I Don’t Want to Be Your Mentor

I’ve never been comfortable with the word “mentor.” I don’t like referring to others that way and I’m queasy about other people slapping that label on me.

There are, of course, other artists who I’ve gone to for advice, who have helped guide my artistic career in one way or another. My college professors Delle Chatman and Julia Cameron both fit that description, as does the playwright Lisa Dillman, and the late artistic director of Chicago Dramatists, Russ Tutterow. But I’ve never called them mentors. I’ve thought of them as good, experienced humans who have helped me along the way. Maybe that’s all a mentor is, but it feels like it comes with more responsibility than that.

Mentors are people we look up to...which means to me that we put them on a pedestal. I don’t want to be on a pedestal nor do I want to put anyone else in that awkward position. I prefer to look people in the eyes. In my mind, pedestals are platforms from which mentors can only fall. If someone is looked up to and it’s discovered that they’re flawed when they inevitably disappoint, or quit or leave, those who look up to them feel disappointed. Sometimes even betrayed.

I’ve always appreciated seeing the flaws in those who have guided me. It’s made them human, it’s made me understand that they didn’t exist for me, that they were merely muddling through life like the rest of us. But what if I had stuck the “mentor” label on them, put them on a pedestal? Would I be disappointed in them now as opposed to seeing a larger picture? At the very least I think I would have gone through a mourning period where I grieved a bit for the person I had hoped they were.

A former student recently admitted that she had been uncomfortable at first with my Facebook posts about depression and vulnerability. Did she want me to be the strong one? Did a part of her feel that I was less fun to “look up to” if she could see the gaps in my armor, if I admitted that, even when you reach a certain level of success, you can still be depressed and frustrated and messy? Americans, in general, are uncomfortable with openness and vulnerability. We admire heroes and strength. But heroes are only human beings in a costume.

Another thing I don’t like about the mentor-mentee relationship is the inherent idea that support and advice flow in only one direction: from mentor to mentee. I learn a lot from my students and former students. I learn new perspectives and new lingo. They challenge me to be more daring and reckless because they do it themselves. I’ve had former students support me, offer to write letters on my behalf, write funny plays to cheer me up, and send flowers to cheer me on. I can’t imagine not having this back and forth, compared to the more rigid parameters of pure mentorship.

I recently learned from a third party that a former student (who I think of as a colleague) refers to me as her mentor. I was so perplexed because I asked her for advice not two weeks previous. Doesn’t she see that we’re peers? Wouldn’t it be healthier if she saw me as a peer?

I love giving advice when I can. I love supporting former students and earlier career writers through experiences that I have already been through. But when people call me “mentor” and I can’t support them as fully as I’d like to, then I feel as if I’m not living up to a title I don’t even want. It’s lovely to have people look up to you, but it’s also uncomfortable. It feels like something to be maintained lest the title and the respect be lost. Plus, at some point, many people who look up to us are going to equal us in professional knowledge and sometimes leapfrog us in success, and then what’s the relationship? Is it discarded? Is there pity? Can the shift in “power” be overcome? Isn’t it so much less complicated if people are never lifted onto pedestals in the first place?

Is it because helping others is so unusual in our field — in our world, maybe — that we have to assign titles to people who do it? It should not be a big deal that someone gives you advice or points you in the right direction or puts in a good word for you. Everyone should do this. I realize that not everyone does, but instead of putting the mantle of “mentor” on a few, shouldn’t we expect, maybe even demand, more from everyone?

At one point, when I was teaching college students, I flat out told them, “I don’t want to be your mentor.” I said, “I’m happy to give you advice and keep in touch, and please let me know what you’re up to and if there are opportunities to see your work, but the mentor thing is way too much responsibility.” Years later I ran into a student from one of those lectures. He had also been taught by another writing teacher who I happened to know was one of those professors who likes to tell their students that they’re going to be their mentor. I asked what the difference was between us, post-graduation. He said, “You promise less and deliver more.” This other teacher is not able to live up to what she promises and so her former students feel abandoned and resent her, which is a shame. I’ve heard she’s a very good teacher. I remember one of my professors did something similar to my cohort of writing students when I was in college. She promised to critique our scripts after the end of the year and then mail them back to us. But she didn’t. She moved across the country and those scripts were lost or forgotten or maybe willfully ignored. The result was some of my classmates discarded everything she taught us because of this betrayal, and that’s a crime because she was brilliant.

