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Agamemnon: Episode 3

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Blood, an axe, an orphan – experience the climactic conclusion to Nicolas Billon’s Agamemnon.

After a ten-year siege, the city of Troy finally lies in ruin. Clytemnestra waits for Agamemnon with murder in her heart.
A visceral, contemporary re-imagining of the opening chapter of Aeschylus’ Oresteia by Governor General award winning playwright Nicolas Billon.

Featuring: Nigel Shawn Williams, Brigit Wilson, Earl Pastko, Susanna Fournier, Ron Kennell, Amy Keating, Zita Nyarady, Marcel Stewart, Samantha Brown. Original stage direction by Sarah Kitz and sound design by Andy Trithardt.

Agamemnon: Episode 2

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After a ten-year siege, the city of Troy finally lies in ruin. Clytemnestra waits for Agamemnon with murder in her heart.

A visceral, contemporary re-imagining of the opening chapter of Aeschylus’ Oresteia by Governor General award winning playwright Nicolas Billon.


Featuring: Nigel Shawn Williams, Brigit Wilson, Earl Pastko, Susanna Fournier, Ron Kennell, Amy Keating, Zita Nyarady, Marcel Stewart, Samantha Brown. Original stage direction by Sarah Kitz and sound design by Andy Trithardt.

Agamemnon: Episode 1

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After a ten-year siege, the city of Troy finally lies in ruin. Clytemnestra waits for Agamemnon with murder in her heart.

A visceral, contemporary re-imagining of the opening chapter of Aeschylus’ Oresteia by Governor General award winning playwright Nicolas Billon.

Featuring: Nigel Shawn Williams, Brigit Wilson, Earl Pastko, Susanna Fournier, Ron Kennell, Amy Keating, Zita Nyarady, Marcel Stewart, Samantha Brown. Original stage direction by Sarah Kitz and sound design by Andy Trithardt.

David Yee

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TRANSCRIPT:

MICHAEL WHEELER [OVER PHONE]: Hello, you’ve reached Michael Wheeler’s voicemail. Please leave a message.

DAVID YEE: Hey Michael, it’s David Yee, this is my first thought. This morning I got an email from Sarah welcoming me to this, and then I got an email from you, and it read: “Try not to say anything controversial, just thoughts that support the status quo.” And obviously that’s a joke, it’s classic Wheeler, but I was still groggy and it didn’t click right away. And maybe because last week Matthew Jocelyn called me and my compatriots “parasites,” I thought, “Jesus Christ, I’m being policed by Michael Wheeler.” Which wasn’t true, but for half a second this morning, I turned you into something you weren’t because last week someone called me something I’m not.

Renderrabbits 03 – “Live” at The High Performance Rodeo

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Hello again! Since my last post I’ve finished Round 2 of this project: the installation version of Renderrabbits at the 2016 High Performance Rodeo. Yeehaw!

Everything went very well, I am happy to say. It was a lot of work to crank it out but the process and installation went smoothly.

(One exception: I broke my glasses on New Years’ Eve when I slipped on some ice and went face first into a street light so the last week of drawing was spent squinting through an old crap pair with my face really close to my computer screen. And I may have had a concussion??? [Probably not.] Did bang my head up though, oops.)

***

FINISHING IT UP

So December 2015 was spent drawing portraits of Michael Green, the late founder of the High Performance Rodeo and One Yellow Rabbit. Since he was a huge figure in our community before his passing I felt he needed a more significant presence in the film. I find it takes me about 2 weeks to do a sequence from start to finish, more or less. I am getting faster at this, but the clips I select are getting longer and more complicated so that cancels out the gains I make in efficiency. So if I only have enough time to do 2 more clips and tie everything together, 2 weeks per clip and another week for additional animation and post-production, what two clips do I make?

I decided to make 2 sequences of him: one from an interview he did shortly before he passed away, and one of him doing his infamous performance piece, “The Whaler.” Michael did this wild little performance as sort of a suitcase piece he could ‘whip out’ for parties, festivals, or cabarets. It was notorious. He performed it entirely nude except for a pair of yellow rubber gloves. In it Michael intermittently recites a stanza from a poem he wrote titled “The Whaler,” does a dance, then dunks his head into a bucket full of water, bellowing “I AM THE WHALER!!!” And repeat. It’s fantastic.

