Category Archives: Theatre

Feb 08 2021
Film, Theatre

Acting with Autism

I invited actor and playwright Cameron McNary to write a guest blog about being a theatremaker who’s on the Autism Spectrum. I wish I had read this piece 20 years ago. Every theatremaker should read this piece! I learned so much I wish I could apply retroactively to my work.

Cameron McNary. Photo by David Hobby.

ACTING WITH AUTISM

I can remember the moment I realized that Henry Higgins (the Pygmalion one, not so much the My Fair Lady One) was on the Autism Spectrum. 

I don’t mean the kinda-sorta, nonspecific “Autismishness” that, say, Sheldon Cooper got because The Big Bang Theory‘s writers didn’t want to be pinned down by a real-world diagnosis that would force them to do the hard work of writing a neurodiverse character accurately. No, I mean, real, honest-to-goodness, straight from the DSM, if-this-diagnosis-existed-back-then-he-100-percent-woulda-had-it Autism Spectrum Disorder.

It wasn’t his obliviousness, his social awkwardness, his general dickishness. Sheldon Cooper has those, in spades. The clumsiness and lack of intrinsic concern for personal hygiene, well, that’s just a type: “The Geek.” Just Shaw’s considered observation of a “Man of Science.”  Then I hit this line, in the middle of the philosophical and emotional blowout with Eliza that takes up the last chunk of Act V: 

HIGGINS: The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.

Well, now. There, I’m starting to feel more than a little seen. 

The passionate, blinkered application of a general rule to human social interaction? The kind that sounds really virtuous in theory but ultimately misses the point, vis-a-vis other human beings having feelings? A way of trying to bend the world around you so you don’t have to constantly burn so much energy considering the existence of other people?

Oh, yeah. I knew this guy. I knew him very well indeed. 

Shaw, stage directions, top of Act II: “His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least reasonable moments.” 

That’s a precise description of how I survived grad school: I was mind-blowingly inconsiderate and generally insufferable, but I meant well–  I mean so, so well–  that ultimately you couldn’t hold it against me.

It was a profoundly comforting feeling to find out that people whose brains worked like mine existed in 1912.

Again, I’m talking about this version of Higgins (Leslie Howard in a still from the film Pygmalion, 1938). My Fair Lady is wonderful, but it strips out about half of the ASD-like behaviors, and almost all of the context for them, and winds up with less of a sharply drawn portrait of a particular brand of humanity and more just Rex Harrison being charming and weird.

Shaw’s conception of Higgins had to come from somewhere–  it was way too accurate in the particulars, and hung together too well as a whole, for it to be an invention from whole cloth. This is somebody– probably more than one– that Shaw knew. They existed. And they were like me. A lot like me.

It made playing him a real privilege.

So how does someone who has a developmental condition that involves “persistent challenges in social interaction, speech and nonverbal communication” wind up working as a professional actor and playwright? It’s more common than you might think. 

(Disclaimer: My story is my own; “if you’ve met one person with ASD, you’ve met one person with ASD”; one size definitely does not fit all, etc.) 

The theatre can be a surprisingly welcoming place to someone with ASD. For all its air of loosey-goosey do-what-thou-wilt bohemian home-for-freakery, to someone who looks at social rules explicitly, as puzzles to be figured out, the unspoken laws of the theatre are both easy to articulate and satisfyingly unbending. “Five” means “five.” Be 15 minutes early. Never give another actor notes. Say “thank you” every time it’s humanly possible. Have we worked together before? Broad smiles and that friendly back-pat hug at the first reading, even if we don’t like each other. Especially if we don’t like each other. 

Acting company etiquette evolved literally over centuries to allow multiple powerful, attention-hungry (and sometimes fragile) egos to work together efficiently. It gives broad latitude to attention-seeking behavior that doesn’t get in the way of the work, and clamps down hard on any that does. 

A lot of ASD-fueled behavior can look like attention-seeking. Which means when you slot into a group of loud, emotionally sensitive theatre kids, you don’t really look all that out of place. And when you’ve also got a powerful, attention-hungry (and sometimes fragile) ego to go along with that ASD, well, it’s very easy for the theatre to start to feel like home.

Where I’ve often run into trouble is with my sometimes inflexible way of thinking. “Just take the note” is one rule that’s taken me a long time to internalize. My artistic choices can often set very quickly, and can have a “stuck on a track” quality. We’ve all seen actors argue with a note, passionately convinced that the scene in their head is the only way it can be. I do that too, but trust me when I say this is different. When a director pops my already-conceived notion of the way the scene just has to go, it takes me a lot longer to recover than other people to put the pieces back together. There’s no malice to it, and it’s actually not an issue of ego– although it can certainly look like one. My mind loves rulesets, and is only comfortable when those rulesets are well-defined and strongly in place. If a director smacks up against one of those rulesets, I can’t just change the line reading or the blocking or whatever. I have to build a new ruleset that can contain this new bit of information. And that can take a moment. 

“You need to know: although I know it looks like it, the expression on my face does not mean I think your note is stupid and you’re an idiot who can’t direct. It’s just the way my face looks when I’m recalibrating.” ← Words I have actually said to a director in a professional production. 

There’s also the fact that, like Henry Higgins, I am by nature incredibly inconsiderate. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, or you’re not important to me; it means you’ve got a chip in you somewhere that’s constantly considering other people’s needs, and I don’t. I’ve had to develop habits that do the same thing instead. After four and some-odd decades’ worth of practice, those habits are very, very good at their job. But they’re not infallible. I’ll always be processing information about the needs of those around me on equipment that just wasn’t designed for it. 

The best way to accommodate that is one I try to give people a heads-up about whenever possible: hold me to account for the things you need from me, emotionally or otherwise, but know the best way to get me to actually do those things is to explicitly tell me what you need. I do really, really well with things that are explicit.

We tend to think of theatre, and especially acting, as being primarily about emotional truth. And I guess it is, for most actors I’ve met. I mean, I get there eventually, if I’m doing my job, but that’s almost never where I start. I start with the gestures that play, the line readings that sing, and most importantly, knowing what my job is: knowing what I need to be doing at every moment to serve the story. What needs to happen, and what do I need to do to make it happen? Not my character, mind you: me as a performer.

I have been told I think about acting like a director. Some of the people who have said this even meant it as a compliment.

I come at acting– I have always come at acting– from a fundamentally different direction than most of the other actors I’ve met. They start with what their character wants and needs; who their character is. I usually start with poses, and making faces, and line readings. Also a funny voice if I can at all help it.