I guess we can only be responsible for the expectations we set for ourselves. If other people have grand expectations of us, despite what we tell them our limits are, there’s not much we can do about it. But that’s why I don’t like people to call me their mentor and why I don’t tell people that I want to be their mentor: either they’re putting an expectation on me that I haven’t asked for or I’m offering something that the other person gets to define. I’d rather promise less and deliver more.

©2016 by Mia McCullough
@brazenhussyrant

Nevermind Shakespeare, What will the OSF Translation Project do to the American Theatre

I find the recent brouhaha over the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s "Play On! 36 Playwrights Translate Shakespeare" project very, very interesting. First I will say that I have no major objection to translating Shakespeare into modern English... in theory, nor do I judge a single playwright who has taken on the awesome responsibility of translating one of these plays. I’m sure that all of the writers feel it was an honor to be asked, and I’m also sure they feel the weight of the responsibility and the history on their shoulders...a weight that can only have been made more onerous by the arguing, clamoring, outrage, and general internet noise about it these past few days.

The announcement of this project seems to have divided theatre people into two loose camps: those who believe that Shakespeare should be preserved, that language is sacred, that plays are a snapshot of time and place; and those who believe that theatre is a living, breathing, evolving entity and want it to survive. Preservationists versus survivalists.

My research is showing that nothing is doing more to kill the American theatre than Shakespeare. Not because he’s over-produced (he is), or bad (he’s brilliant), but because he’s the only playwright that most Americans are ever exposed to. I’ve been doing a study of which plays high students are being taught across the US and I will tell you that it is mostly Shakespeare and they mostly hate it. Because school is the only place that the majority of Americans are exposed to plays, and because they are being taught plays that they find inaccessible, they are learning to dislike an entire art form and they’re learning it early. Most Americans literally have no idea that there are living, breathing humans (some of them women! some of them not-white!) who are writing plays right now that are comprehensible to anyone who might walk off the street and buy a ticket. Not only have they never been exposed to new plays, they don’t know they exist. They think of theatre as crusty, old, and designed to make them feel stupid. (Incidently, some of the students I’ve surveyed listed Beowulf as a play because the only plays they’ve read are written in meter. Why wouldn’t they, in those circumstances, think that Beowulf was a play?)

We have to remember that theatre is not like music or fiction. There’s no radio or library through which it can be experienced at no cost. High schoolers aren’t quoting Suzan-Lori Parks in the hallways of their schools the way they quote hip hop artists. They’re not reading Stephen Adly Guirgis plays with a flashlight under their covers at night like they were the latest installment of the Hunger Games. But if they knew about Parks and Guirgis, I think some of them would. We have classical music and popular music, classic fiction and popular fiction. Right or wrong, the popular stuff is consumed by the people at much higher rates than the classics. The public knows about classical theatre, but most of them don’t know about “popular” modern theatre. Imagine if they knew.

But back to Shakespeare since he’s why so many have their panties in a knot right now. Survey results show that the students’ reasons for not liking Shakespeare are unsurprising:
“i was not crazy about romeo and juliet due to the fact it was written in old english and kind of hard to understand.”
“the dialogue was hard to comprehend”
“Shakespeare plays, they are not from our time and difficult to follow/understand”

Comments like these say to me that Oregon Shakespeare Festival is making a smart move if the translations actually make it into a classroom. My guess is that many of the plays may be deemed unsuitable for the classroom once they’re modernized, in which case they will not solve the problem of Shakespeare killing the theatre. (I know, it sounds so dramatic and crazy, but imagine a world in which Beethoven was the only composer kids were ever introduced to and think about what the music industry would look like.) Will theaters that present productions of Shakespeare to thousands of high school students every year produce these translations instead? Maybe some of them. I’m curious to find out.

Right now it’s impossible to say if the finished products by these playwrights will be true translations or adaptations. I can’t imagine that any woman (and probably many of the men) working on this project won’t feel compelled to make some of the male characters female. Will some authors be race-specific? How much leeway do they have? Regardless I’m sure there will be a range. My issue with the project is that I predict that it will lead, at least in the short term, to more productions of Shakespeare than ever before – both the originals and the translations — and this will inevitably mean fewer slots for actual new plays. There will be the theaters that excitedly produce these translations putting money in the pockets of living writers (yay), and then there will be the purists who, in a backlash, will produce more original Shakespeare than ever, lest we forget how important he is, how beautiful his language, how perfect the meter. As a result more new plays than usual will take a backseat to this battle of the bards.

Worse than that, I suspect that many theaters, when planning their seasons will say, “Hey, look, we’ve already got a woman of color translating the Tempest, no need to do another new play by a woman of color, we can check off that box.” The translations will count as new plays when they are not new plays and those writers will count in the tallies of under-represented voices. But whose voice will they be actually representing? They’re own? Shakespeare’s? The answer is probably both.

