Even Plays That Interrogate Racism in America Can Uphold White Privilege: Welcome to Braggsville at Book-It Repertory

Ku Klux Klan Gathering, Crystal Pool (2nd and Lenora) in Downtown Seattle, WA. March 23, 1923.
Photo courtesy of the Washington State Historical Society

It has been a long while since I left a theatre performance physically ill. Thinking back, I believe it might have been the night I left Bad Apples during the second intermission.

I admit that I don't know the source material -- T. Geronimo Johnson's lauded novel Welcome to Braggsville -- but the adaptation and staging of it by Daemond Arindell (co-adapter) and Josh Aaseng (co-adapter/director) that I sat through at Center Theatre last night left me wanting to scream into the night.

Why?

Because this production is masquerading as something it is not. Because, for being a show billed as a satirical interrogation of white supremacy (in the American South), it fails.

Why?

Because the person we, the audience, are meant to empathize with is the white guy : D'Aron Davenport, born and raised in the eponymous, fictional Georgia town of Braggsville where he was called a faggot because he was smart and sweet and sensitive, or so we are immediately told in the opening lines of the play. All that to set us up to see him as an outcast from his hometown and elicit sympathy from the audience.

The show follows D'Aron and his three friends -- "the four little Indians" (which is NEVER unpacked) -- on a journey to stage a "performative intervention" during a Civil War Battle re-enactment in D'Aron's hometown. The dramatic fallout of their ill-advised "intervention" -- a staging of a lynching in the midst of said-re-enactment -- is the sub-plot of the play. What, then, is the main thrust of the nearly 3-hour show?

It is not about how Charlie, the one black member of the quartet parses the experience of being thrust into the racial tensions of a Confederate-flag-waving community while being asked to play the lynching victim for "authenticity."

It is not a dissection of the culturally-appropriating behavior of the dread-locked Becky that comes up with the whole idea in the first place.

And it is not even an analysis of the racist behavior of the Chinese -- sorry, Malaysian -- comedian of the group who primarily appears to provide comic relief, even in the aftermath of the lynching-gone-wrong while he sports, among other problematic accoutrements, a spray-painted red clown wig.

Instead, the play focuses on the hometown boy learning about how the years of saturation and maturation he spent steeped in a stereotypical, Confederate-proud Southern town has actually made him a pawn in the white supremacist hatred that he and his three friends have come to town to protest in the first place. Which could be useful and interesting for a we're-not-racist-Seattle audience, except....

Every opportunity presented to interrogate the white guy's journey down the rabbit hole of his complacency in the violent, destructive race relations in America -- from a powerful and yet ineffective slam poetry-style dialogue between D'Aron and the black narrator/poet to D'Aron's final line of the play going completely unchecked by any dramatic reaction by the characters, actors, or, hell, dramatic environment itself -- is completely lost. Making this production, which is actually full of beautiful performances and a fantastic design, yet another opportunity to uphold the white privilege and soothe the white fragility that actually underlies the decision of some white Southerners to get the Confederate flag tattooed on both of their forearms, to re-enact Confederate battles, and to use the N-word in everyday speech without any consequence. More importantly, this production reinforces Seattle's own "we're not racist" mindset while this weekend one floor above the theatre was Festival Sundiata celebrating Black history, culture, and accomplishments that included tables full of documentation and commentary about Seattle's racist history from red-lining to KKK gatherings (oh yes, we had our own klan).

How does it do that?

The reasons hinge much on action I do not want to give away in case you're on your way to see the show, but let me start with the simple fact that the story takes place in rural Georgia. Did we not see the disjointed, "racism/bigotry/ass-backward thinking doesn't happen here" mindset during our 2016 election? It's too easy for white Americans outside of the South to distance ourselves from the cultural, systematic, and historic racism that is overtly played out in small, rural communities in the South because that racism doesn't look like our racism. And yet, it's all connected because our entire country was founded and populated by the same people and laws that originated in the 13 colonies. And I point, once again, to the fact that Seattle had it's own KKK activities, which means our hands are very much not clean, let alone for our decimation of the native tribes of the Duwamish, the internment of the Japanese, and countless other acts of white supremacy.

Along with the geographic/emotional distance inherent in the location of the play, let me give away one plot point to drive this home: D'Aron doesn't change. No, he doesn't. Faced with the brutal, violent truth of his family's and community's role in the oppression of the black people of "the gully", he chooses to protect them. HE CHOOSES TO PROTECT HIS FAMILY AND TOWN. And the only response to that is a well-delivered but lost punctuation point about how what we saw in Braggsville is not unique to the South, delivered by Charlie (remember, the black member of the "four little Indians") before lights out and curtain call.