If you want to know more about Michael Green’s “The Whaler,” my buds and fellow SpiderWebShow contributors at the Deep Field Podcast spent the Rodeo creating an audio piece exploring the stories surrounding it. Listen to it here, it’s great! They got our mayor Naheed Nenshi on there too, which is pretty rad.

Going through the Rabbit’s archives I found a really decent video recording of a performance of it on VHS tape. This piece is infamous, like I said, but part of that means that more people have heard about “The Whaler” than have seen it. Festival goers and fans of the Rabbits will be talking about it, it always comes up whenever people start talking about Michael. Theatre is such an ephemeral thing. This notorious piece exists in our memories and our stories, but we will never see another performance. Maybe though animating a version of it from an old recording, I can make it tangible again. For a short time, anyway. Preserve an impression of Michael’s energy into a series of drawings that reanimate him in our minds when flashed at our eyeballs at 24 drawings per second. (I animate at 12fps, but stretch it out “on 2’s” so 1 drawing is shown twice. Same difference.)

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This was a long clip though – the whole piece is over 5 minutes long, which is very short for a theatre piece but a LOT to rotoscope. I found a great section near the end of the performance that was about 26 seconds long, his final dance, bucket dip, and holler. This was an older recording, but not that old. Michael was in good shape. He has a pretty sturdy physique and immense control over his movements. I know he did yoga every day. His body was his instrument. Analyzing the piece and sketching out his movements, I noticed that all his motions were very precise.

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The biggest challenge of this piece was dealing with all the blurs and smears in his movements. A “smear” is when you elongate a drawing between two end points to imply a fast motion. The VHS rip I was working from had a lot of blurry images, some from fast motions – essentially smears directly encoded in the tape – and just fuzzy out-of-focus or poorly lit sections. I had to “make up” quite a lot, and sometimes when I couldn’t make out where, say, Michael’s foot was, I would either guess or just leave it out. The video blurs a lot frame by frame, so I tried to emulate that by making the lines inconsistent on those frames to match – dashed lines instead of a solid line.

For this one he whirls his arms around 3 times – each whirl I have to draw his fingers “smearing” implying fast motion for 4 circular motions. Then his hands have to come into focus. His hands blur but his body stays in focus. The way I arrange the lines, in sequence, determine our perceptions of how “fast” his arms are moving. Too many smears in sequence and it doesn’t read as moving fast.

The bucket was hard to find on the video until basically he has his head dunked into it. The original camera footage zooms and follows him around the stage a bit, and the bucket is blocked by the audience half the other time, so I just made it magically appear when it needed to instead of spending another week tracking and drawing in detail this fucking bucket. Kinda lazy, but whatever. Pick your battles when you’re doing all this yourself.

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Something I am playing around with is how to portray dialogue visually, without a soundtrack. The other clip I animated before “The Whaler” clip, from his interview, had Michael talking throughout. For this one I wanted to imply that he is bellowing, and I did a lip sync to match his bellows phonetically in time. I’m not 100% on this yet. It’s effective but I think it can be refined.

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Finally, the transitions between everything! Tie it all together! I decided against looping the portraits individually. Instead each animation segment transitions to another one, and it’s the whole film in installation that loops. I had a technical problem: the portraits of Denise, Andy and Blake were drawn on paper, and the ones of Rico and Michael were done digitally. I didn’t want (and wasn’t really set up) to do more paper drawings to finish up, so I faked it in photoshop. You can kind of notice the difference between them – the pencil drawings were done in light pencil, and the digital pencil is heavier.

I wanted to turn the Rabbits into, well, rabbits. It’s something I had been thinking about for a while but I hadn’t had a chance to do it yet. So the transitions to get from one paper animation to another was to have each Rabbit’s head morph into a rabbit that looked like them. White-tailed jackrabbits, in particular. They are the kind of rabbit we have running around in the backyards and parks in Calgary. I see them at fortuitous times. Every time I start working on this project some of these jackrabbits start appearing everywhere I go. I had one big guy living in my backyard for a while. These wild, agile, and fast rabbits have thrived in the heart of our city. Seemed appropriate for these Rabbits. Not a flop-eared among them.