I was asked on Facebook today, “What is it we value about new plays that is not being ‘served’ by this project?” It’s a good question which prompts another question: what do we value in new plays? I value a new voice, a new perspective, and an examination of the world we live in now and its current dilemmas. Some themes and issues are universal and we’ve been writing plays about them over and over for centuries. But there are a lot of topics — race, feminism, gender, and sexuality among them — that have been taboo (or simply ignored) for centuries, that are still taboo in parts of the world, and those stories have not gotten the same amount of stage time as the classics. The plays and the voices that open up my understanding of the world I live in —  be it the world at large or my inner world — that’s what excites me about theatre. Will these “translations” do that?

Some of them may. I don’t know. What I do know is that they will all be created based on building blocks set-up by a long-dead white man. Whatever exciting new voices and perspectives are being employed, they will be filtered and probably constrained by the themes, plots, and structure of William Shakespeare. There’s a challenge in that, and I criticize no one for taking it on, but it is not the same as if one of these artists were being paid to tell any story they wanted to tell.

For me, in the end, it’s a question of resources and how they’re being used. These OSF commissions are being used to pay living artists, but they are also being used to keep Shakespeare alive — not the American theatre, but Shakespeare who, by my accounting, is doing quite well for himself already.

I’m not criticizing Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They are using their money to support their mission, but if we really want to support playwrights, we would pay them to write their own stories, and if we really want to save the American theatre we would figure out a way to get those stories into the “hands” of the American teenager.

What if Detroit Was the West Bank

A few weeks ago a Facebook friend posted a Washington Post article about Harper Collins publishing an atlas where Israel does not appear. This atlas was intended for sale in Middle East schools. My Facebook friend was pretty appalled by this and said something to tune of "facts are facts" and Harper Collins has no business printing a map that omits Israel. Now I agree that Harper Collins was enabling denial in this situation. Like it or not, Israel does exist, and pretending it does not exist doesn't solve anything. But on the other hand, millions of people don't acknowledge the State of Israel. When my friend called Israel a fact, well, that gave me pause.

Are countries really facts? Or are they merely opinions agreed upon by a majority of people? And not just opinions, but opinions that have shifted and changed enormously over the course of human history. Climate change? That's a scientifically proven fact. The climate is changing regardless of how many deny it. Genocide? Also in the fact area. Millions of dead Jews, Native Americans, Tutsis? Those dead bodies are facts. Borders of countries, on the other hand, fall more into our belief system.

Over the past few months I've met three Palestinians. None of them hail from the West Bank or Gaza. One of them left Jerusalem for Jordan with her family when she was four, one was born in Egypt, the third in Jordan, I believe. But they will all tell you they're from Palestine. Palestine still exists for these people as a physical place. They see the borders even if the maps don't show them.

I feel as if there's a general attitude of, "Well, shit's different now people, get used to it." "Why the hell are you hanging on to this when Israel is here and it's not going away and you live somewhere else now, so get over it." We Americans, we colonizers, we usurpers of land are not in a very good position to empathize with the Palestinians. No one's threatened to move our borders in a very long time. We're full of immigrants and assimilators, but most of our people came here by choice. (Unless we're black, then likely not so much by choice.) We don't get it.

So, I say, imagine this:

The US and Canada have a scuffle. A large scale disagreement. Toes are stepped on, tempers flare, we need a little detente, so we give them Michigan. And the Michiganders (yes, that's the technical term) are pissed. They're all "What the fuck? We don't want to be Canadian! We're fucking American." Except, now they don't live in America. And the Canadians don't consider them Canadian, because they're not.

Meanwhile, let's say that Canada is flooded with Arab Muslim refugees. There's been an upswell of hatred and violence toward Muslims (hard to imagine? not really, right?) and the world powers are thinking: These people need a place. They need a place to be together and feel safe, and hey Canada, you just got that new sub-province --- which, let's face it, they're gonna call The Mitten --- let's put all these Muslims in The Mitten.

Before I go on, I want to acknowledge that this analogy is rough and does not properly include a shit-ton of context, like say, that whole Holy Land thing or the millennia of unresolved conflict between peoples. Civilization was not born anywhere near Michigan. This analogy is a stripped-down, exponentially less-loaded version of the real deal. And let's remember that in a truly equal analogy the entire United States would cease to exist, not just Michigan.

