I'm reviewing the situation--

Welcome to my first day without work since February 12! I'm currently one week into my newest project, which is working with undergraduate theatre students on a crazy-pants American premiere of a crazy-pants play. My brain is still decompressing itself from jumping straight from one ship to another, so this week is just the time for some scattered miscellania... which has turned out not to be so scattered after all.

I'm in rural New York state for this job, so it feels a bit like I'm back home. Lots of trees, lots of snow, lots of white people. Coming full circle, I had cribbed a chunk of my blog post about Les Misérables and me for a Facebook post the other week, and now I'm cribbing the Facebook post for the blog, as selection and framing tells its own story.

Today was my last performance. The show has extended through next weekend (go see it!), but I already had another project lined up. It feels weird. I've never before left a show before it closed, let alone one I've been with for nearly six months. I started working on it as soon as I moved to New York, my first show here, and I couldn't have asked for better work or better people to do it with. A bunch of you have probably heard a variation of the following story, but I need to repeat it again, because of this show and the article I linked.

I grew up as an adopted Korean kid in a white family in a predominantly white town (97.66% white, according to the 2000 census), going to a predominantly white school through fifth grade (out of approximately 500 kids in grades 2-5, at the most diverse point, I was one of six non-white kids). And it doesn't take a Ph.D. in media studies to know that representation is an issue in mainstream entertainment and culture, particularly prior to the turn of this century. However, I wanted to be in Broadway musicals. In fact, I had devised a practical plan for the rest of my life, completely sincere and free of cynicism or bitterness: I would find a production of The King & I, join the chorus of the King's children, age up into Tuptim, go back into the chorus as one of the King's wives, and finish my career as Lady Thiang.

That was my America, and how I existed within it.

My life was changed the day that I turned on the television and saw Lea Salonga performing the role of Eponine in the Tenth Anniversary Concert of Les Misérables on PBS.

That was when I made the first step, to "in spite of." Where I could do what I wanted to do, and not be limited, in spite of being who I was. It would take many more years until I reached "because of" -- when I would know in my soul that I could do what I wanted to because of who I was, that every aspect of me played a part in my being able to make my own unique contribution -- but I needed that first step, and just seeing Lea Salonga's face on my television like that changed my life.

So, storycreators and storytellers: you never know whose lives you may be changing, or how.

I hadn't been expecting the response that the post received -- from myself or others. It's a story that I've tossed off often in the past, a tale for self-aware laughs with rueful but amusing pointedness. I found myself feeling surprisingly emotional when I sculpted it into that smaller post, however, in a way that I haven't in the past (and certainly didn't when it had just been one small section of a larger essay). And it apparently was very emotionally resonant for others as well. I had tagged my show-mates in the post, so I even ended up with responses from a lot of friend-of-friend Asian theatre people I didn't know personally.

So here I am back in rural New York state. The only non-whiteness that I've seen anywhere so far has been on our stage management team -- myself and my three P.A.s, who are one Asian woman and one black woman (as well as one white woman). I've made dry comments about it, and to which my director has responded with ruefully aware grimaces. He'd wished for a diverse/international cast for this show, which wants to be on a world-scale, but he only had one non-white student audition and unfortunately, they weren't a fit for the show's demands. And just as a culture, it's odd. The school I attended for undergrad was also a small, rural, elite private institution, but I don't recall the student body as being anywhere near this homogenous. I think that one factor might be that this school's campus is so spread out, so we basically see only the performing arts students, who are clearly overwhelmingly white.

The last time that I was struck by such overwhelming whiteness was, funnily enough, when I attended one of the Brooklyn live shows of Welcome to Night Vale. I actually refer to the live show as "Welcome to White Vale" in my mind. It was pretty darn dramatic. There is no exaggeration when I say that I looked around as the room filled up and said to myself, "...damn, look at all these white people!" Because when you look around and except for you, the black guy a couple seats in front of you, the East Asian woman over there, and that maybe-Hispanic dude, the entire fucking room is full of white people -- that does not reflect real life. And I say "funnily enough" because, in comparison to mainstream U.S. arts and entertainment, Welcome to Night Vale is one of the most diverse shows out there, with some of the most well-written representation that I've encountered to date, and it even actively deals with the issue of cultural appropriation (i.e., it's asshole behavior, don't do it). I really am curious about Night Vale live shows elsewhere. Is it just a Brooklyn thing? Is Brooklyn just swarming with white people? Or is it a fandom culture thing? Sci-fi and fantasy have never been high scorers on diversity and representation. And when I've attended fandom conventions (anime, specifically) in the past, they've been pretty much entirely white and East Asian people. Really, it's just something I'm curious about.

