

The fact that our organizations were almost universally skating on a razor-thin margin before the pandemic blew it up but instead of using that moment to start from scratch and center the community our 501(c)3 statuses supposedly say we serve, most of our organizations raced back to “normal” as quickly as they possibly could…even when we knew that “normal” hadn’t actually worked in decades (if ever)?

The fact that artistic directors of color are somehow held solely responsible for the fiscal health of their institutions even when they have a supposed partner in organizational leadership whose job it is to keep an eye on that particular ball?

The fact that the spectacular public explosion that was the old Williamstown Theater Festival business model was supposed to help us as an industry stop exploiting unpaid and underpaid labor in order to create our art but somehow that lesson has gone quiet?

The fact that we are spending more time pointing fingers at each other than exploring what (as TCG puts it) a truly just and thriving theater organization (much less ecology) really looks like?

A book I once read talked about the futility of whacking moles instead of getting rid of the grubs that the moles eat and therefore solving the problem once and for all. What is the grub here?

At theaters across the industry, including some I have helped lead, there has been/is a pernicious disease seemingly at the DNA level of the organization. It appears to persist through leadership changes, strong and weak balance sheets, and artistic & critical success or failure. Sometimes it goes dormant but, in my experience, it requires constant, vigilant effort in order to keep it so. For a long time I shook my head in dismay because I couldn’t pinpoint or name the issue. Then, at a TCG National Conference in 2016, I was introduced to the “White Supremacy Culture” document that led me to https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/. Call it what you want: colonialism, toxic workplace culture, oppression, patriarchy, the result is the same: power in the hands of a few who extract all the benefit they can from the many while trying to convince us that we should be thankful for the honor of the extraction. Comfort for those in power at all costs.

I had an intense visceral response when I read Nataki Garrett Myers’s recent post. Rage and sorrow and a deep desire to root out this disease coursed through me. It brought to mind a panel I witnessed of artistic and managing leaders at the TCG conference in Pittsburgh. Hana was there with her then managing partner in St. Louis, Danny Williams. Hana spoke of specifically looking for a white man to fill that role because she knew she would need someone to provide cover for her. To repeat her words after she said them so that particular people in particular rooms could hear them and to speak her vision when she wasn’t in the room. This is such a deeply known, prevalent need that it was near the top of her list of qualities she looked for in the interview process! I have played this role myself for female colleagues because I’ve always presented as the non-threatening one. Passionate, intelligent, powerful women being told they are too aggressive, to “tone it down,” or to simply have their ideas dismissed entirely because the hearer didn’t like their delivery. On the flip side, I’ve also been asked why I was pushing back against dangerous ideas from male colleagues and told, “we hired you for your sunshine.”

I’ve also had my own experience of resigning from an organization I loved after a board of directors prioritized the comfort of a white man over the best interests of the organization. But, Nataki’s post reminded me (again) that there are infinite layers of BS that leaders of color encounter that I have the privilege to not have to think about on a daily basis, or really at all. But, I have empathy so I must not only think about it but do something about it. I’m not purporting to know a darn thing about the inner workings of particular regional theaters but I know the repeated experiences of my colleagues of color cannot be denied.

We, white leaders, have to own and eradicate our own complicity in this. When I speak for a colleague without explicitly saying that’s what I’m doing to the people who can’t hear them, I am complicit. When I grit my teeth in a meeting and then sidebar with allies to work around the problematic people, I am complicit. When I think, “this needs to change but I don’t have time to deal with it now,” I am complicit. When I hear, “but they’re liberal, they would never say/do that racist thing!” and don’t point out the flaws in that logic, I am complicit. I am working every day to hone my complicity radar, to stop it and reverse it in the moment. The longer I wait after an experience, the easier it is to either not say anything at all or temper my response through rationalization. Not one of us can thrive when some of us are harmed.

For almost two years now, I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to work in partnership as the managing director to Peggy McKowen’s artistic director at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. One of the things that drew me to CATF was and continues to be the commitment to anti-racist and anti-oppressive (ARAO) values. We are by no means where we want to be but we strive to look through the lens of ARAO practices and the lens of care hour by hour, day by day. I have never worked anywhere that centers care the way CATF does. Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about sustainability and interrogating what we mean by that word. Financial sustainability, sure, but equal to that is the sustainability of

• playwrights’ ability to share their true, authentic voices

• the daily experience of all our artists during an intense summer season

• the long-term livelihood of our staff and artists

• our patrons’ deep investment in and passion for the fearless art we produce

• our community as it exists now and as it expands

• the nonprofit theater industry that needs the playwrights’ work we produce

We recently examined and rearticulated our vision, mission, and values. Our vision is now “art that deepens human connection.” I believe true human connection is one of the best vaccinations against this disease that is ravaging our industry and our society. CATF endeavors to inoculate through fearless art by diverse voices and the intense conversations that engenders; centering the values of ARAO, community, and care. Other theaters have different approaches. I see the work Out of Hand is doing in Atlanta, that Company One is doing in Boston, that Theater Alliance is doing in DC, that The New Harmony Project is doing in Indiana. Exceedingly different organizations finding exceedingly different paths to health.

We must cure this disease and vaccinate against future outbreaks. What are you doing to help? Please share in the comments.

Documents, writings, and websites that have been on my mind while I wrote this: We See You White American Theatre, “We Came. We Saw. Now What?,” https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/, “Decomposition Instead of Collapse – Dear Theatre, Be Like Soil,” “Awake to Woke to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture,” “Fxck you White American Theatre,” “Feature, Not a Bug: How Regional Theater Keeps Setting Leaders of Color Up to Fail,” “Exit us,” Tribal Leadership, “Non-Profit Arts Leader of Color BINGO,” White Fragility, and many others.