Now let's imagine that the Mitten is not as vast and unpopulated as it actually is and Canada (backed by the entire Western world) says to the Michiganders, "Yeah, you know what? You gotta move. You gotta get out of your houses and you know what? Detroit's pretty empty. You can all go live in Detroit. And Flint. We'll throw in Flint because we're really generous. Now getting moving. We gotta put these Muslims someplace. They've been through enough." And everyone in Michigan is forced to leave their homes. And they can either go be refugees in some other country, or they can live in the city of Detroit. Or Flint.

Do you think that those ousted people of Michigan are going to stop seeing Michigan as their home, stop seeing themselves as Americans? Do you think that they're not going to have Michigan flags and maps of the United States whole and how they remember it? Do you think they're going to call it a province, accept that as a fact? Do you think they're not going to tell their children, "That house at 127 Pine St in Saginaw that is now occupied by the Hussein family, That's our house. That will always be our house. This will always be your land because what was done to us was wrong and unfair." C'mon, this is the country where people still fly the Confederate flag and are so in denial of our own history of genocide that we still have a team called the Red Skins. We're not good at letting go of even the blatantly offensive, wrong-side-of-history stuff. You think we would behave differently than the Palestinians if we were treated this way? I don't.

I think we'd be publishing maps with our version of the "facts" and hanging them in every classroom.

Also, if you think the Palestinians are an anomaly, I recommend traveling to the northernmost parts of Greece and asking what country you're in. I think you'll find you're in Macedonia. 

© 2015 by Mia McCullough

Why it's Hard to Care About Sony Pulling The Interview

I feel like I should have an opinion about this Sony-The Interview ridiculousness. My thoughts on it are a contradictory jumble that shifts every time a new bit of information is released.

First -- and I say this without having seen the film, and I know I'm making a big assumption here (based on the Rogen/Franco movies I've seen) -- I wish this controversy were about a better film.
I've been home with the flu for several days and I've been rewatching some episodes of Freaks and Geeks. Rogen and Franco are brilliant on that show; both so clearly talented. They were given excellent writing and sure direction, neither of which they seem to have had much of in the intervening years --  which is not to say I think they are bad writers or directors, I'm just not sure anyone is requiring them to try very hard. It seems like they've been allowed to run amok and improv to their hearts' content and spend millions of dollars making ok entertainment when I know full well that they're capable of being amazing. So I resent them a little bit. I'll be open about that. They're contributing to the mediocrity of film, and no one is stopping them. Except maybe now they are being stopped, by the wrong people and for the wrong reasons.

Second: The Interview is going to do just fine when they figure out how to get it into the hands of the public. Way more people will go see it now because of this international "incident." It's the best  marketing strategy since The Blair Witch Project (even if it's unintentional).
*I'm hearing now that Sony has no intention of releasing the film in any form, partially because they've been fighting the streaming of films prior to theatrical release. Is this true? To not release the film in any fashion is incredibly stupid, and cowardly, and bad business. It makes me wonder what sort of dirt the hackers seized. 

Third: Of course they had to pull the film from theatrical release. Films play in malls, and it's the holiday season. And people need to feel safe going to malls to shop. It doesn't matter if there's a credible terrorist threat or not, if people think there might be a credible threat it will affect the economy and no one's going to let that happen. Even if someone comes out with proof that the North Koreans (or whomever) have no way of actually carrying out their threats, many people will still be afraid. America has a culture that thrives on fear. (A culture that Hollywood helps cultivate, by the way.) Most Americans would rather be afraid and stay home than be principled and leave the house. Then people don't shop and the economy suffers. The terrorists really do win if they hurt the economy. So I do understand why, at this point, canceling the theatrical release makes sense.

Fourth: So this is the part about freedom of speech. And art. Except I fear we're not talking about art, we're talking about two rich white guys goofing around. And I'm not yet convinced that they're really being silenced. I suspect people will still see this film. Because people now want to see this film. So is it about caving to the terrorists? Are we letting them win? That depends a bit on what Sony does next.






Will this keep studios from making, buying, or promoting a serious film about North Korea? That's possible. That would be a shame. Is it a bad precedent to cave completely to cyber terrorists? Yes, it seems like a bad precedent to not release the film in any form.

I don't know if there's a real threat, or if Sony just doesn't want their personal information and their scripts available for public consumption. Are there North Koreans who have infiltrated the US and will bomb our movie theatres? Would anyone who came to infiltrate the US from North Korea not see within days how fucked up North Korea is? Is the North Korean government really like al Qaeda? I don't know the answers to these questions. So it's hard to know how to feel about it.