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To be honest, these transitions were super fun to make. I didn’t have a lot of time to make them elaborate, but after tracing for so long it was nice to have to make it up myself. Denise morphs into Andy, Andy into Blake, Blake turns into a rabbit and gets smeared off screen, Rico smears on screen, then off again, and Michael appears from nowhere.

So I finished it up, with some time to spare, enough to even (gasp) sleep the night before putting it up! Burned it onto a looping BluRay, grabbed a player from Quickdraw Animation, and went down to the Laycraft Lounge at Arts Commons to install the finished piece!

****

THE INSTALLATION

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The piece played on a TV hung on the wall, on loop, every night from January 07 – 30 2016 in the festival bar. It was hung between two Chris Cran pieces, which is super duper cool. The bar is a high-traffic area most nights, so I didn’t want to hang any drawings because the frames could get broken. See how high everything is hung, like above shoulder level? I included the credits in the piece for 6 seconds at the start, so I decided to not make a plaque.

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ProTip: never use DVDs with an HDTV for installation work. DVDs are 720p resolution at most, and it will look all pixelly and bad if you put it on a 1080p screen. I work at 1920×1080 at a minimum. In 5 years we are gonna have 5k displays as a standard. DVDs are dead. I want it to look like how I drew it, not down-sampled or re-rendered to fit onto a low-res DVD. I wasn’t able to play the looping .mov file off a USB or media player (my preferred option), so I burned a BluRay, set it up so all the bar techs had to do was turn on the player and it would auto-play and cleanly loop forever. It can be a little bit of a pain to burn a BluRay, but the resolution and clarity is worth it. Fortunately Quickdraw has the capacities to do that.

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The bar can get pretty busy!

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People did check it out. It’s a casual thing, an installation not a screening. It’s about 1 minute and 40 seconds long. People can talk to their friends and glance at it from time to time, or sit and watch it all in one go with no commitment. It was fun to sneak into the bar after a show and watch people watching it. As my face isn’t in the piece, no one really knew who I was (other than my friends).

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The Rodeo had a David Bowie tribute dance party the night I came by with a camera to document the installation. Also that night there was a piece called “Dance Aerobics” happening where the audience had to come in outrageous costume and movement gear. Between the Bowie party and the Aerobics crowd there was quite a lot of people at the bar in colourful clothes that night. Made for some great pictures!

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Last night I took the thing down. The Rodeo is over for another year! I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity. I am playing around in this weird middle area between performance and video; this installation leans more heavily towards video. I think Renderrabbits is a performance, “live” in a sense even if it is pre-recorded; it is my hand, my drawings that are performing, and the only way to perceive that performance is through the mechanisms of video and film. Animations only really exist when they are being watched – just like theatre. They never “existed” in the first place. This version of the film is a one-month only performance, the film will change and grow in subsequent shows.

I will be locking it down into a film-film this spring. I have a couple other segments I want to include – I want to have 2 portraits of each rabbit, so I want to do another portrait of Denise, Andy, and Blake, and another one of Rico if I can find some decent footage to use. I kind of want to include more archival footage, but: I have a time limit. I got some production support from the National Film Board of Canada to work with Kenna Burima as a sound designer – but I have to get it finished by May! So I gotta get choosy again about what to spend my limited drawing time on…

Anyway, that’s it for this post! Next time I’ll talk about turning it into a film proper, and working with Kenna to develop the music. Thank you for reading!

Season 2 Episode 2: You Are Here Too – Recalling the Whaler

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S2E2

If you’ve ever seen Michael Green do ‘The Whaler,’ you have every naked detail etched in your mind. It was wild theatre at its hilarious best — wet, nude, and undeniable.

During the 30th Annual High Performance Rodeo – Calgary’s International Festival of the Arts – The DFP Team were Listeners in Residence, recording on location, gathering your tall tales of Michael Green’s ‘The Whaler’. We borrowed your voices and built a chorus. A cacophony. A sea shanty.

