I got time.

About this Blog:

In considering complaints regarding my Blog Post #3, I have several thoughts:

1.        What I have to write is COMPLETELY DEPENDENT upon describing how my experiences created my point of view, and so it is difficult to universally navigate this territory and honor all parties who read it.  I am trying to do right by my own experience, but also by my friends for whom these experiences are related to their experiences, where we intersect. 

While I will always keep anonymity for the folks of whom I write, I will also employ the following rule when writing my blog:  if a friend, (not someone who does not identify as friend,) feels that I have inappropriately represented them, I will change the blog.  If non-friends have complaints, they can talk to me about their concerns, but I do not reflexively promise to change what was written. 

Articulating my experience is not more important than the people whom I love, but it is bigger, for me, than the hurt feelings of folks who I am calling out for having done harm.  I will always review these concerns and I will explore the options of interpretation brought by these concerns, but unless I care for our friendship, I will not promise to change anything.  I take a lot of care in expressing my experiences.  The point of the blog is not to represent everyone’s truth, just mine.

2.       This blog is not meant to reflect the details of reality, but rather represent in image and impact the experiences I have.  This is a satire where I toe the line between truth and not truth in order to tell MY truth.  That means that strong, non-realistic imagery will be used, as well as sarcasm.  I stand by this.

-Tara

I got time

So, as a mom of 2 children, both elementary school-aged until 2 weeks ago, a business owner, an adjunct teacher of the arts at two different schools of higher ed, and an aspiring PhD student honing my writing craft with a blog, fundraising campaign captain, and in general a fighter against the mother fucking patriarchy, I DO, as you would expect, have tons of time to fight with dumb-ass white people on the internet.  I got time, whacha got, Internet?

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Circles of impotent defensiveness

So, today I playfully bantered about white supremacist culture with a person named Dorie. Fun!

Her resemblance to the sweet and cuddly Ellen Degeneres Pixar movie character can't be denied, just as much as her inability to stay on the same topic is on par with the previously mentioned character who tends to forget what she just saw within 10 to 15 seconds.   

To that point, Dorie argued with me and my racism (when did I get the system on MY side, anyway?) on a thread about a video featuring a maybe 9 or 10 year old boy being mistreated by like 6 cops. 

It was a Black boy, and the subsequent undignified treatment he was given in the video was legitimized by Dorie in this thread (hosted by a friend of mine) because ... well, she said because of Covid.  

She assumed that the cops were trying to stop the boy from potentially spreading COVID, and that was the justification for putting a fucking bag on his head and pushing him around like a lead exercise ball to the other officers. 

Despite the fact that this video was filmed long BEFORE Covid, and that information was revealed on the very thread on which we spoke, even so, Dorie kept swimming around in circles of impotent defensiveness as a byproduct of me calling her out for missing the goddamned point of the video.  

(I do keep getting this wrong, I know.)

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Manipulated, bullied and blinded by white culture

In fairness, on this thread, with me idly commenting again and again, casually pushing her down the road of completely unwanted realizations, Dorie eventually came around to acknowledging the inappropriateness of her remarks, and to her credit, she retracted her radically ingenious theory that the cops were actually just protecting folks from the kid's saliva by covering his head, with a bag, and pushing him around.  COMPLETELY FINE.  

Anyway, she got to the happy white ally place in the end.  It's so nice when we all get along, right?

But my leisurely, white-serving, edging on redundant upon itself "conversation" with Dorie got me thinking about how white folks my WHOLE LIFE have been pushing and shoving me away from discovering important words like Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Bias, and goddamn living-breathing Star Wars-style Imperialism. It's like there was a goddamn bag on my head.  

Look, I know that as an Asian woman, I do not have the same experience as that precious boy, who was my daughters age.  He was a Black boy in a circle of white cops.  It doesn't get more clear than that.  

But I can't help but recognize the feeling of being manipulated, bullied and blinded by white culture.  

You all couldn't have let me see just a little?

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I'm happy to do the work

And I'm coming to the conclusion that MOST people are unfamiliar with the meanings of these very important, very applicable, very relevant buzz words.  I can totally google BuzzFeed videos on each of these on my Motorola if you need me to... I'm happy to do the work.

But for reals, what's the point of an educated mind if it's not to know how to problem solve?  My problem was ALWAYS that the actions of my liberal minded educators and my artsy fartsy peers didn't add up to actual commitment, actual communication, actual change. In fact in grad school, I got really good at doing the right thing IN SPITE of my teachers and peers, and they still had criticism. 

