A few days ago, I overheard a fairly innocuous conversation about whether a white director can/should direct a play with an African American cast. The usual thoughts were bandied about: Would the director really understand the nuances of the story, from the inside? Would that white director be taking a job away from a capable African American artist? Why wouldn’t anyone ask the same question the other way around?
The stuff I was hearing struck me as largely tiresome, honestly—an exercise in everyone being cautious, fearful of saying the wrong thing. Not, I’m sorry to say, genuine honesty.
As far as I’m concerned, race is not an appropriate criteria by which we can judge whether a person is fit to direct a play. At the same time, people of color don’t have enough opportunities to direct, so I support actively setting aside more opportunities for them. Queue your favorite argument against Affirmative Action, if you have to, but leave me out of it. I believe in leveling the playing field rather than handicapping the players, and that’s that.
What I really want to talk about, though, is my own work, because it’s only a short jaunt from the questions I was overhearing to questions about which stories I’m allowed to tell as a straight white male playwright. I find those questions seriously troubling.
Of the last five plays I’ve written, three feature prominent African American characters: not tokens, mind you, but lead (or significant ensemble) roles. More and more, it seems, my imagination has been leading me in that direction. I don’t know why that is.
I suppose I could talk about the fact that I grew up in a mostly-black city and that I live in one now; I’ve always drawn clear inspiration from the voices I hear around me every day. I could mention that my father holds a master’s degree in African American history and that I minored in the same subject—that African American stories and culture were part of my upbringing and education. I might also make clear that my dramatic imagination has always been fired by genuinely American stories… and you can’t easily tell important American stories without African American characters.
There are probably several other influential factors, too, both innocent and tainted with the prejudices we’d all rather not admit to having… but why do any of them matter?
What should matter is that these are the stories I’m inclined to tell. What should matter is whether they’re good enough. What should matter is whether they’re genuine. Right?
I understand everybody’s caution, mind you. I, too, want very much to do the right thing. But I must ask that you judge my work on its own merits; you can even ask an African American director to do the judging, if that seems appropriate. (In fact, that’s not a bad idea.) Just please don’t dismiss my stories out of hand.
Fair enough?
I read this sympathetically, which is no surprise since I’m another straight white male. There is a big part of me that just says OK, fine, so long as you don’t expect to get good intention points and leniency from people of color if/when you get something wrong… go for it. After all, what you’re talking about is sort of what Tracy Letts did with Superior Donuts, which I happen to think is a really good play.
However, the potential problem is that white directors, ADs, & literary managers who would like to incorporate more African-American characters (because they think they should) might very well find it easier to accomplish that by producing your plays, instead of those by African-American playwrights. If that happens, you’ve basically made it easier to get your interpretation of some African-American voices onstage without actually getting the actual voice of an African-American playwright onstage. You’ve made it easier for somebody to go halfway.
I definitely think you should bring in whatever characters ring true to you, whatever characters you need to tell the stories you want to tell. But I hope that you’ll be careful to not let your plays get used to meet some literary manager’s diversity goal.
Honestly, I’m usually happy just to see my plays used, period.:)
Honestly, though, if I thought my work was ticking somebody’s diversity box, I’d be upset. In practice, though, I have very little — if any — way of knowing that. If I’m offered a production opportunity, and I feel good about the company doing the work and the director I’d be working with and so on and so on, that’s about all I can reasonably be expected to judge. It’s not as if I know the rest of a theater’s season when they offer me a slot. Heck, they don’t always know themselves! So there’s a little bit of an act of faith on that front when I sign a contract.
But we act on faith a great deal in the arts. We trust each other immensely in a great many ways.
As for the comparison to Tracy Letts… thank you 🙂 In truth, what I’m talking about doing is no different than what I do whenever I write a character who’s in any way different from me: a woman, a Christian, a scientist, a sculptor, a person with a disability. All I can do is rely upon compassion and insight and not be afraid of criticism and dialogue if there are ways in which I go wrong.
But isn’t that true no matter what I write? If I were to write a play full of characters exactly like me, shouldn’t I still be criticized if I get it somehow wrong? Of course I should. I’m an artist. If I have faith in my collaborators, as I’ve just said, I should expect no less.