At a Listening Party of this episode, held on January 29th 2016, we celebrated YOUR remembrances, YOUR belly laughs, and YOUR voices shouting out “I AM THE WHALER!” one or two – or a hundred – times more.

—

Featuring the voices of: Allan Baekland, Allison Lynch, Andrew Mosker, Ann Connors, Annie Wilson, Anton de Groot, Blake Brooker, Brad Walker, Chris Cran, Col Cseke, Deanna Jones,  Denise Clarke, Eric Ollivier, Grant Burns, Jason Markusoff, Jennica Greinke, Johnny Dunn, Ken Cameron, Kevin Jesuino, Kris Demeanor, Laurel Green, Michael Green, Maya Green, Michelle Kennedy, Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Natasha Sayer, Natasha Pedros, Nick Diochnos, Nico Brennan, Oliver Armstrong, Peter Moller, Rachel Blomfield, Rita Bozi, Sarah Troicuk, Simon Mallett, Susan Falkner, Tee Crane, Troy Emery Twigg, Ty Semaka, Tyler Longmire, Vicki Stroich, and the crowd at the Laycraft Lounge on January 29th.

 

With music by: Richard McDowell, Alex Fitch, Jason Shaw, Jon Luc Hefferman, Poddington Bear, Sun Brah. All music sourced from the Free Music Archive, except for the music by Richard McDowell: sourced from the One Yellow Rabbit Archives.

Potluck Protocols

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Still leading the way. #oldskoolmadenew. Photo by @ravensboogie via Instagram.

I think if we’re honest, we all consider diversity through a lens of “gain” and “loss”. How those might potentially be inverted depends on which side of privilege you habitually occupy. For those of us having these conversations on a regular basis, we are more than ready to see a collective shift in terms of what we are doing after all this talk. I’ve been reconsidering how we might activate a more expansive understanding of words like “diversity,” “inclusion,” “exclusion,” “accountability” if we created communally derived protocols[1] to guide the way.

One possible answer I offer: a Potluck Protocol Agreement.

All companies/producing collectives are invited to sign a protocol agreement that outlines a manageable and measurable list of values and actions – best practices, if you will. Signatories will commit to fulfilling this agreement throughout the 2017 season.

“But how,” you ask? How about collectively.

The Potluck Protocols will be collectively built through smaller meeting-potlucks as represented by the various ‘communities’ in Vancouver. Individuals will break bread together, dismantling what ‘we’ve always done’ into protocols that best meet the needs of their member-community.

Companies, collectives, and individuals, especially those with aspirations to foster diversity and inclusivity, would be responsible to make themselves present at some point in the process. Further mechanisms can be collectively designed to compile, propose, and fine-tune the Potluck Protocols. Venued-companies will offer their spaces for potluck-meetings as a goodwill gesture towards accessibility.

The as-a-whole theatre community will gather at the end of the 2017 season for a full day or two. Artistic directors/collective representatives will present their findings: the gains and losses of an enlivened diverse theatre practice. Based on these findings, adjustments to the Protocols will be made by those in attendance/proxied.

The benefit to meeting yearly is the ability to be responsive. It means we try, (dammit, Jim). And from our attempts, we learn. This diminishes the weighted fear of failing; it relieves companies from the pressure of needing to have the perfect solution and doing it all right the first time. As Andrea Loewen, Board President of the Jessie Richardson Awards Society said, “We won’t know what works until we try things out, after all.”

Each company/ collective will be given the opportunity to decline further involvement with the Potluck Protocol Agreement or commit to another year. This ensures some meaningful degree of transparency for the community at large.

Why potluck? If nothing else, we are building ‘community’ and where there is community, there is always—always—good food. Food on a table brings people together. And ceremony transcends difference.

Ultimately, I’m asking that protocols be collectively defined and in this, become a means to challenge the structures of privilege and normativity. After all, ‘diversity’ as its been enacted is often just enriching what we already do with what we can access, while ‘inclusion’ maintains a power structure of the us-versus-them: “I will include you.” Seen this way, it’s imperative that diversity and inclusion become more than a numbers game where we do things like hire more different looking people.

