My Truth
I never thought I'd say this, but my African American Theatre & Culture class today was fantastic. Timothy Phillips (August Wilson picked him to direct Radio Golf, his last play) is an artist in residence at Emerson, so he came and spoke to our class. Honestly, I'd given up on theatre to a degree and didn't really get why African American Theatre was so important but he really struck a chord with me.
The things he had to say about colorblind casting versus nontraditional casting and the idea of preserving the playwright's original intent while exploring new ways of casting were interesting, as well as his statements regarding race in America. He said that when a play, like say To Kill a Mockingbird, has colorblind casting the American audience's perception of whether the race issue will be addressed is in the air, it's just silently accepted by everyone watching. If you're going to do non-traditional casting for a show, the idea of race can't be an issue in the original text, otherwise all sorts of other meanings will be evoked, or it will viewed as a gimmick.
I brought up the fact that I feel like theatre is this living, breathing thing, and it's stuck now because the generations before us want to address the issue of race in their way, and our generation has a completely different view of the race issue, and we're supposed to save theatre but they won't let us. Also, I feel like our generation can't meet their expectations because we're going to do things the way we view them because our roots are so different.
Timothy said "Tell me what your thing is from your greatest truth, I want to adjust."
Older theatre professionals really want to believe in us, but it's hard because so much has happened that seeks to prevent theatre from changing because the people funding theatre don't want it to. They have to let us find our own way, they can hold our hand for a while, teach us, but eventually we have to find our own truths. I want theatre to grow and change. It can't always be the way it is right now, stagnant and limited.
People are too quick to dismiss our generation because we don't go about things the same way as they did, but we can never be who they were, and honestly, I'm glad. I'm glad that World Drama is a requirement, and that we have to do Languages of the Stage, because we get educated in the way Emerson views theatre, and the way other cultures have viewed it, and that's important, because we need a basis to find our way and our truth.
I don't want to be a temporary idealist like the kid from This Side of Paradise. I want to fight for this. It's worth it, it's art.