And from here, here are some links to and quotes from things I've read in the past week or so, which, presented collectively, all seem rather related.

Run, freedom, run--

I used to have dreams about not being able to run. Usually, I would be trying to elude capture, but the fastest that I would be able to muster was the speed of someone trying to run in water. I'm sure there was something deeply psychological in this -- like those dreams where I'd try to talk but no sound would come out, or where I'd "know" that I had a superpower, such as flying, but it would fail me while I was using it and it would be a losing battle between my active belief in my power and "reality." Fact of the matter was, however, that I also just couldn't run.

I'd always had a competitive spirit. Classmates would fear me in gym class, as I was generally considered ferocious. It was very much a willing spirit more than an able body, though. I would hurl myself down the soccer field and frustrate the efforts of my opponents, and I would be furnace-red in the face and feel like I was about to throw up after about ten minutes. I would never let that stop me from putting forth the same effort each time, of course, but it was always so much mind over matter.

I think that, in general, if you're a girl and you're skinny, nobody cares beyond that.

Which isn't to say oh poor little princess me. I won a number of genetic lotteries when my biological parents' gametes combined, and I'm well aware of that. But in a similar way to how patriarchy gives power to men but also hurts them, our fat-shaming body culture gives power to the thin but also hurts them. The systems choose whom to give benefits by reducing people into boxes that are inevitably inaccurate, ill-fitting, and restrictive, to varying degrees. We'd all be better off without it.

I'm sure there are a lot of fat people who were a lot more fit than I was back then. Society wouldn't treat them that way -- oh, you're fat, absolutely everything in your life could be made better by losing weight, didn't you know? (that's sarcasm, by the way) -- but my burning, constricted lungs that made my legs slow beneath me, my noodle arms providing no help, seem evidence enough to me. But hey, she's skinny -- why would she need to actually be in good shape? I mean, she eats right and her numbers seem good, I'm sure she doesn't need any exercise. And if she's sluggish and depressed, I mean, she just needs to relax from all the stressful things she's doing, right?

They smile when they are low--

Or, How To Almost Not Open An Off-Broadway Show (Just In Case You Were Curious)

12:30pm
It's the last rehearsal before our opening performance at 7:00pm. Staying in compliance with union rules, we could start rehearsal as early as noon, but while we have a lot of notes on our work list, they're mostly tiny acting notes, with just a couple moments specifically for tech (and those are small notes, too). It's been a long week -- today is Friday, we started tech last Thursday, worked a ten-out-of-twelve (i.e., a twelve-hour long workday with a two-hour actor dinner break in the middle) that Friday, had Saturday off, worked a ten-out-of-twelve on Sunday, had a full (but normal) length rehearsal on Monday, and then had been rehearsing from noon to five followed by shows at seven each night since then.

Tech had gotten a rough start, too, with load-in falling behind schedule and the lights giving us lots of technical problems -- things weren't not working in the artistic sense but, rather, in the "they won't turn on" sense. Our lighting designer had maintained the patience of a saint, and somehow never snapped or yelled during each additional hardship that fell upon him through the entire process. (Though he did drain a large number of whiskeys at impressive speed when we went out to the bar after work.) When he had gone back home to Minneapolis yesterday night, he probably felt like he couldn't get out of this theater quickly enough.

Anyhow, people are tired, so even a half-hour's respite is not something to be scoffed at. And at least it's an easy day's worth of work. Without any big tech fixes on our to-do list, it's just the actors, one of the directors, the crew, and me.

You cross your fingers and hold your heart--

No post this week -- opening your first Off-Broadway production when technical issues meant that you were about two minutes away from not opening your first Off-Broadway production will do that to you, apparently.

But the show is open. And during today’s school matinee, the theater employee gave a pre-show speech, telling the kids that the way to let the actors know that you’re enjoying yourself is by applauding.

The kids applauded almost non-stop throughout the entire show.