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Empathy map appropriated by a medicine wheel (and some of its teachings). Content created with the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards Society board of directors. Photo by Lisa C Ravensbergen.

Dylan Robinson, Stó:lō scholar and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, gives a great example of this, framed around new protocols for listening:

“‘Xwelitem’ is the Halq’emeylem word Stó:lō people use to say ‘non-Indigenous person’ (or ‘Xwenitem’ in Squamish, Muqeuam, Tsleil-Waututh communities). As I understand it, these words came into use because, when settlers first arrived in our territory, they were starving. They were starving literally, for food, but starving also for gold. This hunger for resources has not abated with time, indeed it has only grown – a hunger for the resources of our land: the rocks, the trees, the water, the land itself. Each has been thirsted after, each has been consumed.

How are you listening right now? What are you listening for? Is your listening ‘hungry’?

How, might we define (demand) new protocols of engagement: listening, viewing, witnessing, that are not hungry and driven by the desire to consume knowledge and Indigenous content? Ways that are not starving?

The Potluck Protocols “could be a great way to bring clarity without reductionism,” says Jay Dodge of Boca del Lupo. Yet, despite these kinds of affirmations and pockets of ‘diversity discussions’ happening around town, fear continues to grow, shrouded with confusion or anger. The fear seems to lie in losing what has been gained. It also lies in never gaining what we have lost. It seems people fear practicing power, inverse to how one might be used to.

The very nature of reciprocity and protocol as I’m offering it, is not utopian; more, it is that it offers empowerment, birthed of self-determination, internalized through community-led accountability. We gain opportunity for all sides of privilege and all the diverse pockets of intersectionality to be welcomed, validated, seen and heard. Allies must also be acknowledged. As for those who say they’re allies but won’t do simple-complex things like call their peers on their theatrical privilege… the generous side of me asks: can these protocols challenge and empower them to do that more and better?

Even in this ‘age of reconciliation,’ I don’t know if we will become a community of allies; I really don’t know if we’re ready. It has always been so easy to confuse reconciliation with assimilation. I still witness how ownership and entitlement gets confused for artistic integrity and guilt for accountability. Though it frames these initial thoughts, we need something other than “loss” and “gain” to view our work. I do believe we are capable of nurturing a collective consciousness and communal awareness that very simply and clearly halts talking that isn’t doing. I believe we must offer ourselves more.

And, hivemind: go.

[1] I propose “protocol” in acknowledgement of Vancouver’s unceded Coast Salish land we practice our art upon and the existing system of governance that has sustained them from time immemorial and still guides the three nations. Each nation enacts their distinct sovereignty even as they share unifying protocols (lineage, values, principles, language, codes of conduct, acknowledgements, etc.) that also embody specific spiritual beliefs. These protocols are foundational and the reciprocal respect and enactment of these protocols ensures a measurable system of accountability.

Miigwetch – Thanks to the following for the initial Facebook (and on-going) discussion: Margo Kane, Dylan Robinson, Lucia Frangione, David Bloom, Jessica Schneider, Heidi Taylor, Nicola Harwood, Jay Dodge, Diane Roberts, Tasha Faye Evans, Crystal Verge, Carmen Aguirre, Brander Raven, Jan Derbyshire, Andrea Loewen, Mona Stillwell, Christina Wells Campbell, Lisa Voth, Daniel Martin, Ron Reed, Hilary Strang, Kevin Loring, Jeremy Waller, Susanna Uchatius, Omari Newton, Leanna Brodie, Stephen Drover, Lisa Bunting, Olivia C. Davies, Sandra Currie, Jules Koostachin, Jacob Zimmer, Adrienne Wong, David Geary, Carol Sawyer, Anitra Donald, Michele Volansky, Michael Wheeler, Marianne Anderson, Amy Baskin, Jenn Griffin, Shandra Spears Bombay, Brendan Patrick McClarty, Lib Spry, Donna Spencer.

– Edited 26/01/16 9:19 EST to include additional names to Lisa’s acknowledgements. —AW

How to Get Over White Girl Guilt and Do Your Fucking Job

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The Richmond Gateway Theatre’s Pacific Festival poster, 2014.

This needs to be said before we can get into it: I am a white woman of immense artistic privilege.

