Julian Mesri

This post is meant to be a response to this post by Distinguished Professor of Theatre Arts/Acting  at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Tom Loughlin, but in doing so I hope to highlight a problem that I, as a working artist of color, have witnessed firsthand and continue to witness.

Let us begin then, with Loughlin’s  more or less, thesis:

This is not to say that other races or ethnic groups do not have theatre or do not enjoy it. But the particular form of the scripted written work as interpreted by actors in a linear story-telling fashion seems to be one that has interested western Caucasians for a long time, and apparently continues to do so for a certain demographic slice of white people as a whole.

Theater, it seems, is for white people:

Rather than assume, as Loughlin does, that theater as an art-form is special for white “western” people, let us consider this a byproduct of creating a work that limits access and information to specific communities. In order to do so it is imperative for us to stop thinking about the mere statistics of audience goers and playmakers and take a strong look at the institutions, systems and spaces in which “theatre” is created “for” and “not for” people, and see how our conceptions of class, race and space are directly affecting what work and whose work we make.

If we want to understand why our theatre is becoming white, and failing our communities, we have to look not only the work created, but the spaces that it inhabits, whether physically, mentally or virtually.(Joshua Dachs has an interesting take in this article in American Theater)

If we we see the first “theatrical” spaces, the Athenian Amphitheaters even up to the Globe or the corrales in Spain, we see open air and circular spaces. In the Middle Ages, even this space was usually an appropriated “public space” – usually a church, but sometimes an entire village. Eventually, we introduced perspective into our theaters and suddenly sight was privileged for the lucky few in the lines of sight, and little by little as film replaced theater as the communal past-time, theaters got smaller, more expensive, and became the kind of thing one did out on vacation to New York instead of a commonplace cultural event.

If we look at the main theaters today, we see that they are large, foreboding and shiny apparatuses of concealment. What gets you into that brand new Black Box? First of all money, but more importantly, you have to feel as if you belong to that Black Box, if that black box even wants you inside of it. Theaters today are more preoccupied in proclaiming themselves as theaters than public communal spaces. They behave the way other luxury goods do, by enclosing themselves, and defining their audience as a informed, privileged elite. It is no surprise theaters have been getting progressively whiter, richer and older.

Why is theater for white people? Because by the choices and spaces we have created, rather than create an open center for public discourse, we have created a privileged center for elite discourse. Why are we surprised then, when the plays that make it to the large-donor theaters end up being predominantly about white families, usually with money?

This is how theater becomes “white” – not from any inherent genetic or historic trait. Theater is a form of communal expression in time that requires an audience. The way we treat and place that audience will not only effect the population that sees it, it will effect the work itself. It is a reinforcing system that we cannot stop if we do not see how our institutional model feeds the very whiteness we are trying to address.

When we cater entry into that box to large subscriber bases of generally white older-individuals with larger paychecks, that is who gets our information, that is who our intended audience becomes, and that makes our theatre a white one. When you make prerequisite for entering into that black box (on the artistic side) a college education, the ability to work multiple non-paying internships and/or the ability to subsidize your art via parents’ money, trust funds, or somehow other forms of wealth your theatre will be predominantly a white one. When the pedagogy that defines the art of these theaters is not based in in the communities themselves but in secluded ivory-towers where the process of playwriting or directing is taught in a prescribed method garnered from the experience of years of similar work with the same structure, in the end, consigning most plays to development hell where they eventually take on the formal characteristics of the very spaces they are shown in – your theater will be a white one.

Your audiences will be mostly white, the people who will be defined by those institutions will be mostly white and most importantly, anyone who is not white and makes it to those instituions will be singled out, not just for their accomplishments but for their non-whiteness. They are honorary members of a community that has been, whether intentionally or unintentionally, excluding them.

By clinging to that capital-granting status quo we have consigned ourselves to listen quietly and accept the Loughlin thesis of the theater world, seeing no other way in which we can change, and simultaneously searching for and then denying those magical harbingers of discrimination (as if they’re mean old racists locked somewhere deep in our file cabinets and not systematic flaws that live in the very fabric of our instituions)

Unfortunately, the largest step in changing theatre cannot come from places whose dependence is on theatre to remain precisely in this way. It is up to  theater-makers to seek out new spaces, develop new ways of making work and open ourselves up to the audiences which have been robbed of a theatrical voice. The time for this is now.

much love, and fight the good fight,

- Julián