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Internally bleeding exhaust

I remember once the school sent our company of actors out on a residency deep in rural Oregon in a van.  I had experience with that van, and so on my own, I got that van inspected.  I found out that the vehicle was super dangerous, bad tires, internally bleeding exhaust, a literal page worth of dangers...and the school ignored me completely.  

Three days after I submitted the information, we were sent to drive it 7 hours into the state with internally directed exhaust until the fucking thing broke down and we had to be rescued.  

Being right made me VERY unpopular, but lets be real, I was clearly unpopular already.

  

I mean that's why you ignore a professionally sourced appraisal of a vehicle, right? You do it because you don't WANT to believe, because you have invested in not trusting the source of the complaint. 

It's certainly not the smart thing to do, ignore that the vehicle is a death trap, when you're talking about the lives of students in your care on their way to asphyxiation and lung cancer... er, I mean Oregon.

But they just didn't believe me.  I wonder why?

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Rented our own goddamn rug cleaner

Or that time that I had to spend the night in the hospital because my (white leadership at grad) school didn't believe my concerns about the mold in the carpet.  The carpet was one that I was meant to lie down on for hours at a time in rehearsal.  But they didn't think my concerns were legitimate. They just didn't believe that I was having reactions from the rug, which consisted of shortness of breath, itching, headache, and a little nausea.  Get over it, whiner!

Eventually, AFTER I was released from the hospital for acute asthma irritation (cuz you know, I couldn't breathe,) my partner and I had to come in to the theatre space, the next night.  We rented our own goddamn rug cleaner, and removed as much of the mold from the rug fibers as we could.  The water from the machine was black, but, ya know, no biggie.

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Punch down

Or how about how one of my classmates (oh did you already know he was a white man?) liked to rail on people with outright insults again and again, passing it off as "joking".  He enjoyed the benefit of being the "funniest" and the "favorite" of the class while insulting other classmates without ever even noticing how tone deaf it was to punch down at someone like me, for example.  

This guy was literally the highest status classmate (and the only one without an actual undergrad degree but admitted anyway,) there. Coasting on privilege he didn't earn, the school encouraged him, saw greatness in him, lifted his sense of humor up as a beacon for us aspirants. Ignoring the inequity left in his wake.

THEY ENCOURAGED HIS ABUSE OF HIS PRIVILEGE.  

I mean, I was hurled on in grad school from all directions.  (Surely I just deserved it and there was no function of those buzz specific words in THAT system, we ARE talking about 'the arts' afterall...)

What was the justification for allowing this behavior from the teachers (who also called me names and treated me with disdain), and wordlessly promoting that distrust in the school culture? 

Why did they lift up white male students who bullied classmates? 

In this closed system, where bullying was the norm, and the white men benefited from it again and again, it was usually only the white male point of view that the school was interested in hearing.   

How did they NOT SEE that their own biases were not justification for ignoring the voices of other students?  

How did they not see that the white man art passing as theatre was not the pinnacle of expression because of their SKILL, but rather, that the white man's voice was the one that everyone already listened to, they've had loads of precedent, and that the school's culture was only encouraging more of the same? 

How did they NOT see that a white man's point of view WAS NOT EVER COMING OUT OF THIS MOUTH??? 

Happily, when I got out, I realized that students who wanted to study physical theatre were catching on.  One Pig Iron student, (the OTHER MFA in physical theatre,) told me that they chose not to go to my alma mater because they heard that teachers were abusive there.  

Thank goodness, someone somewhere leaked the truth.  

White theatre, what's your theory?  Did they just not watch enough Buzzfeed videos?

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A good reason to vomit

Can we talk about Angry for a moment?

I can tell that we are existing in a coma of anger right now, and I'm speaking of our culture.  

We are so filled with anger that we have gotten to the "we don't know how to-  don't know if we should- don't think it will go so well- don't know what to do with it- shit, lets just eat cheetos and drink Southern Comfort until we have a good reason to vomit" stage of existence.

It isn't comfortable not knowing what to do with all these big feelings.

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My second cup of tea

I'll give you an example of how these big feelings manifest.

Today, whilst drinking my SECOND cup of tea, I attempted to talk down an escalating white supremacy post from my Asian friend's facebook page. 