I am not even kidding. Somehow it usually works, too.

I’m used to people rolling their eyes at the acting styles of yesteryear: your Booths and Barrymores and Bernhardts, clutching their forelocks and biting their fingers and oh sweet lord Larry Olivier doing that dying swan ballet thing when he dies as Richard III . . . and all I can think is: oh god, what I wouldn’t give to get away with that shit. 

Yesssssssssssssss. (George Rignold as Henry V, 1876. Photo: Folger Shakespeare Library/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Different actors have different strengths and weaknesses, of course. Making it truly authentic can be hard for me.  I have yet to really find my groove on film. I sometimes have difficulty with scenes more intuitive actors can take to like water. On the other hand, I have no problem doing some otherwise unmotivated theatrical shit for Brecht. I’m never disappointed when speaking Shakespeare clearly gets in the way of my emoting. And you never, ever, ever have to tell me to find my light. Get in between me and my light and I will mow you down. I will feel bad about it afterwards, but then I’ll realize it was my light, and I won’t.

I think non-ASD actors and I were born with the same theatrical sense: what I think people are talking about when they use the word “talent” in relation to acting in the theatre. We’re all able to sense what an audience wants, and more importantly what they need, and fulfilling it is a goddamn drug to all of us. But neurotypical folks see the emotional through the lens of . . . well, the emotional. They don’t have to think about it at all, really. They just read emotions like a fish reads water pressure. I have to work at it. I’m not like, emotion-blind or anything, but it’s like all those emotions are on the ceiling, and to read them I have to tilt my neck back and look up. It’s not a huge deal, and I do it out of habit pretty easily by now, but it is a conscious, explicit action, and it always takes effort. So my instinct has always been to come at what that audience needs at a right angle from most actors. 

Eye contact, for instance: ever wonder why someone with ASD avoids eye contact? It’s not because it’s bad or scary (at least for me). But it’s always significant, and drains at least a small amount of my emotional energy while I’m doing it.

I mean, I can look you in the eye if the scene needs it, if you need it from me as a scene partner, but if we could be blocked gazing out over the audience into the middle distance? If that’s a possibility? Oh, I’m at least gonna try that. 

(Also, people in real life don’t make eye contact as much as you think they do. Definitely not as much as actors do on stage.) 

Again, how could somebody who can’t perceive emotions know such a thing?

Again, I can perceive emotions just fine. They’re just up there on the ceiling and ugh . . . effort.

But it’s an effort I’ve had to make a lot as a social animal. In my time on this Earth, I may not have liked studying how my fellow humans behave, but I have done it a lot, because I had to. Neurotypical people get so annoyed when someone doesn’t know how they work. 

Writers like Stoppard and Nabokov– non-native English speakers– bring something to writing English that native speakers never could. There’s something about coming at a mother tongue at an angle that lets you see things– connections, turns of phrase, linguistic opportunities– that just can’t be seen from straight on.

So it is with actors. Actors with ASD come at human behavior at least a little widdershins. Yeah, it can be a pain in the ass for all involved, but it can also let us see things about emotional truth and the performance thereof that neurotypicals just can’t coming at it the easy way ‘round.

When Sir Anthony Hopkins was asked in a 2017 interview with the Daily Mail if his ASD had affected his acting, he said, “I definitely look at people differently . . . I get offered a lot of controlling parts. . . . And maybe I am very controlled because I’ve had to be. I don’t question it, I just take the parts because I’m an actor and that’s what I do.”

Which is something we have in common with neurotypical actors, I think: we don’t question it too much, and we take the parts.

But sometimes it’s helpful to know the hows and whys of our own behavior, and of the folks we get to work with. Sometimes I’m very thankful to Shaw, and the mirror he was holding up to nature in Henry Higgins. Definitely for that delicious, delicious role, but also for letting me feel a little more seen, over a century away.

Cameron McNary is an actor and playwright living in the Baltimore/DC area. His plays include OF DICE AND MEN, SHOGGOTHS ON THE VELDT, and BED AND BREAKFAST OF THE DAMNED.

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Jan 25 2021
1 Comment
Film, Theatre

Ten Ableist Tropes to Jettison in 2021

People with disabilities make up a significant percentage of the population– by some measures, a full quarter– and yet, despite aggressive, ongoing ableism, we are almost always left out of discussions of diversity and equity in theatre & film. We’re rarely hired and our stories are rarely told– when they are, they’re almost always told by abled people, for abled people, with abled people. Abled people are centered in nearly everything about us. 

A smiling young woman with olive skin, dark brown curls, red lipstick, and deep brown eyes smiles broadly in this headshot. She's wearing a red top and her head is tilted slightly to the side.
Throughout this post, I’ve included pictures and information about disabled actors, directors, writers, producers, & designers. Meet actor Melissa Salguero. Melissa is represented by Gail Williamson at KMR.

The centering of abled people routinely takes the form of ableist tropes that present the lives of disabled people through an ableist lens. In these tropes, the disabled body is used as a container for the emotions able-bodied people have about disability. 

You’ll recognize all of the following ableist tropes; you’ve seen them all numerous times. I am hardly the first person to write about these, and this isn’t even the first time I’ve written about them. Yet somehow, no matter how often we write or speak about this, ableism never seems to be taken seriously, and our concerns are minimized, dismissed, ignored, or outright rejected. Disabled people need people who live in privileged bodies to do better. 

A Black woman with her hair pulled back and falling over one shoulder smiles slightly in this headshot. She wears a rich blue shirt and light pink lipstick. She leans toward the camera as if she's about to tell a fascinating story.
Actor, storyteller, and performance artist Terri Lynne Hudson.

Ten Ableist Tropes to Jettison in 2021:

1. WE ARE NOT SYMBOLS. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen scripts with a disabled person who never appears on stage, only appearing in the play as a topic of conversation, a problem that must be solved by the able-bodied characters. I’ve seen scripts where a disabled person is on stage, but never given any lines or any meaningful action, often partially concealed– back to the audience, or partially behind a screen, for example. In each of these cases, the disabled person is a symbol of something affecting the able-bodied people. When a silent disabled character appears on stage yet is marginalized from the action, the disabled body is minimized, a prop rather than a human being. And those silent roles, removed from all meaningful action, are almost always played by able-bodied actors, which renders disabled people voiceless, powerless, and entirely invisible. The voiceless, powerless, disabled body is framed as a burden, an object of ridicule, an object of disgust, or an object of pity. An object, never a subject. 

