White a$$ community theater
As you may have heard, I am from Minnesota. Minnesota, as you may have heard, is a really white place. Thanks to a massive influx in refugees/immigrants from Laos, Somalia, and Latin America in the last 30 years, it is rapidly diversifying, especially in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. This diversification, for example, is why Minneapolis elected Ilhan Omar to congress in 2018. She very accurately represents a large body of citizens in Minneapolis. I'm actually really excited to see the census numbers because I think it'll help us with our white-ass image.
The demographics of Minnesota accurately reflect the theater situation in the Twin Cities as well. On the one hand, we have a growing number of spaces dedicated to artists and actors of color (alongside older institutions like Mixed Blood and Penumbra) in the core Cities. Those spaces were hard fought for and won, and have been instrumental in the fight to diversify casting in the Twin Cities. Overall, the ratio of actors of color to white actors is still heavily skewed to the white, but it's even better now than it was five years ago when I started. But there is still a major problem: White theaters doing white shows because that is what white audiences will pay for, particularly in the suburbs.
Take a few of the theaters I worked with, many of which were in the northeast suburbs, where rich old white people paid to see classically white stories. One of my friends was let go from a managing director position at Lakeshore Players theater in White Bear Lake because he was trying to push them to create more 'subversive' theater. The bill was coming due for a massive renovation to the theater and the board, whose median age had to be 68, voted him out. Since then they have put on plays such as Cabaret and Gypsy which may have been subversive in 1959, but are both a very comfortably white way of expressing "counter-culture." They have been massively popular and money-makers. To give you another example, I was in One Man Two Guvnors there and The Great Gatsby at Lakeshore. Both very white. I refuse to work there now on since my friend was fired, and quite frankly, I want to fucking get paid (really glad my free labor provided you that nice new space, but hey howdy hey let's start to pay our artists), but the question I keep going back to, is should those spaces still exist? It's hard for me to say no, as they bring arts to otherwise devoid places. Also without them I wouldn't have gotten the resume boost to get into LSU. My career would look entirely different and possibly wouldn't exist if it weren't for those suburban avenues. My privilege was having a car to drive and perform there, and skin color to fit the bill.
It also isn't as if Lakeshore consciously doesn't cast people of color. They surely do, when folks come up from the city to audition, but that is the issue itself. Why would a person of color want to audition for what will probably be an otherwise very white Great Gatsby at a community theater in the suburbs when they can get paid to play roles more directly applicable to their own lives in the Cities. It is, indeed, the paradox of suburban/exurban/small town community theater. White people pay for the stories, white people get the stories they want to see, oftentimes the roles available are predominantly white, and so people of color don't show up and the cycle repeats itself. I don't know if I have the answer. I don't know if it's right for me to suggest an answer, or listen carefully to solutions proposed by people of color and support them when they come. The former puts my white voice in spaces of color, the latter puts the onus of work onto bodies of color.
Ultimately, I do see progress in this place in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but further out into the whiteness-sphere... boy there is a lot of work to do still.
The demographics of Minnesota accurately reflect the theater situation in the Twin Cities as well. On the one hand, we have a growing number of spaces dedicated to artists and actors of color (alongside older institutions like Mixed Blood and Penumbra) in the core Cities. Those spaces were hard fought for and won, and have been instrumental in the fight to diversify casting in the Twin Cities. Overall, the ratio of actors of color to white actors is still heavily skewed to the white, but it's even better now than it was five years ago when I started. But there is still a major problem: White theaters doing white shows because that is what white audiences will pay for, particularly in the suburbs.
Take a few of the theaters I worked with, many of which were in the northeast suburbs, where rich old white people paid to see classically white stories. One of my friends was let go from a managing director position at Lakeshore Players theater in White Bear Lake because he was trying to push them to create more 'subversive' theater. The bill was coming due for a massive renovation to the theater and the board, whose median age had to be 68, voted him out. Since then they have put on plays such as Cabaret and Gypsy which may have been subversive in 1959, but are both a very comfortably white way of expressing "counter-culture." They have been massively popular and money-makers. To give you another example, I was in One Man Two Guvnors there and The Great Gatsby at Lakeshore. Both very white. I refuse to work there now on since my friend was fired, and quite frankly, I want to fucking get paid (really glad my free labor provided you that nice new space, but hey howdy hey let's start to pay our artists), but the question I keep going back to, is should those spaces still exist? It's hard for me to say no, as they bring arts to otherwise devoid places. Also without them I wouldn't have gotten the resume boost to get into LSU. My career would look entirely different and possibly wouldn't exist if it weren't for those suburban avenues. My privilege was having a car to drive and perform there, and skin color to fit the bill.
It also isn't as if Lakeshore consciously doesn't cast people of color. They surely do, when folks come up from the city to audition, but that is the issue itself. Why would a person of color want to audition for what will probably be an otherwise very white Great Gatsby at a community theater in the suburbs when they can get paid to play roles more directly applicable to their own lives in the Cities. It is, indeed, the paradox of suburban/exurban/small town community theater. White people pay for the stories, white people get the stories they want to see, oftentimes the roles available are predominantly white, and so people of color don't show up and the cycle repeats itself. I don't know if I have the answer. I don't know if it's right for me to suggest an answer, or listen carefully to solutions proposed by people of color and support them when they come. The former puts my white voice in spaces of color, the latter puts the onus of work onto bodies of color.
Ultimately, I do see progress in this place in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but further out into the whiteness-sphere... boy there is a lot of work to do still.
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