Is Theatre for White People?

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Written for MSPS by Ally Kwun

 

Eighty-three percent of of all (Broadway) tickets were purchased by Caucasian theatregoers.

Bam.

What do you think of that?

That statistic is part of The Broadway League’s annual report on demographics of their audience from mid-2010 to mid-2011.  There were many other interesting points that they made, such as that 65% of theatregoers were female, that 62% were tourists, and for those over 25 years old, 78% of them had completed college and 39% had a graduate degree.

So we know that the majority of Broadway theatregoers are white, female, not from NYC (booo) and well-educated.

What are the implications of that?

(Those are just the things I thought tickled my brain. Here’s the report so you can pick and choose your own: http://www.broadwayleague.com/index.php?url_identifier=the-demographics-of-the-broadway-audience. Note: I did not buy the full $25 report I’m too cheap I’m taking all of this from the executive summary.)

I think this all comes down to WHY IS DIVERSITY IMPORTANT IN THEATRE? Is it necessary? Is it the same issue as diversity in general? Is diversity in theatre possible?

All important questions I have no idea how to answer. And like all things I don’t know what to do with, I google it.

Here is what I found:
The Greater-White-Than-Ever Way
Sh*t White Theatremakers Say
More Sh*t White Theatremakers Say
Okay, then. Let’s Really Talk About It.
More Statistics That Are Useful for the Race and Theatre Discussion

Read them. Comment on them. Join the conversation.

What if Jean Valjean was Black in America today?

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What if Jean Valjean was black?

In America.

Today.

This week, forty-five Notre Dame students will travel to the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago to experience the 25th Anniversary Tour of the epic musical, Les Miserables, the popular theatrical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s critique of nineteenth-century French caste society.

Jean Valjean is the show’s celebrated central hero: An ex-convict who breaks parole after serving a nineteen-year hard-labor sentence simply for robbing a house in order to feed his sister’s dying child. A punishment that seems outrageous to the audience’s ears.

Once paroled, Valjean runs into all kinds of barriers in place to keep him from any upward social mobility. Not to mention he will be hunted throughout the show by the musical’s main antagonist, Police Inspector Javert.

Though not always, the hero Jean Valjean is typically played by a white performer.

And in light of some recent critical research and scholarship about the histories and accounts of experiences of black men and other men of color in the segregated criminal justice system in the United States, Valjean’s Les Miz epic might have a lot to offer a discussion of our time and our place if we would consider, even for a moment, the counter-factual question:

“What if Jean Valjean was black in America today?”

Would he be able to achieve what the character Valjean achieves? Would we still cheer for him?

Do we?

I’ll leave it open for now, though I will posit that we might not have to rack our brains too much to answer this question. The difficult history of racial caste relations in America and its equally unsettling relationship with punitive justice, nonviolent crimes, and especially the War on Drugs have been explained critically enough in recent years by scholars such as Michelle Alexander.

And so although the audience smiles and applauds when Jean Valjean is able to break free of his oppressive system and achieve a wild, swashbuckling and fulfilling life, I hope that we don’t ignore the very real possibility that the situation of the dashing, singing character Valjean seen at the beginning of the musical might not be very different at all from the real-life situation of the man standing just outside the Cadillac Palace in downtown Chicago and holding the sign:

How do we reach a critical mass for racial equity on campus?

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How do we reach and organize the critical “critical mass” of fully invested students, faculty, and staff in the fight for racial equity on our campuses?

  1. Dismantle privilege.
  2. Continue to acquire knowledge.
  3. Embrace and encourage change.

This fight for racial equity—by which I mean the solidarity and struggle of an elite multi-generational and multicultural team of students and professionals in the pursuit of the full and equal access and participation of all races and communities of people in the fair and equitable attainment of higher educational outcomes—is not for everybody.

The fight for racial equity is not an equal opportunity endeavor. If it was, there wouldn’t be such a specific, dire, critical need for racial equity projects in American higher education in the first place.

Rather, what I am interested in is the movement’s critical mass: the minimum required amount of human capital to create a new system of radical racial equity on our university campus.

As I understand things, we have not reached a critical mass in the fight for racial equity yet for a few reasons:

  • Relative (though in no way universal) racial and socio-economic privilege and advantage among dominant, majority groups often prevents an understanding and valuing of the dire urgency for racial equity.
  • Honest lack of knowledge and skillsets in the practice of oppression theory, critical race theory, and liberation theology by administrators, faculty, and staff prohibits fully institutionally-organized racial equity efforts.
  • Real and understandable fear of the challenge of radical, institutional and campus change can undermine the pursuit of racial equity.

Privilege, lack of knowledge, and fear.

So what does it take to overcome these barriers and to identify and organize the critical mass of individuals for whom the fight for racial equity is necessary to bring about significant change and development to campus?

These are vague beginnings:

  • Dismantle privilege. We need desperately to increase the number of students, faculty, and staff who can articulate opposition to the racial privilege and caste systemthat has dominated the political and socio-economic foundation of higher education in our country for the past 400 years.
    • Formal and informal (but always purposeful) cross- and intra-group discussion.
    • Development of thoughtful new programs (in replace of the old) to dismantle the system of privilege on our campus. These programs will do as much to address the eradication of legacy admissions, traditional staff hiring practices, and faculty tenure processes as they will to undo policies related to leadership position appointments, mentoring and career services outcomes, and facilities and residence hall organization. The mission of these new programs should, in fact, be: “To fully dismantle the inequitable system of privilege across our entire campus.”
  • Acquire knowledge. This does notrefer to cultural competency or passive mentoring about tolerance and difference. Rather, the knowledge necessary for the movement for racial equity is a deep, life-long, foundational learning process about systemic oppression, critical race, and liberation, as well as thoughtful racial identity development.
    • Increase dramatically the numbers of students, faculty, and staff who participate in these schools of thought through new hires, new tenures, and new admissions procedures.
    • Establish purposeful personal and professional development programs for the continued investment in the racial equity skills of our campus leaders.
    • Fully integrate and organize students and professionals equipped with this knowledge into fundamental positions throughout the structure of the university.
  • Embrace change. Do not fear change. We must fight for change. We need to recognize in the deepest of our hearts that the campus must change, and radically, in order to build the kind of college environment that true and just racial equity demands.

Tradition, by this recognition, is a significant barrier to racial equity by virtue of the obvious diametrically opposed realities of tradition and change.

  • New programs and services must significantly embody the transparent call for change and in very many, if not all, cases must competently and thoughtfully oppose campus traditions. This will mean the eradication of tradition-focused programs, as well as the thoughtful integration of new and more integrated educational programs for racial equity.

At an institutional level—and at a personal level—if we can start with these three broad approaches to campus racial equity, we might begin to assemble the necessary critical mass to create the kind of institutions we want to create.