Again, I can't speak to the source material, but I am going to call a spade a spade: Welcome to Braggsville, while it attempts a running leap at vaulting over white privilege and fragility in the hopes of sparking conversation and inciting change, it falls flat and keeps the white audience firmly on the side of not dealing with our white privilege and our role in white supremacy. It does not dare us to stand up against all odds, our family, our community and call out behavior that is insidiously reinforcing white supremacy because poor D'Aron -- who does honestly struggle with realizing how he has internalized years of racism just by being alive in such a community -- isn't forced to. We even get to watch him cry tears of white fragility as he draws parallels between a survivor of the atom bomb explosions in Japan being protected because he was underwater only to resurface and see his family, friends, and village destroyed, shadows of their former self (if that isn't a poetic interpretation of Robin DiAngelo's "we're all swimming in the same water" of racism, I don't know what is).

In 2017, we should be past showing that white people are just now realizing there is racism that they just didn't know about. The stories we need to be telling, that will truly change our society and the world, are the stories that force those same white people past their fragility and into action. Barring that, the producing company has to shepherd further conversation around the play through talk backs, dramaturgical resources, lobby displays, and continued conversation through public outreach.

If you do go see the show, white Seattle, do me a favor and look around at who is in the audience and how they react. The night I saw it, there were maybe 10-15 people of color and they were not standing en masse like the white audience at curtain call. Why? Because I don't think this play was a revelation to them. And it shouldn't be a revelation to any of you, either.

Peer Review?

In my last post, Bubblegum, I discussed Peter Brook's indictment of directors/designers and audience members in their role in creating "Deadly Theatre." There was one other part of the chapter that has been bouncing around in my head, begging for more writing (and something else, which I'll get to in a moment): the role of the critic.

It should come as no surprise that Brook believes the critic's role in promoting deadly theatre is in being too soft and not calling for competence when the piece falters. Brook calls the critic a "pathmaker" towards a better theatre, a necessary part of the ecosystem: "like the fish in the ocean, we need one another's devouring talents to perpetuate the sea bed's existence. However, this devouring is not nearly enough: we need to share the endeavour to rise to the surface." (32) Brook knows that this is not easy for the critic or the artists' on whom the critiques are being made.  Nevertheless, it is necessary as a bridge between the art and the audience. "When the status quo is rotten... the only possibility is to judge events in relation to a possible goal" (32).

There have been countless articles and blogs written about critics in theatre today. In Seattle, the theatre community is very on edge about the role of critics as seen in a Facebook comment discussion  in April of this year after Battleground Productions posted "An Open Letter to Seattle's Theater Community", a satirical lambasting of the critics in Seattle "written" by the late George Bernard Shaw. If you happen to be a part of the Seattle Theatre Artists Facebook page, please, go read the comments. Producers, actors, directors, and even our critics joined in on a, mostly, healthy and civil debate about why the critical response to Seattle theatre has been falling short. Ranging from accusations that only the large theatres are getting print space at The Seattle Times and The Stranger to the usual, touchy belief that reviews are too critical to the point of warding off potential audience members, the conversation boiled on for over 72 hours. Ignoring the personal attacks that floated to the surface, one thing was clear to me: Seattle Theatre Artists are really intelligent, thoughtful people who I'd like to hear more from when they see a show.

And then I read Brook's thoughts:

"It is for this reason that the more the critic becomes an insider, the better. I see nothing but good in a critic plunging into our lives... I would welcome his putting his hands on the medium and attempting to work it himself... [Because the] criticism that theatre people make of one another is usually of devastating severity -- but absolutely precise. The critic who no longer enjoys the theatre is obviously a deadly critic, the critic who loves the theatre but is not critically clear what this means, is also a deadly critic: the vital critic is the critic who has clearly formulated for himself what the theatre could be -- and who is bold enough to throw this formula into jeopardy each time he participates in a theatrical event." (32-33)

I have long wanted to write publicly about the theatre shows that I have seen but have avoided for one very important reason: my career. The idea of reviewing my peers, bosses, and potential bosses seemed like a really bad idea if I wanted to advance in this field. Actually, it still seems like a bad idea. However, perhaps emboldened by Brook's words and my own desire to shape the Seattle theatre community into what I know it can be, I'm going to embark on just that. Kind of.

I am not setting out to be a theatre reviewer or critic in the traditional sense of the term. I'm not going to search out or even take press tickets if they are ever offered to me. I am not aiming to tell audiences one way or another if they should see a show, though that may be a by-product of my writing if more than 5 people ever read my work. I am not going to hide the fact that I am a designer or that I have an agenda in both choosing the plays I see and the ones that I think are important. I am not even going to guarantee this project will last very long.