Our disabilities are not ABOUT YOU. We  are not a “symbol of oppression,” a “symbol of willful ignorance,” “a symbol of the voiceless,” “a symbol of the futility of language,” “a symbol for our burdens,” or any of the other dozens of explanations I’ve been given when I point out that the disabled character is reduced to a prop. 

An ivory-skinned woman with short blonde hair and big hazel eyes has a perky smile in this headshot. She wears a rich blue shirt with a zig-zag pattern woven into the fabric. She stands in front of a black fence.
Actor, singer, director, and producer Erin Cronican, Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater.

2. DO NOT INFANTILIZE US. When you depict your able-bodied characters treating your disabled characters like children, you’re echoing generations of oppression and marginalization we have endured. And these issues are intersectional. When you infantilize a disabled character who is neither male nor white, that infantilization is intensified by the white infantilization of BIPOC and the male infantilization of women, as well as trans, enby, and genderqueer people. 

Disabled adults are adults. Needing assistance does not make us children any more than an able-bodied person’s need for assistance makes them children. Everyone on the planet requires the assistance of another person each and every day. Unless you live as a hermit, grow your own food, generate your own electricity, make your own clothing from fabric you craft from raw materials; never use the internet, the postal service, retail stores, roads, healthcare, or sanitation services; never read books, listen to music, watch films, take classes, or have partnered sex, you are being assisted by others. 

Adults with disabilities are adults. We have adult problems, concerns, joys, fears, relationships, hopes, ambitions, plans, and desires. 

A tall, thin white man with a mustache and a beard; short, dark hair in a stylish cut, and dark eyes adjusts his tie as he smiles rakishly at the camera. He's pictured from the waist up, showing his stylish suit.
Actor Brian Seitel.

3. WE ARE NOT HERE FOR YOU TO SAVE. One of the most popular tropes is the “heroic” narrative in which an able-bodied person “saves” a disabled person by “curing” them, teaching them something (to walk again! to use spoken language!), or showing them life is worth living. The disabled person is deeply minimized, presented (again) as a problem for the able-bodied person to solve. The disabled character is often entirely reduced to “disabled and sad,”“disabled and angry,” or “disabled and bitter.” Disability is presented as a dragon for able-bodied people to slay while the disabled character sits by passively, and then showers the able-bodied character with gratitude when they are “cured.”  The worst part of this trope is that it’s often presented as “the heroic doctor who stops at nothing to find the diagnosis, treatment, and/or cure” when in reality, medical professionals routinely disbelieve us, avoid us, refuse to give us needed tests and medications, misdiagnose us, or give up after their first guess proves incorrect. And this gets much, much worse if you’re also in any of the other groups that doctors treat with the utmost skepticism– if you are a woman, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, poor, or fat. 

A woman with dark eyes and pale skin sits in her wheelchair. She has bleached blonde hair with dark roots cut in a short, 80s-inspired style. She wears a black top, a silver pendant, silver hoop earrings, and blue jeans. Her hands are in her lap and her body is turned away from the camera, but her head is turned to face us. and she has a slight smile that's a bit mischievous.
Actor, singer, dancer, director, and writer Megan Simcox.

4. WE ARE NOT HERE TO INSPIRE YOU. You may have already seen this one referred to as “inspiration porn.” We’re not here to inspire you; we’re just trying to live our lives. We have all the same problems you do, plus our sometimes stubborn & disobedient– and beautiful, and sexual, and joyful– bodies. One especially egregious version of this trope is the MANIC CRIPPLED DREAM GIRL. Her illness or disability is always invisible and she’s always played by a thin, conventionally beautiful, young able-bodied white woman. She teaches the able-bodied hero to love, or to find himself, or to “appreciate the beauty of life,” while she bravely “overcomes” her disability to graduate, or travel “one last time,” or enter the big ballroom dance competition or whatever. She then conveniently dies, but not before her Final Inspirational Words, which are, of course, all about HIM. She dies (prettily) and he lives on, eternally inspired. There are many other versions of this trope, such as: 

  • “NO EXCUSES” (“a nearly worthless disabled person can do this amazing thing, so why can’t you, with all your majestic abledness?”)
  • “SUPERCRIP” (“it should be impossible for this disabled person to do this thing, but they are the literal best in the world”)
  • “THE ONLY REAL DISABILITY IS A BAD ATTITUDE” (“look how positive this weak and worthless disabled person is; suck up your problems, majestic abled”)
  • “HOW CUTE! THEY THINK THEY’RE PEOPLE” (“these poor, useless cripples get one shining moment to pretend to be human through the selfless, heroic work of able-bodied people who staged this event”).
A Black woman with short hair, a green headband, tortoise-shell-framed glasses, a black spaghetti-strap top, and pink lipstick smiles cutely, showing off her dimple. She's seated outdoors in a lovely park with green grass and trees.
Actress, writer, and poet Love Lace. Email ciarayvonnelovelace@gmail.com for booking inquiries.

There’s an easy way to depict disabled people doing cool– dare I say inspirational– stuff and avoid sliding into inspiration porn. Just write the disabled character exactly the same way you would write an abled character doing the same thing. Chirrut Imwe from Rogue One is a great example. What prevents him from falling into the “Supercrip” category is the fact that able-bodied characters throughout the series are similarly depicted using the force to achieve seemingly impossible things. Imwe is a valued member of a collective. He has a well-developed personality. His loving, longterm relationship with Baze Malbus is one of the most enjoyable relationships throughout the entire genre. Depict disabled people and our lives as varied and as full as anyone else’s and you won’t go wrong.

A tall, thin woman with pale skin and long, curly brown hair sits in her wheelchair. She wears a 1/2-sleeved black top with a plunging neckline, blue jeans, and a thick gold bangle. Her hands are crossed in her lap and her body is turned away from us, but her face is turned toward the camera. She's in a house with a hardwood floor and cream-colored walls. Her smile is wide, warm, and welcoming.
Actor, singer, and teaching artist Jenna Bainbridge. Jenna is represented by Gail Williamson at KMR.

5. OUR LIVES ARE NOT ABOUT DISABILITY. OUR PERSONALITIES ARE NOT “DISABILITY.” People with disabilities are wonderful people. We are also petty bitches, selfless heroes, cruel gossips, hardworking activists, ambitious entrepreneurs, excellent parents, terrible parents, and everything else. Becoming disabled didn’t change anything about me. I walk with a cane and have to manage chronic pain but I was the same irreverent, nerdy, overeducated discount Dorothy Parker both before and after I acquired this disability. If “disabled” is your character’s only description, you need to start over. 