Girlfriend had some big feelings, she just didn't know how to put them all together with all the white supremacy coating and covering her genuine love of fellow humans. {edit:  To be clear, she didn't put that hate there; hate is a pre-existing condition in America.  The way I see it, she, like me, was handed a confusing mess of ideas and no context for understanding it.}

It reminded me of the when my kids are feeling crafy and want to start making something from scratch, but they have items out on the table from all the categories of craft, and then JUST BECAUSE ITS THERE, someone starts making some slime at the same time and all of the sudden everything on the table is covered in glittery gluey slime.  

We want our sovereignty in those big American ideas, and challenging them with limitations to those privileges is complicated. But what about free speech? (but it's covered in goo.) But what about my right to hate who I want?  (covered in goo.) But what about THE IRISH SLAVES??? 

Yall can look that one up, but clearly the USA needs to wash their hands and put away the glitter and Elmer's, and go see an addiction counselor, cuz the SoCo and cheetos aren't working for anyone.   

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The purple slime concoction

We all have to deal with big feelings.  These feelings are living under our skin, and they are as mixed up in our country's inherent racism as my son's self portrait on construction paper is inextricably lost in the purple slime concoction.

How do you wash that stuff off???  Won't the paper just wash away????

I'm learning how to navigate my own racism.  Seeing it in my little, unconsidered thoughts, and being very clear that these thoughts are what I have absorbed, but they are not WHO I AM.  I have to work hard to separate who I am from what I have absorbed.

One way I've started to realized this identity is by accepting that I am brown, and to resist the white supremacy I was steeped in means confronting why I am often so unpopular.  

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At the very least, I'm good with me

MAYBE THEY JUST DON'T LIKE YOU, TARA you might say.  But it just doesn't matter if it's an inherent unlike-ability, or if it's the purple goo we've been steeping in. I need to get good at being unpopular, get comfortable with it! Conversely, accepting my inherent "badness" means accepting that there is NO PLACE in which I fit.  

And that just isn't acceptable.  You all have to see how unacceptable that is.  

I may as well turn the Racist Decontaminator on at full blast!  Accept my total bitch identity! Accept what I really feel, if there's literally NO PLACE for me to fit in.  

That way, AT THE VERY LEAST, I'm good with me.

Everywhere in my life, the "people pleasing" act has literally gotten me no satisfaction.  Pretending I don't feel the impact of the cultural racism: "It's okay, you're not a racist just because you think that property is more important than human life," and "I know you care about police brutality if it's a white person being hit," are not bylines I can stand to say.  

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SoCo flavored glitter

So, I've been practicing being unpopular lately, ya know, soaking up the rays of being "that bitch" and such, and I've gotten quite a "yes I am that bitch" tan.  Thank you Dell'Arte International for showing me that I had so much potential to piss of white theatre people, and all I had to do was to be myself!

In the last couple of years, I've been embroiled in a group of white theatre makers that also didn't want to listen to reason. They didn't trust me when I told them the collective van was leaking exhaust into the cabin.... They also didn't want to take off the goo and glitter from their beloved ideas of 'self-determinacy' when I asked them to try.

And until only very recently, they were pretty sure as a majority white theatre company that they were pretty great allies to BIPOC folks:  they were very good at watching the buzzfeed videos, at pronouncing those really big words like "sup prem ass see," and they were ready to make the world a better place by producing musicals and throwing SoCo flavored glitter around. 

I'll talk more about my struggles with this company in later posts, but as you might have guessed, the company spent 6 months swimming around in circles of impotent defensiveness as a byproduct of me calling them out.  

Deliberate and furious in their insistent lack of accountability, they missed the goddamned point of having me, their brown director of inclusion and community, on board in the first place.

SOMEONE TAKE THE ELMERS OFF THE TABLE!!! 

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Enter the Tan person

As well meaning as these people were, talking the path of equality is not the same as walking the path of equality.  They never looked at themselves and questioned how wyt sup prem ass see was playing out in their theatre practice.  

ENTER THE TAN PERSON.

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Some earnest content

So readers, As you can see, I've had a lot of experience with unspoken, unconsidered, probably completely unrecognized white supremacy in my lifetime of professional theatre work, and over the course of my life, I've done A LOT of labor for the white folks around me.

I know we share this deeply tongue in cheek blog as a place to satirically frollic in the white glow of racist theatre.  I dearly love to frollic.  

But I want to take a moment at the end of this post to share with you some earnest content that is the product of my years as a brown person in white centered American theatre.  

If you are a white reader, please consider this list of mine a way for you to critically observe your own theatre interactions and the organizations around you.  

If you are some who sees the world as a Black person, an Indigenous person, or as a "person of color" (like myself), I hope that this list might serve you when you get asked to join that white theatre company that just realized it needed some folks of color in order for them to be taken seriously amongst their peers. 

