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.
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The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I Stopped Being A Voluntourist
Some might say that that’s enough. That as long as I go to X country with an open mind and a good heart I’ll leave at least one child so uplifted and emboldened by my short stay that they will, for years, think of me every morning.
I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to — who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.
Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental. It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches.
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Arts Education Won't Save Us From Boring, Inaccessible Theater
Take the basic argument of "We need more theater in schools so more people will go see theater later in life” and substitute comparable forms of entertainment where young people are already dropping boatloads of money. The very logic of the construction collapses.
Consider the following assertions:
-No one likes cooking anymore because we stopped teaching Home Ec in the schools.
-We need more video game training in classrooms to ensure the next generation of Xbox users.
-If we don’t teach kids how to listen to standup comedy, Louis CK will go bankrupt.
-Kids who never played live music in school just plain won't pay for a Jay-Z concert.
Audiences don’t have a problem with arts education. Theaters have a problem with hospitality. Most efforts at bringing in young audiences are condescending at best. Designated Twitter Seats... because kids can’t stop tweeting. Free Beer with Your Ticket... because all kids want to do is get wasted. No efforts made at changing up the actual plays.
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Ten Things Theatres Need To Do Right Now To Save Themselves
With this one, I'm more appreciative of it as a strting point for thought and discussion rather than going "Amen, brother!" I'm pretty much onboard with points 1 through 7, which are about creating community. I am pretty much off-board with points 8 through 10, which are about devaluing professionalism and labor.
7. [...] Theaters try to "build community" with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you've spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle.
9. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.
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In the Name of Love
There’s little doubt that "do what you love" (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers.
According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.
No one is arguing that enjoyable work should be less so. But emotionally satisfying work is still work, and acknowledging it as such doesn’t undermine it in any way. Refusing to acknowledge it, on the other hand, opens the door to the most vicious exploitation and harms all workers.
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5 reasons you shouldn't work too hard
American leisure? Don’t let the averages fool you, he could say. While it looks like leisure time has gone up, time diaries show that leisure and sleep time have gone up steeply since 1985 for those with less than a high school degree. Why? They’re becoming unemployed or underemployed. And leisure and sleep time for the college educated, the ones working those crazy extreme hours, has fallen steeply.
So yes, America, work hard. Hoo-ah American ingenuity, gumption and drive. But remember that inspiration comes in the shower, on a walk, in a moment of rest, not when your nose is to the grindstone. It’s just the way our brains are wired.
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Nutella-Stuffed Brown Butter + Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies
Imagine: Warm. Gooey. Hazelnutty. Chocolatey. Sweet and salty. What more could you want in a cookie?
Basically I’m just saying they are the best thing evvaaaaaaaaaaa.
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All right, so maybe the last one was just wishful thinking.
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