An olive-skinned young adult sits with their body facing away from the camera, but their head turned back toward us, their left hand behind their head. They have short, dark hair in an 80s-inspired style; deep, dark eyes, and full lips. They wear a hoodie with pastel multicolored stripes and a diamond earring. They're sitting indoors, in front of a small wooden table with a green, grassy plant in a white ceramic container.
Singer, director, actor, and writer Osiris. Email cuenosiris@gmail.com for booking inquiries.

6. OUR LIVES ARE WORTH LIVING. One of the ways in which able-bodied people comfort themselves in this pandemic is to tell each other, “Most of the people who die have pre-existing conditions.” This is equivalent to saying, “Your life is worth so little that your death is less serious than mine would be.” When a disabled character dies, other characters should not echo this kind of sentiment by saying things like,  “At least he’s not suffering any more” unless he was in excruciating daily pain. Sure, there are ways in which disability can limit what we can do, but even if we can’t do a ten mile hike or see a painting, trust and believe our lives are as full of joy and pleasure as yours is. We have spouses and children; we make and consume art; we make and consume food. To quote your aunt’s kitchen wall, we “live, laugh, love” as much as anyone else. 

A filmmaker is lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, on the ground near the wheels of a non-moving train. She holds her camera, but looks over the top. She has brown skin, black hair pulled back from her face, and an expression on her face of serious concentration. She wears a short-sleeved red top, blue jeans, and a, orange and white bangle. A black labrador sits on the ground with its body up against her, gazing off camera at the same thing the filmmaker is looking at.
Day Al-Mohamed is an author, filmmaker, and political analyst. She’s a founding member of FWD-Doc (Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities) and the author of the novella The Labyrinth’s Archivist. I don’t know the dog’s name, but he is clearly a very good boy.

7. DISABILITY DOES NOT MAKE US DIVINE ORACLES. This trope is thousands of years old, and deeply enmeshed in western literature. Sophocles, Shakespeare, and everyone else who wrote prior to the 20th century get a free pass. Yeah, I’m not thrilled about “Now that he is blind, he can REALLY SEE” or “This nonverbal person can literally BLESS YOU,” but no one is seriously proposing that we set fire to classical literature. We’re only asking for an acknowledgment that these tropes dehumanize us and a pledge to do better now that you know. A blind human has no more (or less) psychic, prophetic, spiritual, or metaphysical talents than a sighted human. A nonverbal human is not an “angel.” People with disabilities are people, no more or less oracular than anyone else. Disabled people share this tired trope with BIPOC (the “Magical Negro,” the “Magical Native American,” the “Magical Asian”) and we’re all asking you to do better. How do you know if you’ve written a “Magical Cripple” as opposed to a cool character with special powers? Does the disabled character have any goal, purpose, objective, or concerns other than helping an able-bodied character? If not, it’s time for a rewrite. 

A man sits in his wheelchair outside in front of a large tree. He has long, curly drak hair, olive skin, and a beard. His mustache has been waxed to curl up at the ends. He wears large, 70s-style sunglasses, a dark yellow suede coat with a fur-lined hood and fringe at the chest and waist, and blue jeans. He has one hand on the wheelchair armrest and one on his knee. He has tattoos on his chest and hand, and a serious expression on his face.
Writer, producer, and director Rio Finnegan. His film production company is White Whale Productions.

8. DISABILITY DOES NOT MAKE US VILLAINOUS. This trope is also thousands of years old, and based in two purely ableist bits of nonsense: “Disabled people are bitter and angry at the world, and their hate and jealousy lead them to commit unspeakable acts,” and “A deformed body reflects a deformed soul.”  Again, no one is asking you to detonate every existing copy of Richard III. We’re asking you to acknowledge the issue and pledge to do better in your 21st century work as a writer. Allison Alexander has a great piece on this trope. Read it here. 

A woman with light skin and light brown hair is pictured partially obscured by something out of focus. She sits with her head tilted to her right, propped up by her right hand, with her left hand curled at her chin. SHe wears a tan off-the-shoulder sweater and has a somber expression on her face,
Director Chloe Kennedy specializes in acting theory, improv techniques, and queer performance. Email chloenkennedy@icloud.com for booking inquiries.

9. DISABILITY DOES NOT MAKE US INNOCENT. One of the issues widely discussed in medical ableism is the fact that doctors often assume disabled people do not have sex. It can be a struggle to get STD testing, birth control, or useful, sex-positive information. This issue is exacerbated by the portrayal of people with disabilities as innocent, asexual beings. Let’s face it, even people who are genuinely asexual aren’t angelic innocents. No one is. This trope is also expressed as characters with cognitive disabilities who are “too innocent” to recognize abuse or crime, the “cute mute,” and characters with physical disabilities who are automatically assumed to be incapable of evildoing. 

Natalie is a young white woman with a round face, large, deep green eyes with winged eyeliner, and full lips with red lipstick. Her hair is cut in a short, stylish fashion with a streak of magenta on the left side. She wears a short gold necklace with a gold bar at the center and a denim shirt wirth a plunging neckline. She looks out at the camera with a serious expression.
Playwright Natalie Ann Valentine.

10. WE ARE NOT FAKING OUR DISABILITIES. This trope does significant real-world harm. One of the most common problems people with disabilities face is being disbelieved. We’re considered unreliable narrators of our own lives by medical professionals, by our families, by coworkers, and even by random strangers. Nearly every disabled person– certainly every one I’ve ever met– has been accused of exaggerating or outright faking either their symptoms or their entire disability. Ambulatory wheelchair users and people with invisible disabilities are particularly favorite targets of ableist bullying. This trope causes immediate and immense real-world harm whether the character you’re writing is deliberately faking a disability or has a psychosomatic disability that magically resolves when they learn to accept that the Big Accident was Not Their Fault, or when they learn to love life again, or when they learn the true meaning of Arbor Day. (Bonus points for the able-bodied characters smugly smirking behind the Fake Disabled person’s back when he forgets to limp because they have successfully distracted him).

The only possible way around this is including at least one well-rounded, fully developed disabled character. You can argue all you like that people fake disabilities in “real life,” but “real life” also includes far more examples of actual disabled people, so without that counterbalance, your script is just ableist. 

Griffyn is angled away from the camera, but looks back at us with an eyebrow slightly raised and a slight, mischievious smile. His dark hair is buzzed on the sides and longer on top. He has pale skin and wide, dark eyes. He wears a grey T-shirt with a red flannel checked shirt over it and sits in front of a bookshelf stuffed full of books.
Actor, writer, and consultant (specializing in mental health, gender positivity, and disability) Griffyn Gilligan. Contact his agent, Simon Pontin, at castings@thesoundcheckgroup.com.