I JUST had this conversation with the men in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing. We are working on August Wilson’s FENCES in the directing class I am teaching, and I read the men a statement August Wilson gave about how he didn’t want white directors directing his plays both because he wanted to create opportunities for black directors and but moreover, he wrote, he didn’t think white directors had the cultural experiences that would allow them to direct his plays successfully. I then told the men about the 2009 Broadway revival of JOE TURNER’s COME AND GONE directed by Bart Sher and approved by Wilson’s widow. What did this largely African-American and Hispanic group of men think about that? Not one of them shared August Wilson’s opinion: to a man, they felt that it was important to have cultural understanding, but they felt that there were lots of way to acquire that; they sought more opportunities for African American directors, but they didn’t feel that this required the exclusion of thoughtful voices of other ethnicities or races.
I find this anecdote — like everything I hear from you about the work you do — absolutely fascinating. The men you work with strike me as both wise and convention-defying. What a spectacular human experience you get to have! Thanks for sharing.
Actually, it’s not fair.
Starting off with “I know all about you people so my decision to write about you should be above reproach” is exactly the wrong way to go about having this conversation.
It would be very refreshing if, for once, White authors put more energy toward holding themselves accountable than towards establishing their credentials or intentions.
I think I can see why you’d have this response. I also think you are misunderstanding what I’ve written.
It isn’t my intent to say that “I know all about you people.” (I assume you’re referring to the sixth paragraph in my post.) It’s my intent merely to describe the circumstances of my upbringing and present life. I write what I know: that’s what I know. I was also raised in a predominantly Jewish household; I write about Jewish characters a great deal, too. My brother is a corn geneticist, and my mother’s family is full of doctors and nurses; science and scientists make frequent appearances in my work. My wife is from Minnesota, and in the last eight years I’ve spent a great deal of time there; now, after some time, that great state and its many subcultures are beginning to speak to my writing as well. This is as it should be.
Note that in no instance am I ever saying that I’m trying to tell or define other people’s experiences. I’m not trying to say how life is for anyone else. I have always believed that I am my characters; that they represent parts of my soul. I use those parts to tell what I think are human stories, narratives that are much bigger than me… but they always come from me first and foremost.
So if part of me wants to express itself as an atheist African American retired electrician (THE FAITHKILLER) or an African American math professor (THE GREAT DISMAL) — let alone a gay Jewish graphic designer (THE TREEHOUSE) or the middle-aged female host of a cooking show (CRACKED) — so be it.
I should also add that I did note, in my post, that I’m happy for my work to be held accountable. In fact, it has been, by the companies that have produced it and by the audiences that have seen it. That’s as it should be. If I’m not telling the truth, or telling stories that seem in some way offensive or errant, I expect to hear about it. I want to hear about it. I need to hear about it, to make my work better — no matter what kinds of stories I’m telling or whatever characters they feature.
So, you want to know how I hold myself accountable? Here’s an example: when my play THE CONSTELLATION was first produced, I worked with an African American dramaturg to ensure that I hadn’t missed the mark in any way; she said I hadn’t. We did a reading of the play in front of a racially diverse audience at the Kennedy Center, then did a discussion with the audience to get folks’ input. Then, throughout the rehearsal process, the dramaturg and I both worked directly with the two African American actors who played prominent roles in the play. We had some great conversations. Then, when the play was open, I did several talk backs with audiences to gather additional feedback. Along the way, I must have done something right, because (an abridged version of) the play was eventually produced by an African American theater company in LA, which offered another opportunity for me to make sure I was telling a genuine story from a good place.
If that isn’t enough accountability, I don’t know what is. And yes, I didn’t write about that in my post, because I wasn’t writing about accountability: I was writing about what I find to be an offensive notion: that I don’t have what it takes to write the stories I want to write, let alone the permission to do so.
Having said all of that… I do understand that there are important sensitivities here. We live in a time in which African American characters are still written more often than not by white people. Believe me when I say that I earnestly want to see more plays (and films and television shows and novels and…) written by African Americans.
Even more than that, however, I’d love for it to be no big deal who writes what stories using what characters… because that, ultimately, reflects what I believe to be true about artists: that we’re full of compassion and creativity and have the tools we need to express ourselves thoughtfully and with honesty and respect. That’s all I’m trying to do.