There are a lot of these companies about lately, and tools are needed to even recognize the goo they might be stepping in.  Whatever the situation, I hope that this list serves you in your work, it is the product of mine. 

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Lessons I've Learned

These are a few lessons that I as a person of color have learned the hard way in a majority white theatre environment:  I call them Red Flags for theatre collaboration.

 

1.     1.   The Importance of Dialogue on Difficult Subjects:

It's important to continue to HAVE DIALOGUE and articulate how racist and anti-feminist structures function in our society, even in the most liberal-minded organizations of white folks. They need to be willing to have conversations that push past best intention assumptions in even the most liberal-minded organizations of white folks. 

If the company refuses or tactically ignores or misses multiple conversations about important issues that have to do with race, gender, sexuality, ableism, body shaming, or others which define the company point of view, this is a red flag.

 

2.       2. What does your Theatre say? 

Secondly, it is integral that you're AWARE of about WHAT KIND of theater you are producing.  Especially as majority white theatre makers, You can't just say you have good intentions and assume that 'what you mean' is 'what you say' through your creative stage work.  Ask for help, and trust people when they tell you they hear you doing something different than what you think you’re doing.  If you are not constantly considering how and what you say as an artist, then you and your art are being irresponsible to the collective dialogue.  

If a company is not able to hold criticisms of their work up and consider such points of view as important ways of understanding what their work means in their community, (rather than dismissing anything that they find challenging to their intentions,) this is a red flag.

 

3.       3. Read the scripts, everyone:

MORE THAN ONE PERSON NEEDS TO ACTUALLY READ THE SCRIPT CRITICALLY BEFORE IT IS AGREED UPON TO PRODUCE. 

This is a massive problem, and leads to misguided beliefs about what pieces are fit for an anti-racist/ feminist agenda.  Taking responsibility for knowing if a piece is appropriate or not is completely dependent upon you actually taking the time to read the play.  This is one of the most irresponsible practices I have seen and it is across the board one of the most commonly practiced aversion of responsibility. 

If the company does not insist on reading and discussing the plays in their season BEFORE the production is greenlighted, this is a red flag. 

4.       4. How are you treating folks Collectively, and do you have accountability practices for how folks are treated?

Please PAY ATTENTION to how you COLLECTIVELY TREAT any individual company member and PLEASE DEVELOP SOME ACCOUNTABILITY PRACTICES.  

Marginalized folks may have to convince you that you are doing wrong when you’re doing it in spite of your push-back. In order for these people to be effective, you need to find new ways to hear and respond to concerns as they happen. 

If you see folks who have concerns or criticisms being ignored again and again, this is a red flag.

 

5.       5. Lack of Differentiation between professional and personal conflicts:

The problem occurs that when a company is called out for doing the wrong things, they often do not believe the victim and personally turn against that person. One way that this is done is by faulting the victim, or victim shaming.  Victim shaming aims at fighting the person's character and credibility rather than focusing on the issues that could bring change and growth to to the company.  Often, the victims are targeted as having 'personal issues', thus de-escalating the value of that point of view.  

If a company as a whole cannot articulate clear acceptance of reasonable, diverse points of view on an issue, or dismisses professional concerns as being “personal problems,” then that is a red flag.

 

6.       6. Mob Mentality Self-Check:

PLEASE LEARN TO THINK INDEPENDENTLY OF THE GROUP.  So many of us, as we learn to navigate our privilege, are followers first; we figure out to how best respond to challenges by watching things play out to the end. However, that's a dangerous mentality to maintain. If you follow what powerful leaders say and do without taking time and space for real, critical reflection, you can easily fall into groupthink, which is defensive, unconsidered and driven by the need to belong. 

Learn to recognize, and separate from the groupthink/ mob mentality.  Groupthink is defined as, "the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility."  Did you see the part about individual responsibility?  This is what groupthink does:  it relieves individuals from having to obey their own values by threatening on our innately held need to belong.  

If a company cannot handle company responsibilities, such as accountability for bad behavior with individuals/ multiple people/ poor company practices WITHOUT villain-izing the source of the initial concern, this is a red flag.

7.       7.  Performative Allyship paired with Inaction

If your experience with a company aesthetic is inconsistent with their social awareness practices it may be that they are social-justice performative, but social-justice inactive. 

If a company talks about 'being good allies' without actually manifesting these intentions through action, again and again, this is a red flag.

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Tara in Whiter-land