I am going to be transparent about why and how I am seeing a show. I will divulge how I came by the tickets. I will only write about shows that I see after they've opened out of respect for the preview process. I will be clear about any connections I have with anyone involved in the cast or the creative team. I will strive to be honest and thoughtful in what I write, which brings me to why I am going to try this out.

In life, I try, mostly successfully, to be honest and truthful with people I encounter. I don't talk behind people's backs; anything I say about you to anyone else is something I would say to your face (again, I am only mostly successful in this). For the last nine months I have taken a conversation with a fellow designer to heart: the mark of an amateur is that you do more theatre than you see.  At the time, I wasn't doing much theatre, so I decided to go see it. After every show I had thoughts, so many thoughts! If I'd been so fortunate to have a companion who'd shared my evening at the theatre, then the thoughts could be mulled over, dissected, and processed in conversation. And there it would end. What good does that do? If, as Peter Brook asserts, the critic and the artist has the same goal of shaping theatre into the as yet undefined art-form that is not deadly, then why not make my thoughts more public (and polished). And invite my fellow artists to do the same. I cannot tell you how much more I've valued my peers' opinions about my work, even when negative, over the reviews I've read.

So, after years of contemplation, I'm going to take the plunge and write publicly about the theatre I see. One might call it reviewing, but I hope it will be not only more than but also different than that. I don't plan to write formulaic-ly about the shows--touching on every design element, the directing choices, the stand-out performances--but instead to discuss the things that strike me and also how the show fits into the regional and national dialogues about our art form. And, because I have an agenda to make our industry representative of our society and more diverse in gender, race, culture, ability, among others, I'm going to touch on that when I write. This will probably take the form of a statistical breakdown, but we'll see. Much of this will be a "we'll see." I hope good things will come of it. Perhaps my fellow artists will join me in this endeavor. In fact, I'll be looking for someone to write about my upcoming show at Sound Theatre next month. In the mean time, stay tuned!

___

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space: A Book About Theatre; Deadly, Rough, Holy, Immediate. Touchstone: 1995. Print.

Is There Such a Thing as Feminist Design?

Okay, the honest truth is that my weekend has been so full of preparing for SETC next week that taking a second to write this entry seems like a bad idea. But I do have something that has been jumping around my brain for a while because I'm writing a research paper about it. Is there such a thing as "feminist design?"

There is an article by a woman named Delores Ringer that discusses this very question. She posits that there is a way to approach design in a feminist mode: that by making obvious ways in which the patriarchy is represented in the play and breaking those down/highlighting them in design choices, a designer can further a feminist interpretation of the piece. She lists the following questions as a way to approach the script:

1. In the production I am currently working on, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?
2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?
3. How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?
4. How have my relationships with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed? (299)

Let us set aside questions three and four as a part of the discussion of being a female designer overall. They are important, but I believe that the first two questions hold in them the seed from which the notion of feminist design may spring.

1. In the production I am currently working, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?

I would argue that a good designer, male or female, should be asking this question regardless of their social agendas. Granted, the question may not be framed in terms of gender-- for sure when we were approaching The Seagull we did not discuss the power dynamics specifically in terms of gender and thus delve into the nature of Arkadena's character, but power dynamics were discussed and were brought to play in our design choices (especially in costuming). As I write this, having read a short essay on the female roles in The Seagull, I wonder how things might have changed if we had more directly troubled the roles of Arkadena, Nina, Masha, and Paulina.

2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?

This question is more difficult, I believe. (And perhaps is why questions three and four are an important part of her list). It is difficult because not everyone interprets visual language the same, depending on where they are coming from in their lives. For instance, Ringer discusses how one might use landscape paintings on the women's aprons in Marsha Norman's Getting Out to invoke the geographic past represented in their lives. I puzzled over this idea for some time as I read it, and have often questioned these types of approaches to displaying the underlying meaning/subtext/what-have-you in a play. It reminds me of Brecht's gestus and how things like that are likely lost on an audience without a program note or talk back after the show.

When we started to work on the designs for The Seagull I had originally proposed representing the lake in a reflective floor for the set. It appealed to me as a purely aesthetic idea, and I felt that it helped underline the personal choices that were being made within the script: that people were hiding their true selves; that they were adrift in the world; that the lake holds power (which is referred to in the play). The director rejected this idea because he didn't see the point if it needed a program note to explain. And while I thought that was a ridiculous reason to cast aside my idea, over the last few months I have come to realize that perhaps it is true that the more subtle visual cues may be a lost cause. How could anyone know that was why I had wanted a reflective floor, apart from it adding visual dimension (especially in the sparse set that was decided upon)? There is no way to know.