For 10 years, I have worked in large regional theatres as an artistic programmer, dramaturg, and publicist. I select stories for the stage, shape those stories, and craft the communications strategies of those stories selected for those stages. Just writing that sentence gives me White Girl Guilt; a neurosis that stems from my hyper-awareness of the limited access to that power. I’m tempted to reinforce why I earned those jobs, but I won’t because that’s the exact reaction that prevents us from doing the work.

Theatre’s fundamental purpose is to share stories that connect us. Artist to artist, artist to audience, human to human. So shouldn’t it be the responsibility of arts makers, producers, and advocates to ensure all human stories and sensibilities are included in our practice? Of course it should, but we often fail at this because our fears and egos get in the way. And while it’s vital to hire more non-caucasian arts producers in our theatres, I would argue that us White Girls (who occupy the majority of arts administration jobs) can make great changes right now by getting over our privilege guilt and doing our fucking jobs.

Here are the ways I’ve seen, felt, and dealt with my own White Girl Guilt and made stronger, more inclusive artistic choices with my colleagues that reflect the perspectives and needs of all our artists.

When Otherness Isn’t Funny: A Christmas Story, The Musical – Arts Club Theatre Company

The comedy of characters’ perceived racial difference is delicate. Minimize the sentiment and it’s not funny. Go heavy-handed and it’s offensive. So when director Valerie Easton staged the restaurant scene in the Arts Club’s 2015 production of this super-campy musical, we went full throttle: the Asian waiter had a fu manchu and thick accent that seemed to suit the scale of the zany show.

Then we got a letter from a subscriber and artist who carefully deconstructed that scene’s meaning and impact on her. The private letter was then publicly shared on Facebook, where it was liked by more than 80 people within hours, with a fast-growing comments feed rallying behind the letter’s sentiments. I emailed my marketing, artistic, and senior leadership team at 10pm with the subject line: URGENT.

By 9am the next day, Artistic Managing Director Bill Millerd was already on it. He read the letter, called Valerie, and requested that I withhold our public response until they decided what to do with the scene. After reconsidering the artistic choices based on the subscriber’s feedback, Bill wrote to the patron, acknowledged that these choices could cause offense, noted the changes made (fu manchu cut, accent flattened), and thanked them for their input on the work. I also asked the patron to close the loop on social media by sharing the update, which she gladly did, and the comments feed celebrated her for being a catalyst of change.

Rewind to me watching dress rehearsal, where I wondered if the scene was offensive. Knowing our creative team meant no harm, I assumed the bold choices weren’t landing, comically (“Surely the scene’s intention is ironic, they just need time to play with it”). I also doubted my role in the production (“You’re the publicist; you’re not on the artistic team, so don’t overstep your bounds”). I was also very new to the job and didn’t want to overstep any boundaries (“You’ve only been here a month. Don’t offend people with your pokey questions”).

My own White Girl-ness of maintaining my place and not raising doubts held me back from doing my fucking job. Because when I read the subscriber’s complaint letter, I had intense artistic shame, thinking, “I could have prevented this.” Rather than partnering with my AD in a moment of doubt, I wound up partnering with him on a crisis of perception (which is much worse). Huge lesson learned.

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The cast of A Christmas Story, The Musical. Photo by David Cooper.

The Politics of Bilingualism in New Canadian Programming – Gateway Theatre

In 2014, Gateway Theatre Artistic Director Jovanni Sy implemented his new vision for the organization: the Gateway Pacific Theatre Festival would present Hong Kong plays performed in Cantonese with English surtitles. While Kelly Nestruck asked his Globe and Mail readers the immense artistic question, “Has Jovanni Sy solved the biggest problem facing Canada’s theatre establishment – what to do about shrinking (white) audiences in a growing (multicoloured) Canada?”, Jovanni and I were hung up on the nitty gritty practical follow-up conundrum: “how do you get this potential audience into the Gateway without alienating the established audience?”