Ableism is rampant in playwriting and screenwriting. It’s 2021, writers. It’s long past time to do better.

MORE DISABLED TALENT TO HIRE AND SUPPORT:

Michaela Goldhaber is a playwright, director, and dramaturg who heads the disabled women’s theatre group Wry Crips.

Writer Jack Martin runs the film review website Film Feeder.

Michelle E. Benda is a freelance lighting designer for theatre, dance, and opera. See her portfolio here.

Sins Invalid is a “disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized.” Sins Invalid is run by disabled artists of color.

Access Acting Academy is an actor training studio for blind, low vision, and visually impaired adults, teens, and kids. They offer classes in New York and worldwide via Zoom. Access is headed by actor, writer, director, and motivational speaker Marilee Talkington.

And of course, yours truly. I’m currently available for consulting, dramaturgy, workshops, and classes. You can also become a Bitter Gertrude patron on Patreon.

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Dec 23 2020
Theatre

Theatre As Commodity: Saving Our Industry By Undoing Our Worst Mistake

We are a luxury good. And that? That’s not a compliment. It’s a calamity.

Chris Quintos in The Chalk Boy by Joshua Conkel at my theatre, Impact Theatre. Photo by Cheshire Isaacs.

Theatre is a shared artistic experience, both in its creation process and in its performance. In human history this shared artistic experience has been framed in a multitude of ways — as ritual, as religious observance, as entertainment, as propaganda, as resistance. And while it has been — and will continue to be — all these things in modern America, what it is primarily for us is a commodity. Framing theatre as a commodity is at the root of every major problem we have.

In 1954, we made a pretense of detaching art from commodification by the establishment of the nonprofit tax category, enabling nonprofit companies to collect tax-deductible donations & generate income without having to pay corporate income tax. Like absolutely everything else, this has primarily benefited the privileged.

Systemic racism, sexism, ableism, and transphobia are inextricably bound to classism and the commodification of the arts. All of these problems need to be addressed at once.

Arisa Bega in What Every Girl Should Know by Monica Byrne at Impact Theatre. Photo by Cheshire Isaacs.

INDIVIDUALS

The number of people making a living in the theatre is vanishingly small, and able-bodied white cis men are widely overrepresented. Most theatre is small, local, and underground, dominated by women and BIPOC who make almost nothing doing it. Well-funded theatres reach into this community occasionally and pluck out its white men while sourcing the majority of its hires from the same tiny handful of MFA programs that are the gated communities of the theatre world. While this has improved somewhat in the past ten(ish) years, it has improved at a glacially slow pace, in part because the commodification of theatre at all levels roadblocks progress and makes gatekeeping the far easier choice.

At every step on that journey, there are roadblocks for women, BIPOC, people with disabilities, and trans people. Economic disenfranchisement has long been a tool to protect privilege, and we have upheld that systemic injustice because the problems seem too big to solve. Whose family can afford theatre tickets, who gets arts education in schools, who can afford to attend an MFA program, who can afford to work for below-poverty-level wages before landing that LORT gig — and for many, especially women, BIPOC, people with disabilities, and trans people, after that LORT gig is over — all gatekeep who is able to become “professional.”

Imagine calling a doctor who runs a free clinic an “amateur doctor” or an attorney who works exclusively pro bono an “amateur attorney.” This is absurd; medicine and law rigorously control who is licensed to practice their craft as a “professional” based on education and experience. In theatre, we base this purely on income. How many weeks you were employed at a theatre with an AEA contract, which itself is based on income, determines who is a “professional.” These “professional” gigs are given disproportionately to white, able-bodied, cis men, weaponizing our art form against women, BIPOC, people with disabilities, and trans/nonbinary/GNC people.

ORGANIZATIONS

A small handful of companies, almost all run by able-bodied cis white men, collect the majority of the available funding. The importance, value, and prominence of a theatre organization is based on its annual budget. If your annual budget is below a certain amount, you quite literally don’t count — your stats are left out of every major study and your needs and concerns are left out of every initiative. Only theatres with a certain level of income qualify for inclusion in “the theatre.”

Theatres with incomes below a certain threshold are considered “amateur,” and beneath consideration. The more money a theatre has, the more power and influence it has. Considerations of quality or artistic experimentation are a distant second behind who is able to pay people the most money. That’s an important consideration — people should be paid fairly for their labor — but it should not be the primary evaluation of an organization’s worth. And of course, which organizations are given funding and how those decisions are made are steeped in the commodification of our art, which is bound to systemic inequities. Studies show that companies run by BIPOC get less funding; boards consider a candidate’s ability to bring in high-level donors a primary (if not THE primary) consideration in hiring and retaining Artistic Directors; grants are often given to white-run and abled-run theatres that do “outreach” to BIPOC and disabled communities rather than give funding to the smaller companies that are already doing that work. And so on.

AUDIENCES

Audiences are hounded for donations after paying an exorbitant amount of money for tickets. It’s shocking to charge $40 for a single ticket to a single performance when $40 will buy you a pair of padded, reclining seats with cupholders in a movie theatre, and no matter how you try to excuse it with “theatre is a unique experience,” “live performance is inherently more valuable,” or “it costs much more to produce than $40 a seat,” that’s a tough sell to the average overworked, underpaid American with very little free time and even less free money and we know it. We all know it. At the end of the movie, no one comes out and asks you to put even more money into a basket; no one emails you once a week forever after asking for money.

Theatre IS a unique experience; it DOES cost more than $40 a seat to produce. And yet the cost to attend is prohibitively high. Half price tickets for people under 30 is an expired Tylenol that theatre found in the bottom of its purse when what it needs is major surgery.

And what are you all thinking right now? You’re thinking, “$40 is cheap; most companies charge much more.”

FUNDING

We charge these kinds of prices because we must in order to survive. The truth is that most of us are barely surviving.

As a producer, I often heard, “If you can’t afford to pay everyone (amount), you shouldn’t be producing theatre.” This is the “let them eat cake” of the arts world. “Only the wealthiest theatres should be producing” is not the solution we need. “Just get more funding,” also something I was told over and over, isn’t a real answer. It’s magical thinking. There is no more funding.

We don’t just need more funding. We need better funding. Funding needs to be more practically and usefully conceptualized.

Right now, funding is based entirely on a for-profit, commodification model. We are supposed to imagine that we are selling a product to an audience. We should charge that audience as much as possible, pushing the limits of what the market will bear, and still work relentlessly to “upsell” them, to convince them to give us even more in donations. We do everything we can — we are forced to do everything we can — to cater to a wealthy audience, to keep them happy, to keep their wallets open.