What I do know is that if the film industry actually made, bought, and marketed films for grown-ups the way they did back in the 90s -- if they acknowledged that it's an art form instead of constantly trying to prove it's not -- I might care a lot more.

My Not-Shitty Birthday

I’ve had a remarkable number of people call me today, email me, text me, and send me Facebook messages wishing me a happy birthday. (Which I appreciated so much.) I had a few people ask me how my birthday was going, and I think in each case I said, “fine.” I didn’t quite know how to answer because, “it doesn’t suck!” seems like a weird response, but it’s what I was thinking. A couple people saw my Facebook birthday wish about answering old emails today and they told me I should let the work wait. And I understood that sentiment even though I felt so much better to get some work off my plate. It’s been a good-but-busy summer, and I’ve had very little time to myself, so getting work done was actually a bit exhilarating. Definitely a relief.

So here’s the thing about my birthday being “fine.” A year ago yesterday my mother had major surgery on her lungs. I woke up the next morning on my birthday vomiting with one of the worst migraines I’ve ever had. Last year my birthday sucked. A lot. And while a lot of good things happened for me in my 43rd year, a lot of not-good things happened too. My mother almost died from a reaction to chemotherapy. My son missed six weeks (not consecutive) of school because he had walking pneumonia and other tenacious viruses. I injured myself last September in a yoga class, and it took PT and chiro and being really careful with myself for about 7 months to not be in pain all the time. I went on a very restrictive diet to try to get rid of my migraines, giving up almost every food that I love for three months (and some things permanently). I cried in grocery stores looking at aisles full of items I could not eat. I worried about my mom. I worried about my son. I thought I might never be pain-free after this stupid yoga injury. I was so stressed all the time that I couldn’t really enjoy teaching the way I usually do. That was hard. All of it was hard.

Today I woke up without a migraine. So right there, before my head came off the pillow, I was thankful for that gift. The stupid restrictive diet works wonders (read "Heal Your Headache" by Buchholz if you or someone you love is a headache sufferer), and I’ve been mostly migraine-free for over nine months. Special thanks to my dear friend Emi Clark for shoving that book into my hands and saying, “Just read it.” My pain from my stupid-yoga injury is gone. For a while I couldn’t walk three blocks without my hips hurting. Now I can walk/run/climb mountains for miles and feel no pain. (Well, ok, my right pinky toe currently hurts a bit from being maimed by the puppy-in-law two weeks ago, but mostly no pain.) These things are gifts. HUGE gifts. My middle-schooled aged son let me kiss him in public today without yelling at me. That is a gift. I have a play going into rehearsal next week. That is a gift. I got to go to the lakefront twice today! Once for a walk on my own and again later with my boys for a quick trip to the beach. These are gifts. But honestly, the biggest deal is that my mother came over tonight for dinner and she was feeling really good for literally the first time in a year. I could not have asked for a better gift than that.

There was cake. I got lovely presents. I ate veggies from my garden. I answered some of my work emails. I had positive thoughts about my appearance. I had a quiet dinner with my family. On paper it doesn’t sound like a monumental birthday. A bit low key. "Fine." But I am acutely aware of how different things could look. So much has gotten better since a year ago. Sure, a lot of things got worse first, but I am so grateful for the turn around. And so grateful for the perspective and clarity I’ve gained. My birthday wasn’t just “fine.” It was decidedly not-shitty. That may not sound like something to aspire to, but it is. It really is.

Is Shakespeare the Problem?

Several months ago I started working on a new stand-up bit about whether it's harder to be a female comic or a female playwright. I concluded that it's harder to be a woman playwright because as a lady comic no one is going to say to me, "You know Mia, we love you and we think you're hilarious, but we can't book you next month because Shakespeare's in town." That doesn't happen in comedy. There are so, so many men out on the comedy scene, but once they stop breathing we women don't compete with them for performance slots any more. But in theatre, the dead guys never go away. In fact, in some instances they get a lot more work than the living playwrights.

So I started wondering: How much is Shakespeare the problem? I say in my set that Shakespeare is the most produced playwright in the United States every year. And I knew it was true, but I wanted hard numbers. I have believed for a long time that theatre people's desperate devotion to the classics is silencing so many new voices and new stories. But how many dead playwrights, composers, and lyricists are produced every year compared to living ones? And what is the gender breakdown? A month or two ago I went onto the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) website, chose the 2012-13 season, and started compiling data. I took long breaks because it's tedious fucking work. This week when The Kilroys announced their fabulous and necessary list (thank you, ladies), I thought, this seems like a good time to put the stats out there, so I finished going through the data and this is what I found:

In the 2012-2013 season, TCG theatres reported that of all the plays and musicals they produced
60% of the credited creating artists were living male playwrights/composers/lyricists,
21% of the credited creating artists were living female playwrights/composers/lyricists,
12.5% of the credited creating artists were dead male playwrights/composers/lyricists who are not Shakespeare
5.5% of the produced plays were written by Shakespeare
1% of the credited creating artists were dead female playwrights (predominantly Lorraine Hansberry.)