The shows were surtitled, so the problem wasn’t accessibility of understanding the work. The challenges were with the surrounding communications strategies and the politics of bilingual signage. A hot topic in Richmond, particularly at that time, due to a silent divide between the Caucasian and Asian communities. Jovanni wanted to close the gap, so we needed to wield our words in inclusive ways. Since the festival is primarily for a Cantonese-speaking audience and accessible to those who speak English, the communications materials needed to reflect that relationship to access.

Decision: copy written primarily in Cantonese with English translations. With Cantonese-speakers being the primary demographic, the communications team also reached out to Cantonese-speaking vendors, community partners, and media; heeding their advice on effective methods of communication and connection; and learning what motivates that community. In short: we served that demographic by putting them first.

Initially, it made me uncomfortable. Richmond was a city where I already felt like the Other and the festival reinforced that my Caucasian cultural perspective and language would not come first at the theatre where I worked. How often does that happen in Canadian regional theatres? Never. How awesome that it finally did.

I became aware that People Like Me (white) were no longer the central demographic driving artistic decisions. That flip in power was humbling, and necessary, because for the first time I was able to see the People Like Me were not white, they were ALL theatre lovers who simply wanted to connect with a show that brought them a little closer to their truth.

Strategies vs. Solutions – Speaking Up in all Rooms

If you are an arts marketer on a job interview, you will inevitably be asked how you plan to reach diverse audiences, which is great. It means the leadership team is keen to make change. How brave you are about addressing the magnitude of change necessary is entirely up to you.

When I was recently asked this question, I replied, “I wouldn’t simply program one ‘diverse’ story a season, participate in the community outreach, and pretend like we’ve solved the problem.” This statement simultaneously raised eyebrows and guffaws of approval; the room was delightfully surprised that I had placed blame not just the marketing teams as a demographic-seeking tactic, but demonstrated that it was an entire organization’s responsibility to uphold diversity.

If you’re thinking I said this confidently, you’re wrong. I honestly believed I ran my mouth and blew my chance. I left the interview stewing over the successful strategies I’ve used in the past; all examples I could have cited to get the gig. But then my gut kicked in and said that wasn’t the truth, because the tactics are only temporary solutions (sell the show) and don’t address the problem (how theatre can be more inclusive).

So how about we commit to real change instead of reinforcing perceived notions of success? What if we make a ruckus in any room, even those where you have no guarantee of work? I’m proud to say that being a voice for bigger change not only got me a job at that organization, it gave me a chance to do the good work on the ground floor in some of the greatest rooms in Canadian theatre.

There are, of course, broader diversity debates worth discussing. Systemic racism, the politics of access to power, or generational perspectives and divides. But those conversations are too theoretical and unchangeable until we do the real work: look each other in the eye, deal with our fears, and make more inclusive decisions in the day to day.

Because if the Whitest Girl in Canadian theatre can get over herself and do her fucking job, so can you.

How I Decided To Speak

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January Town Hall Meeting at PL 1422 in Vancouver, BC.

I have been feeling like I need to puke for the last month, ever since Carmen Aguirre, Alexandra Lainfiesta and I first decided to write our letter to the Vancouver producers of The Motherfucker with the Hat, challenging their casting choices.

It was the first time that I had ever spoken up publicly… on anything really.

I don’t like to be the heavy. When it comes to these issues I always feel like I’m swimming behind a boat hoping to catch up with those who are far better spoken than I on these subjects, those who’ve been active in these conversations for years, or who’ve already written so eloquently on the topics of race and representation.

I don’t consider myself the most intellectually nimble person out there. In fact, I am intimidated by those who are. I act on instinct, without planning my every step. But my gut was telling me it was time to speak up.

Recently, I had begun to reexamine my own heritage as a first generation Latino Canadian. I was looking around at who was making work in which I saw myself reflected. I didn’t see much. So I began to make my own.

I began reaching out to fellow Latino artists and researching the history of my ancestors. All this led to finally feeling as though I had earned the right to call myself a Latino. So when the issue surrounding the casting of The Motherfucker with the Hat presented itself I felt it was time to stand my ground and add my voice to the fray.

Which brings me to the town hall held on January 11th, 2016, and to a room full of people I respected, admired, and others I had never met before. We planned the event so quickly that I was afraid that it would only be a handful of folks talking in circles. But it wasn’t. Over 130 people came and more streamed the event online. We came together ready to listen to each other. I was amazed by the theatre community that I’m honoured to be a part of.