We are a luxury good. And that? That’s not a compliment. It’s a calamity.

Jonathon Brooks in Of Dice and Men by Cameron McNary. Photo by Chshire Isaacs

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. And decoupling our art from commodification requires decoupling our art from the systems of hierarchical privilege that are bound together with it.

We need money to survive, and by “we” I mean both our companies and our individuals. Right now, in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, our industry — along with the rest of the US economy — is contracting, and there’s no way to know who or how many will survive. It’s a terrifying time. In many ways, it feels like now is not the time to address these major, systemic issues. But I think now, while everything is in flux, while most of our industry is paused, is exactly the time to create a better, more sustainable future.

We need to imagine ways in which our art is not valued by its success as a commodity, at every level.

Imagine more equitable funding. Imagine removing financial gatekeeping from grant applications. Imagine not caring if the money is “used well,” defined by the creation of a successful commodity. Imagine paying theatremakers a salary because they are theatremakers, whether they are part of a company, a production, or not. Imagine funding for operating costs, removing the need to lie on grant applications that all funding goes to production costs for that one sexy world premiere. Imagine funding playwrights because they are theatremakers, not because they wrote a sexy world premiere starring a celebrity. Imagine not caring about celebrity. Imagine free college and free MFA programs, including housing, ending MFA gatekeeping, then imagine fully funded arts programming in our public K-12 system, funding that’s centralized and untouchable, unable to be cannibalized for higher admin salaries at the local level by firing teachers and canceling programs. Imagine every child in America having arts classes. Imagine widening the definition of “arts” to include non-European art forms. Imagine kathakali being as valued as ballet. Imagine performance being as valued as STEM. Imagine capping all tickets nationally at the price of a movie. Imagine being able to make a career in theatre even if you didn’t marry an attorney or an engineer, even if your parents aren’t wealthy, even if you have no inheritance. Imagine how the entirety of our industry would change if access to its creation was no longer determined by income.

Imagine the circle of theatremakers, including funders, all looking at each other and saying, “We have decided to care for one another, as one community, to protect theatre as a shared human experience rather than a dog-eat-dog construct that values the privileged only.”

Systemic change is a challenge in theatre because we’re not just one field. We are multiple fields that collaborate to produce our deeply collaborative art form. Systemic change requires buy-in from funders, from donors, and from theatremakers simultaneously.

Every corner of our industry values the economically privileged. Our culture has spent generations disenfranchising people who are not able-bodied cis white men and creating systems based on the values, beliefs, needs, and desires of those able-bodied cis white men. Anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-genderist, anti-ableist work must be done as such, and it must be done in tandem with reshaping the commodification mindset and rejecting economic privilege as a core value, from playwriting to closing night.

Next up: That’s big talk, Melissa. Just how do we achieve this?

YOUR TURN

I have my ideas, but I want this effort to be collaborative. I want to hear from you as well. What are the ways in which you think theatre should be decoupled from commodification? Do you think theatre should be decoupled from commodification? Or is there a different solution? Email bittergertrude@gmail.com with your thoughts to include in my follow-up post.

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Tagged , ,
Nov 26 2020
Bitter Dramaturgy, education, Theatre

Worldbuilding: Your Secret Weapon

Cartoon image of Melissa in a red-orange shirtwaist dress with orange details, including a pumpkin brooch. Melissa has short red hair with bangs and wears black-framed glasses.
Art by Asia Ellington! I only own this dress in my dreams.

I’m giving a workshop in worldbuilding for playwrights! Come play with me!

Worldbuilding isn’t something we talk about often in playwriting and screenwriting. It’s more common to writers of fictional prose, especially SF/F writers.  Careful attention to worldbuilding, however, can level up your scripts significantly. Conversely, its lack can sink a piece, distancing or even confusing your audience. 

When people give examples of excellent worldbuilding, they’re always rich, deeply crafted fantasy scapes like the Lord of the Rings films, NK Jemisin’s fiction, or Game of Thrones. When you ask people about worldbuilding in playwriting, people will offer high concept musicals like Wicked or Seussical. But all well-crafted plays have richly detailed worldbuilding.

At its heart, worldbuilding is about consistency and detail. 

This Sunday at 4PM PST, I’ll be giving a Zoom workshop through PlayCafe on worldbuilding in playwriting. We’ll discuss the basics of intentional worldbuilding, troubleshooting common pitfalls, building inclusive worlds, and navigating authenticity.  Reserve your tickets here! The workshop is free, with a suggested donation of $10-20 to support the great work PlayCafe does for local playwrights. 

Tagged , , ,
Oct 30 2020
Culture, Theatre

The Future of Theater in the US

Everything is in flux, our future is uncertain, and we’ve never been more important.

Delacriox’s “Liberty Leading the People” with “The Arts” on her flag and “Remember Who You Are” below

Are we really that important?

The arts are always important, but they’re critical during cultural inflection points, and right now, the US is in a doozy. The GOP slide into authoritarianism is unraveling our democracy, emboldening racists, and pushing the horrific stance that everyone but the GOP base are “the enemy,” and, in the words of Eric Trump, “not even people.”

Republicans have radically shifted their approach to the problems facing our nation.

In the past, we discussed problems in terms of: “What do we do about this fact?” Republicans have altered the terms of the debate to: “What is true?” They dismiss factual evidence by claiming that the source of that evidence is liberal — “the enemy.” The circular logic is dizzying — they claim that publishing a “fake news” story is “proof” that a source has a “liberal bias” while simultaneously claiming that the “proof” that the story is “fake news” is that it comes from a “liberal” source. Only stories that confirm their world view — no matter how outlandish or contradictory — can be “true,” and all stories that contradict their world view, no matter how well supported by evidence, are “fake news.”

While the point of this is discrediting any source that could cast their agenda in a negative light, that short term gain for Republicans comes at a major long term expense. If we can no longer agree that facts, evidence, & expertise = truth, then we can get nothing accomplished, there’s no point in thorough, serious debate about any issue, and the only consideration becomes: Who has the most raw political power?

Republicans now have fully committed to Bully Politics. Using their newfound ability to define “truth” politically rather than factually, they feel perfectly entitled to ignore factual problems and substitute a list of wholly invented problems, like “Antifa,” (which Trump’s own FBI determined was an ideology, not an organization), the imaginary idea that trans women are a danger to cis women, or the dire predictions they’ve made about every Democratic politician for years that never materialize — they’ll send jack-booted thugs to confiscate your guns; they’ll outlaw Christianity; they’ll put conservatives in concentration camps; they’ll institute communism; they’ll kidnap, sexually assualt, and eat your children (which, while new for everyone else, is familiar to Jews as one of the primary antisemitic lies, known as the “blood libel”).