*I created a spiffy pie chart to go with the stats above, and if I ever figure out how to import it, I will!*

It should be noted that if Dickens had written a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol he might actually surpass Shakespeare. I didn't count, but it's mind-numbing how many productions of that story go up every year. It should also be noted that productions of Shakespeare comprise 30% of all productions of classics (if one defines classics as pieces written by artists who are no longer with us). It's undeniable that Shakespeare is the most produced playwright in this country, living or dead. I didn't do individual numbers on any living playwrights this go around, but when I did a different study of the 2007-2008 season this is how the most produced living playwrights measured up to old Bill:
Sarah Ruhl - 23 productions
Martin McDonagh - 14 productions
Jeffrey Hatcher - 13 productions
Theresa Rebeck - 8 productions
William Shakespeare - 136 productions (and that time around I didn't even count Shakespeare productions at theatres that had Shakespeare in their name, so there were likely a couple dozen more).

There's no way to dispute that Shakespeare has a disproportionate amount of stage time. I would argue that when any one voice is heard so very much, other voices are being inevitably withheld from the public. Modern, living, talented playwrights are being silenced because of what I call the Cult of Shakespeare in this country. I have a big problem with it.

BUT if we look at the 2012-2013 numbers we can see that even if we stopped doing classics altogether and gave all of those slots to living women playwrights/composers/lyricists, we would still not achieve gender parity. That would indicate that in order to represent equal numbers of men and women playwrights/composers/lyricists in the American theatre a minimum of 10% of the men would have to step aside,... but that's not actually how the numbers work.

As it turns out (and I didn't track the specific numbers on this) it is far more common to have multiple men creating a collaborative project than it is to have multiple women do the same. Most of the musicals that came up meant at least three hash marks in my notebook under "live men." I counted number of people credited/receiving royalties, not individual projects, because there was no way to do the latter and include composers and lyricists. But this trend of men collaborating and women working individually was true for the 2012-13 study and for the one I did for the 2007-08 season. One can assume if you counted only the number of female-created projects vs. male-created projects the numbers wouldn't be quite so skewed, (though men would definitely still be more produced than women), but you also would need a third category for projects written by people of both genders.

Also, in each category I created there was a relatively small number of artists getting a significant percentage of the productions. For instance of the 28 productions credited to dead women at least half were A Raisin in the Sun. (And one wonders if that's merely a reaction to Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park.) Both Tennessee Williams and August Wilson accounted for between 15 and 20 productions each in the "Dead Guys" category. It's similar with the living playwrights: a handful of names pop up over and over again. It's the flavor of the month phenomenon. We've all seen it; many of us have experienced it. Writers become the cool kid for a season or two and every theatre in America is producing the same seven writers' plays. This is a problem of people not trusting their own opinions and not trusting/conditioning their audiences to except work they haven't heard about in the New York Times or recall from their youth. Theatres play it safe by doing old stand-bys and anointed plays because they're afraid of losing money. We all know it, but I think it's bullshit.

I think there are ways to spread the wealth around so that more voices are heard, but it will require that artistic directors and managing directors and boards stop being lemmings.  The Kilroys just published a list that says, "Look! Look at these fabulous, important plays by all these women writers that no one is producing! They've been pre-screened and pre-approved for you!" I hope ADs take advantage of it. But I also hope we acknowledge that there are hundreds of male playwrights out there who are also not being seen; so many plays by writers of both genders that get one or two productions and then vanish, discarded like some deflowered 19th century ingenue. I don't know about Tennessee or Bill, but I have to think August Wilson would gladly sacrifice a couple of productions of Fences if it meant that Jonathan Norton's Tidy List of Terrors or Marsha Estell's Heat could be produced instead. Shakespeare would probably love that his plays are still so popular, but I'm guessing that he'd be appalled by what a small section of the population actually attends the theatre these days.