But by the same token, is it not important to challenge the audience to find meaning in the visual landscape before them? They might not understand the reflective floor in the way I intend, but it is likely they would have found some reason for it. A number of people asked me where the lake was in my set anyway; I'm sure it would have caught on. And no one was even remotely aware that the diagonal painting on stage that represented the floor boards were specifically done upstage left to downstage right to highlight Konstantin's work at his desk in Act IV. Did we need a program note for that?

I don't know that there is a right way or wrong way to approach design in terms of the above discussion of subtle visual choices. I also am not sure how much I agree that there is a strictly feminist design approach (though, after writing this, I feel more inclined to agree than not). Design work, as with most artistic endeavors, is so much about translating the concrete into the subjective, and I believe that there is a lot of room for interpretation both in terms of the final product and how one gets there. (Though The Seagull wasn't approached in a feminist design mode, I think one could interpret it as such in some ways-- does that make it any less of a feminist design?)

--

Ringer, Delores. "Re-Visioning Scenography: A Feminist's Approach to Design for Theatre." Kare Laughlin and Chatherine Sculer, ed. Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. London: Associate UP, 1995. Print.

Tempestuous Validation

Just returned from this year's Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) in Region IV (that's the Southeast). Compared to last year where UNC-Greensboro was the host school, I felt pretty detached from the whole thing. It also seemed to be very diminished in size as the economy problems have started to trickle down into school budgets (I know UNCG felt it).

I took my design for Shakespeare's The Tempest which I completed in my Scenography Seminar last spring semester. Basically, a Scenography Seminar means that we completed designs for all three areas: scenic, costume, and lighting. We spent four months with the play, built half inch models, and designed 30 costumes. And then it sat in the office until told that the school was footing the bill for us to go to KC/ACTF this year.

Dusting off the model (and I mean that literally), I was struck by the work that I had put into it and the joy I had found creating all of the little details of my dilapidated warehouse space. I felt very good about bringing it to competition in the regional paper project division (the competition I took home first place for La Boheme in last year). Even when the poor thing was practically destroyed in transit, I was hopeful. (I was able to rebuild it just fine).

Then on Friday night, the awards were announced, and I was left sitting in the audience while my three colleagues (the only other UNCG students attending the festival) were called onstage to be recognized for their work. I was dumb-founded, flabbergasted, and hurt. In part because I had felt so good about my work and the judge's response to it and in part because the work that was awarded first place was presented haphazardly and looked like he'd pulled it all out of his backpack before tacking it to the wall. To be honest, I drove everyone back to the hotel and then sat in the car and cried. And called my aunt.

I felt humiliated but also incredibly stupid for letting something like this tear down all of the confidence that I had about myself. I knew going into this competition that I had set the bar high last year by winning so out-of-the-blue-like. And yet I felt robbed by not even getting an Honorable Mention. After sleep, some inner soul-searching, and seeing the designs as we took our own work down to travel home, I've come to the conclusion that in the end the best designs were awarded prizes, despite their presentation quality. The designs fit the play very well (or so the judges had said) and were well-thought out and at least mostly executed well as far as the modeling technique is concerned. So what if the students hadn't been coached on how to create meticulously laid out presentation boards of research and process? Ultimately, their artistic thoughts were clear and deserved recognition.

But what to do with my own feelings of inadequacy? How, after seven months of being very proud of my work and ideas can something as innocuous as this award tear down my confidence in just a short five minute time span? Why is it that I need validation for work that has come out of my ten years of scenic design, and many hours individually scoring brickwork with an X-acto blade and reading glasses?

I think it's a cultural thing, as we are taught from a young age the importance of winning and hearing that we are the best. I also think, artistically, there are so many times that it's a shot in the dark to put something out there that will be judged so subjectively. I spent over 15 minutes talking to one gentleman during the design Meet & Greet in which he poked all kinds of holes into my modern interpretation of the piece (which was encouraged by our professor, not something I came up with solely on my own!). This guy seemed generally offended that I had deigned to take Shakespeare's play off of a literal island and place it somewhere that perhaps undercut the lines regarding the necessity of a boat to arrive there. And on the one hand it was frustrating to have him admonish me for claiming perhaps it was a metaphoric boat, but I was thankful to see that I could hold my ground even after six or so months of complete removal from the project.

This kind of thing always makes me wonder if this is truly the field that I want to wade into for sure. My skin is not thick regarding my work. In fact, I find it very difficult to separate myself from criticism of my artistic work. Why, oh why, do I want to spend years trying to squeeze every ounce of creative juice from my brain only to risk complete destruction of my psyche if the director, actors, audience, or critics tear it apart? I'm not sure if I know the answer to that. But I can say that as the years have passed I've become better at bouncing back. I've found joy in what I do that cannot be touched by outside comment. And I know that is all the validation that I can count on, even if it isn't all I will ever need.