Republicans have evacuated all serious discussions facing our nation and the world — climate change, systemic racism, authoritarianism, public health, Russian aggression, North Korean nuclear capabilities, losing our place as the economic center of the world, losing our place as a political world leader, alienating our allies while courting & flattering brutal dictators — by locating the argument in gaslighting rather than in discussing the issues. Republicans have bet the farm on “none of these problems are true” because they have no answer for “what do we do about these problems?”

This inflection point will decide the entire future of our culture. Are we a nation of evidence, careful consideration of the facts, and serious debate? Or are we a nation that prefers to ignore our problems and focus instead on sifting who is in the “in group” and who is in the “out group,” distributing rights and rewards accordingly?

At major cultural inflection points, the role of the arts becomes critically important. The arts are where we, as a culture, determine who we are, what we want to be, what we hope for, what we fear, what we’re willing to fight for. The stories of a culture reflect that culture and shape it. The storyteller shapes the narrative; the narrative shapes opinion and belief; opinion and belief shape the culture. There is no greater power than controlling the narrative, which is precisely why conservatives have radically shifted the terms of the debate and focused on the fictional narrative that the left are not, as previously believed, fellow Americans whose opinions differ, but “the enemy,” hell-bent on “destroying America,” whose statements are always calculated lies.

At this point in our culture’s history, we must fight for a shared acceptance of reality. We must fight for a return to the critical cultural narrative that evidence and expertise are more important than opinion and belief, and that facts should shape our worldviews, not the other way around.

The arts have more power to shape culture than any politician or political pundit. There are examples of this throughout our history. Sometimes it’s an art-led movement, and sometimes the arts distill, reflect, and popularize something already stirring in the cultural fringes — usually both. But one thing is certain:

This is the most important cultural moment for arts leadership that there has ever been in our lifetimes. We must fight for the existence of observable, verifiable truth.

So what do we do?

Pete Seeger's banjo says "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender."
Pete Seeger’s Banjo, photographed by Annie Leibowitz.

We’re arts leaders. It’s time to lead. What does this mean in practical terms?

1. Honor and promote expertise. This means recognizing that an industry centered around white male able-bodied gatekeepers is limited in its understanding of the issues that face our industry and our nation. Hire, center, promote, & share power with marginalized people. Disabled people & BIPOC in particular have been pushed to the margins in our culture and our art. BIPOC are pushing theater, film, and television into a diversity, equity, and inclusion reckoning that’s been a long time coming. Embrace this rather than push against it. Disabled people are still almost completely ignored in DEI work in the theater. LEAD by putting both BIPOC and disabled people into real positions of power at your company and listen to what they have to say about every issue, not just about BIPOC-specific or disabled-specific issues. BIPOC and people with disabilities will have perspectives on general issues that white and able-bodied people lack. We recognize that professional experience grants expertise; this is not controversial. A development person with 20 years of experience has expertise in development; no one questions that. We must also value expertise gained through lived experience as a marginalized person.

2. Act on your principles. Move DEI from an “initiative” to a foundational component of your mission. Move DEI from vague and general to specific and direct. Several white men I was working alongside for the past few years publicly supported Black Lives Matter and #MeToo while simultaneously insisting that Black women in our own organization were “exaggerating” and “wrong” about sexism and racism in our own workplace. Online support is great. It helps shift the zeitgeist. But performative support for victims in high-profile cases of abuse, marginalization, and bigotry in which your personal influence is minimal becomes a depressing joke when you actively work against victims in your own workplace, where your personal influence is deeply consequential. It’s great that you show public support for women, BIPOC, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people, but it’s critical to stand with them in your own organizations. I understand that it’s much easier to denounce someone far away than it is to examine and admit your own complicity, learn and grow from the experience, and commit to finding better ways to navigate your cultural privilege. But it’s work that can’t be avoided if we’re committed to justice. 

3. Reject “balance.” Reject “neutrality.” Now is the time to take sides. Side clearly with the idea that reality exists and that evidence is unchanged by opinion. We’ve gone well beyond Rashomon-style examinations of subjectivity. In our culture, the terms of the debate have been deliberately shifted from “How did this murder happen?” to “Did the murder even take place?” and “Did this person even exist?” We’re seeing it in the shift from “What do we do about Covid?” to “Is Covid really dangerous?” and even “Is Covid even real?” We’re seeing it in the attempted ban on diversity training and the words “systemic racism.” But Covid is a public health crisis no matter how many times they deny it, and systemic racism exists whether they yank federal funding or not. Reality cannot be blackmailed. What does this mean for us in practical terms? Refuse to stage work or host discussions that feature false equivalencies between reality and propaganda. The terms of the discussion must be “What will we do about this issue?” not “Is this issue real?” Do not allow the terms of the debate to include calling hard evidence into question for ideological purposes. In other words: Do not stage Oleanna or any other work that pretends racism, sexism, ableism, or other forms of bigotry might actually just be tools to destroy good white men. These works are not “controversial” or “provocative.” They’re dishonest. No one needs to explore Oleanna’s silly, disingenuous central question “Are accusations of sexism just women exacting revenge because they aren’t smart enough to understand the brilliance of white men?” Stage works that deal with problems honestly. There are plenty of “controversial” and “provocative” plays that honestly explore issues. Remember that everything is political, so all of this applies to fluffy romantic comedies just as much — and likely more — than it does “political theater” with an outwardly political agenda. This extends to all programming. Do not host audience engagement events that include discussions that claim to feature two people from “both sides” of an issue when one side is just dismissing or minimizing the issue. And do not be afraid to ask for help. If you’re unsure, reach out to someone in your org or in the community, or hire a DEI consultant to confidentially help you navigate the situation.

4. Remember who you are. Remember your magic. Remember your power. Make “Guardian of Truth” part of your work. Remember that “truth” includes diverse perspectives. Remember that “truth” doesn’t mean “linear political theater.” Remember that “truth” extends to how you treat every human who touches your organization — staff, audience, press, donors, board, grant officers, passers-by, the dude at Office Depot ringing up your printer cartridges — everyone. I know times are tough. I know not every company will survive. But we will go down fighting. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE. Your work makes a difference. Your work is powerful.

There’s so much more to discuss, and so much more we can do. This is just the Starter Pack.

