Ron Russell of Epic Theatre Ensemble

Tom!  I wanted to thank you for your recent post “The Great Whiter-Than-Ever Way,” (http://www.apoorplayer.net/2012/01/the-great-whiter-than-ever-way) which is now being commonly referred to as the “Is it so bad to admit that theatre is for white people?” post.  It’s a brilliant expose of the banal, but still incredibly insidious, dangerous, modern-day racism that lies beneath the innocent-looking façade of your average friendly, innocuous, white university professor chairing a third-rate theatre department in the middle of nowhere.  I’m blown away by the courage it must have taken to reveal not only your native disdain for all cultures, races, and concepts besides your own, but also your incredible intellectual barren-ness – what some would even call thunderous stupidity!  And to think – you’re a college professor!  You work with impressionable young minds EVERY DAY!  It’s just incredibly brave to reveal that you’re living your life half-asleep - something that could, in fact, SHOULD, cost you your job!   Bravo, sir.

I only have one quibble with your post.  When you use the word “admit” in what has become the de facto title of your post, I think you may have overstepped your bounds, even within the huge leeway you give yourself.  You see, an “admission” is generally a revelation of a hidden fact – now, that fact can of course be your personal opinion, as in “I admit that I feel like black people are beneath me culturally” – but the fact you purport to reveal is that the theatre is for white people.

This, unfortunately, is not a fact. 

Between my first reading of your post this morning and this evening as I write this, I have journeyed by train up to the North Bronx, one of our nation’s poorest Congressional Districts, and worked with a group of 18 student writers, all non-white, on a project called Shakespeare Remix.  These writers, part of an overall group of 60 high school students in the afterschool project, analyzed a scene from ROMEO AND JULIET with me, and then applied their learnings to their own adaptation of the play that will later be re-integrated with the original text and performed in a professional venue for hundreds of members of their community, many of whom have never seen a professional theatre production, but who, nonetheless, if history is any guide, will be on their feet at the end of every show, weeping and cheering for the power of theatre to bring the voices of their youth into the civic forum.  None of them are white.

My theatre, Epic Theatre Ensemble, co-founded their small school within a larger school that, ten years ago, before our partnership, had an average 4-year graduation rate of under 10%.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I do not use to jest.  With our help, among many other factors, this school – not a charter school, which I just KNOW you’re thinking – now has a graduation rate over 85%.  None of them are white.  Why?  Because theatre has a JOB in this world, sir.  A job you do not seem to understand.  It is not an entertainment.  It is an incredibly powerful tool for social change.  For awakening, particularly in young people, a thirst for rigor, and self-expression, and courage, the courage of speaking with truth and clarity in front of an audience who heretofore knew not your potential.  And when this kind of drink is given to the thirsty, they become vigorous.  And, I warn you, dangerous, to some of the things you seem to hold sacred about what you call “culture.”

Because these young people’s adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET is not about Crips and Bloods, as you might assume.  No.  It’s about a wealthy Jewish family in southern Germany in 1938, after Kristallnacht, who use their influence to move into a comparatively low profile working-class neighborhood, where their daughter (“Juliet”) falls in love with their neighbor’s son (“Romeo”), whose family is slowly drifting into active National Socialism.  The students are using rigorous research and text analysis, combined with their native earnestness, empathy, thoughtfulness, and insightfulness (who knew that non-white people had these qualities, right?) to sculpt a truly original vision of theatre that will be impactful on their community.  They have not only embraced the “dominant culture,” as you call it, they are so bold, as young Americans, to think it is their own to use, re-vision, abuse, do what they will.  You question if they are “interested in” the form of theatre?  Trust me, given opportunity and access, they will wrest that form from the grips of lowly thinkers like you and me, and make it remember and fulfill it’s true purpose as a potent tool in our nation’s endless quest for equity and justice.    

So your conclusion that theatre is for white people is just not borne out by the facts I have experienced.  This afternoon.  One person.  At one school.  Through one theatre.  In one city.  For one hour.  In the vast diversity we call America.  Who knows how many other theatre professionals today, with your ignorance ringing in their ears, have had similar experiences that reveal you to be singularly foolish?

Listen, Tom.  Let me make something clear.  I am white.  And you don’t stand for me.  In fact, I think our native relationship is as enemies.  Don’t ever presume to speak for me.  Don’t ever imply that my voice, as a white person, is aligned with your own.  What you wrote does not make me “uneasy.”  That’s the word people who are assured of their status because of the racism that pervades our every institution use when they write dangerous shit.  What you wrote was a violent affront to everything I do, every day, and everything I stand for; not to mention the many other theatre-makers, and audience members, who actually are NOT white, who your post attacks.  Or the millions of non-white students who use theatre every day to build better futures for themselves and their communities.  What you wrote enrages me, and I here disavow you and your words.  You, and they, are no part of me.