Since I had already used my voice to help gather people there, I wanted to take Carmen Aguirre’s opening words to heart and let those who had not spoken yet have a chance. So after taking the first few minutes to explain to the crowd why Carmen, Alexandra Lainfiesta, and myself had written the letter, I actively stepped back from the conversation. I listened.

Pedro
Manuela Sosa in Mis Papás, produced by rice and beans theatre. Photo by Dan Borzillo.

I’m not going to lie, it took a lot of tongue biting to not jump in and, ultimately, I had to speak up again when someone said that, “it was just a group of friends wanting to do a play.” As if it isn’t as important for a group of actors to consider representation in casting, or that the ethics are different for them than for organizations like the Arts Club.

Maybe it is. Had the Arts Club not held open auditions for In the Heights, I hope our community would have spoken out, organized as we had around The Motherfucker, and taken the Arts Club to task. Maybe now we will be ready to do so or maybe it won’t ever be necessary again. If only.

At the end of the night I was left feeling a little blah, partly from just how tired I was from keeping my emotions in check, but also from how slow the conversation seems to move.

I can see how much effort it is going to take to keep the momentum going. How sometimes I’m going to feel guilty because there will be times that I will just want to do my art and not be an activist or advocate.

I didn’t do all this so that I could dedicate myself to seeking out all the places that Latinos are wronged. I spoke up as a Latino because no one else was and I was able to find others who felt the same.

Ultimately, I’m glad that I helped write the letter, that the event happened, and that we are talking about all of this in the open, not behind closed doors.

Maybe it seems like we here in Vancouver are airing our dirty laundry for the rest of Canada to see. First with the Letter to Jessies (whose board president and members attended the town hall event) demanding equality on our award stage. Then with a letter to the Arts Club about the portrayal of an insensitive Asian stereotype. You might be saying, “Just what is going on in Vancouver?!”

I know for myself there is already some fallout. A friend told me that, for ethical reasons, they can no longer work with me. That sucks. I may have lost a friend because I chose to speak up. But had it not been for the courage of the authors who wrote letters to the Jessies, to the Arts Club, or the openness of the participants at the public discussions that followed, I may never have had the courage to find my own voice.

Hopefully, we will build from these discussions and actually instill some lasting and meaningful change.

#CdnCult Times; Volume 6, Edition 7: VANCOUVER REPRESENT

By and

Your house has a smell.

Not a good smell or a bad smell. Just a smell. You probably don’t notice the smell because you live there. You’re used to it.

Whiteness as a social construct is like the smell of your house. We don’t really notice it because we’re used to it as the default.

Every so often, a situation arises that raises awareness of the sets of assumptions and conventions in place based on the assumed default of Whiteness. Google #OscarsSoWhite, “Black Hermione”, or “Mother Courage/Tonya Pinkins.”

Over the past 18 months, several situations have arisen that challenge Vancouver’s theatre community to examine assumptions around race and representation onstage: the ReaCT open letter to the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards Society addressing under-representation of artists of colour among the Jessie board, juries, nominees and award-winners; a letter to Arts Club Theatre decrying the representation of a Chinese character in their production of A Christmas Story: the Musical; and, most recently, actions (1, 2) by the Latino community challenging the casting of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherfucker with the Hat.

Each instance pushed Vancouver’s theatre community to re-examine values and expectations, current practices and possible alternatives, and what shared principles – if any – the community has the right to hold itself accountable for.

In this edition of #cdncult, we’ve collected three perspectives on Vancouver’s on-going discussion. Pedro Chamale writes about the tensions between finding his voice as an artist and advocate. Amy Lynn Strilchuk unpacks some White Girl guilt and discusses how entire organizations can promote change. And Lisa C. Ravensbergen poses a possible process to communally develop shared values and best practices around race, representation and cultural production.

This edition is not as a definitive portrait of the Vancouver theatre community’s struggles with “diversity”, but rather a snapshot of a community in flux that is, most importantly, willing to consider change.

Time to open the windows and let some fresh air into the house.

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