Going to the theatre is an act of faith for the audience. We-the-theatre-makers are asking a bunch of strangers to come sit in a dark room and trust us, but we don't even trust our own opinions? We're asking them to take a risk, but leaders in our field won't? Going to see a new play is an act of quiet bravery: the audience puts their minds and emotions into the hands of some artists for a few hours and they just see what happens. I swear the only time I'm still excited to see a play is when I know almost nothing about it beforehand. I haven't read reviews or an early draft. I don't read my program. And when the lights go down a thrill goes through me because I have no idea what's about to happen... on stage or inside of me. It's like going on a rollercoaster blind-folded. 

We are a country of thrill-seekers. It should not be so hard to get audiences on board for an adventure. But I don't think the thrill-seekers believe that theatre has any adventure. In their minds it's old and stodgy and full of plays they got tested on in high school. Today's programming is directed at the converted: the Classics Cultists and the people who believe everything they read in the New York Times. But if we want our audiences to grow and we want theatre to matter we're going to have to do better than that. And we're going to have to start with what plays we teach in high school English classes. If we want new generations of kids to become theatre-goers we have to let them know that there are characters on stage that look like them and sound like them. They're going to need to feel included, not alienated if we wanted them to show up. And that means teaching new plays, by men and women, by people of color, by the LGBT community. It means teaching people that theatre is something that is happening now, not 400 years ago. It means making it seem possible that their voices too can be heard if they choose to write a play one day. But how can we convince them of that when most of our voices aren't being heard and we're the "working professionals?"

Talking About Racism

So a few weeks ago a Facebook friend posted a link to a Huffington Post blog about how white people are not saying the right things to their kids about race. The author took issue with phrases like “We are all equal,” and “we’re all the same under our skin.” I would agree that those are platitudes that don’t offer any perspective on the realities of racism in this country or the experiences of people of color. Having taught for several years on a predominantly white, predominately wealthy college campus, I can tell you that most of these white (often liberal) college students do not understand anything about what it means to be not-white. And these are writers, actors, artists: people who are essentially majoring in empathy and expression. My issue with the Huffington Post blog is that it offered no answers. It pointed out the inadequacies in the way white people teach their kids about race, but offered no suggestions of what might be better.

So I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest a few ways in which one can help ones white children understand the sticky mess that is race-relations in this country.

1. Explain to your children that while all people are created equal,  not everyone is treated equally. And explain it early. And often. Children have an acute sense of what’s fair and what’s not fair. They keep score constantly. If it is made clear to them that people with brown skin are not treated the same way as they are, they will understand fundamentally what racism is and know it’s not fair. But you have to show, not just tell.

My son’s insistence on dressing like a complete slob is what prompted an interesting discussion (ok, maybe lecture) on race. My kid hates looking nice. He doesn’t want his hair short, or neat. Button-down/collared shirts are to be shunned and left unworn. Showers are anathema to him. On the rare occasion that I take him to a nice restaurant, he wears a T-shirt and track pants, and the waitstaff doesn’t judge him too harshly because he’s cute and polite and he eats his food. And because he’s white. He’s a white male in a society dominated by white males, and so even though he’s not dressed as nicely as I want him to be, no one’s going to kick us out of the restaurant or even bestow us with side-long glances. But I’m under no delusion that things would definitely be the same if we all walked into that restaurant with brown skin.

So, we were in the car a few months ago, driving home. And there was a guy, a black guy, walking down the sidewalk wearing the jeans-below-the-butt look (a gravity-defying fashion that continues to mystify me) and a doo-rag. I say to my son, “You see that guy? The way he’s dressed, most people are going to assume he’s a thug. He may even be daring people to think he’s a thug, even if he’s not one. But people judge him by his clothes, by how he presents himself to the world. People are wary of him and probably don’t trust him because of how he dresses. AND because he has brown skin. If he was white and dressed like that people would think he was a stupid poseur, but they might not assume he’s a thug.”

“Now, you know those black kids in your class who wear their hair super short and dress really nicely all the time?” I continue. Yes, he says. “Their mothers know that those judgments are made, and they don’t want anyone to judge their kids; they want their kids to be thought of as the nice kids that they are, and so they insist that they look up to a certain standard every day. And for school concerts and special events, those kids are in suits, ties, polished shoes, things you don’t even own. And those parents are going to exert that control as long as they can. Because they know their kids are scrutinized, held to a different standard. But even more than that, it’s about survival. Kids of color have been shot for wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood, for wearing expensive shoes, for wearing a hoodie.

“Now, you can walk around looking like you do every day, all sloppy and floppy and not matching, you can wear your hoodie, and the worst thing anyone’s going to think about you as you get older is that you’re a skate rat. You’d have to get a lot of tattoos and piercings before people jumped to the conclusion that you were a thug, or daring them to think you were a thug. And that’s privilege. You get away with looking like a slob because you’re a white male, but some of your classmates don’t have that choice. Is that fair?”

No, he says. That’s not fair. And I get less flack when I ask him to comb his hair. For a few weeks.

2. Read To Kill a Mockingbird with your kids.

My son and I read this book together this past summer, and it prompted so many conversations about race, class, the “n word,” sexual assault. Yes, these are difficult topics, but it’s your job as a parent to talk to your kids about these things, so grow a pair and do it.

As fate would have it the Trayvon Martin trial was going on while we read the book. To Kill a Mockingbird was published over 50 years ago. It’s set in 1936, and as most people know, one of its main story lines is a trial where an innocent black man is found guilty. And this inevitable tragedy happens “because of the times,” because of the times they lived in “back then.” And as we read about Tom Robinson we talked about Trayvon Martin and how even though we have a black president now, in many ways nothing has changed. How in some ways Trayvon Martin was on trial even though he was killed. And isn’t that tragic and horrible and sad and wrong.

The worst part of reading To Kill a Mockingbird out loud is saying the “n word,” over and over again. It hurt my soul a little bit every time I uttered it (which I told my son), but it felt wrong to the poetry of the book to omit it or say “the n word,” every time. But ultimately it was a good opportunity to say, “Look, this word, white people can’t say this word. It is the pinnacle of racism. But most people know that, so even racist people don’t use this word anymore. Racism is quieter and more subtle now in this world of political correctness. Racism is people of color being followed in stores, and treated differently in hotels, and not given jobs. But just because it’s quieter doesn’t mean it’s not just as pervasive or just as hurtful.”

I’m certain there are dozens of books written by minorities that would also serve this function, but I do think a book written from the perspective of a white child trying to make sense of the world she lives in makes To Kill a Mockingbird exceptionally accessible.

3. Live in a diverse community.
I realize this is a tough one, that no one is going to get up and move, but in case you’re thinking about moving soon and you have kids, consider moving someplace where your kids will actually know some minorities. And not just wealthy Asian kids. We chose a home where our neighborhood school is approximately 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Latino. And I say “black” and not African-American, because there are several kids in the school who are (or whose parents are) from African or Carribean nations. In fact, many of the white kids have parents who emigrated from Europe. It’s a diverse school. Multi-Cultural night is very fun.

Intolerance festers in homogeneous communities where everyone outside is consider “other,” and therefore undesirable and scary. I grew up in one of those homogeneous communities and saw a lot of intolerance first hand, some of it directed at me. Tolerance and understanding are born in places where people are forced to confront differences and also see that, despite those differences, people are generally just people. But also important, it’s much easier to talk about race and racism, entitlement and privilege when you can reference people that your child knows and use your children’s own lives as context.

So those are three ways I’ve found to help my kid understand the realities of racism. I’m sure there are more. I feel very strongly that when talking to our white children about disparity, it’s just as important to make them aware of their privilege and freedom as it is to make them aware of the disadvantages of others.

The day that Obama was inaugurated the first time, I had taught class that day at the predominantly-white, predominantly-wealthy university I mentioned earlier. And one of my white students — a liberal, kind, open-minded student — said he didn’t understand why the news stations insisted on showing “all that footage of black people” in black churches and wasn’t this a victory for all of us? Why was it SO different for black people?

Oh my god, I could barely speak. I was so stunned by his ignorance, by his total lack of awareness of the black experience in America. I think what I said was, “If you don’t understand, I don’t know how to explain it to you,” and we moved on. And it was a grave disservice to the one African-American student in the class (I sent her a lengthy apology email that night), but I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t think straight. I was not capable of a diplomatic answer in that moment. Here is what I wish I had said:

When my best friend from high school had her daughter she told me she cried. She cried because she thought, “my daughter will never be President.” And I thought, “Really? Don’t you think in our lifetime we’ll see a woman president in this country?” But I also thought, “Wow, every minority in America must think that when they have a child.” It’s got to be demoralizing to bring a life into this world and feel that not everything is possible for them.

I vividly remember walking my son to school the day after Obama was elected the first time, and the looks on the faces of every black mother I passed that morning, beaming with pride and joy and relief. And I thought, they must have all woken up and looked at their sons and thought, “Baby, you can be President someday. Sky’s the limit.” Maybe they even said it out loud. And sure, maybe they couldn’t look at their daughters and think the same thing, but maybe soon. Hopefully soon.