Now is the time for arts leaders to lead. Suit up, theater. Let’s go.

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Tagged , ,
Sep 09 2020
1 Comment
Culture, Film, Theatre

Protect Historically Accurate Casting

A black-and-white drawing of a Black man, barefoot and wearing a short white belted tunic, blowing on a musical instrument that looks like a shofar to me. He's carrying a tall staff and stands among flowers. He has a piece of cloth tied around his head that blows in the breeze around him.
Detail from the Kalender of the Shepherdes, 1490s, Paris

Well, they’re at it again! This time they want to take away our precious American and European heritage with their aggressively political casting. The snowflakes are whining about diversity (as usual). They’re insisting that historical films, TV shows, and plays be cast with no regard to historical accuracy.

They’re insisting that shows about Western history be cast with all white actors.

All jokes aside, whatever era in western history in which your production is set, I assure you that people of color were there. “Historical accuracy” is not an excuse for turning away BIPOC actors; in fact, historical accuracy should compel you to cast them.

The reason people believe there were no BIPOC in certain historical eras is because there are so few BIPOC in historical plays, films, and TV shows. Refusing to cast BIPOC, or relegating them to servant roles or stereotypes, just shows the world that the only dramaturgy you’ve done is on Netflix.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Cheddar Man. The earliest skeletal remains that have been found intact in England belong to “Cheddar Man,” a mesolithic skeleton found in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset. DNA testing revealed that he had dark skin and blue eyes. Cheddar Man lived 10,000 years ago. White skin only developed about 8000 years ago, almost certainly a mutation that was likely genetically successful due to its increased ability to absorb vitamin D in areas of the world with less sunshine. Yes, white people: If Northern Europe had more sunshine, we would all still have dark skin.

Roman-occupied Britain. Many people of African descent came to Britain as Romans with the occupation. Two notable examples of the archaeological evidence are the Beachy Head Lady and the wealthy Ivory Bangle Lady.

A painting of the face of a young Black woman facing outward.
A reconstructed image of the beautiful and wealthy “Ivory Bangle Lady.” Wikipedia has images of the grave goods with which she was buried, including a hand mirror (!!!) and a blue glass jar in addition to the eponymous ivory bangles and more jewelry.

The Knights of the Round Table. One of the Knights of the Round Table was Black– Sir Morien. In the tale of Sir Morien, written in Middle Dutch in the 13th century, Sir Morien is described repeatedly as “black” of skin and hair, and repeatedly called “the Moor.” Morien’s praises are sung throughout the tale as one would expect from the genre; he’s as skilled a fighter as Lancelot, handsome, brave, and, although young, taller than all the other Knights of the Round Table. In the tale, Sir Morien is searching for his father, Sir Aglavale, who had pledged himself to Morien’s mother, an unnamed Moorish princess, and then disappeared before Morien was born. Eventually Morien locates Aglavale, who returns with him, accompanied by Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, to “the Moorish lands” to wed Sir Morien’s mother. No one seems to find anything unusual about white Sir Aglavale marrying a Black Moorish woman in a tale written in 13th century Europe.

The head of a Black man wearing a chain mail coif. The statue's nose is slightly damaged.
Detail of a statue thought to be Sir Morien, brought to Magdenburg Dom and called Saint Maurice– also Black— in the 1220s.

Feirefiz. Another Arthurian legend written in 13th century Europe is Parzival, written in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in which the main character, Parzival, has a Black half-brother, Feirefiz. Feirefiz and Parzival share a white father, Gahmuret, but Feirefiz’s mother is Belacane, queen of the fictional Moorish nation of Zazamanc. Feirefiz travels to Europe with a huge Saracen army to find his father, but meets his brother instead. Feirefiz cannot see the Grail because he’s not a Christian, but only agrees to convert after determining it will help him “in love.” He marries the Grail bearer, Repanse de Schoye.

It’s not at all surprising that these 13th century Europeans would be familiar with Moors. Why?

Al-Andalus. Most of the Iberian Peninsula, which now comprises both Spain and Portugal, as well as a bit of southern France, had already been under Moorish rule for 500 years by the time the tale of Sir Morien was written. The Moorish Kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula was called “Al-Andalus.” Portugal regained its independence in the mid-13th century, but most of Spain would continue to be under Moorish rule for another 200 years. For seven hundred years, most of the Iberian Peninsula and a slice of southern France were ruled by Muslim Moors. And before you jump in to claim that these were all light-skinned Amizigh, the art of the period begs to differ, showing a range of skin tones that include both light-skinned people and people who are unmistakeably Black.

Four Asian archers in armor, all facing to one side as they fire arrows at an unseen enemy.
Mongol archers painted in 1305 by Rashid al-Din.

The Mongol Invasion of Europe. This is a special valentine for the Witcher fanboys LIVID at the suggestion that Witcher 3 was too white, and LIVID that the Netflix series cast a few BIPOC actors: The Mongol Invasion of Europe. The Mongols were all over Eastern Europe in the 13th century including Poland, so your “Witcher is set in medieval Poland so diversity is solely political and unrealistic” argument dies in the dust, if it’s even still alive after everyone asked you where elves and giant spider monsters were in medieval Poland. Also for the Witcher crew: Black Madonnas.

Left: The Virgin Mary holds the baby Jesus, who raises his hand in blessing. Both Mary and Jesus have Black skin and hair. Mary holds a scepter in her right hand, and both are wearing golden crowns and golden robes. Right: The same image, but both Mary and Jesus have been repainted to look like white people.
The famous Black Madonna of Chartes Cathedral was repainted white in a controversial 2014 restoration. Most Black Madonnas have been left intact, apart from a few that were repainted in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Black Madonnas of Europe. Hundreds of medieval European paintings and statues depict the Madonna and child with dark skin. One of the most famous is the Madonna of Częstochowa in Poland. Starting in the early 19th century, white people began strenuously working to “prove” that the Black Madonnas were not “intentionally” Black, an activity that continues to this day. Wikipedia flatly states that there is a “wide consensus” among scholars that the dark skin was “unintentional.” Apart from the obvious– no, there is nothing like a “wide consensus”– assumptions such as “Mary must conform to a post-medieval definition of ‘white’ to have meaning to medieval European Catholics” is preposterous. Many of the Black Madonnas are reputed to have been painted by St. Luke himself as he sat with Mary. Whether or not this is true is far less important than the fact that medieval European Catholics believed it, and venerated their Black Madonnas as faithful depictions of the Virgin and child. The face they prayed to in Church, the face they held in their hearts as they heard the words “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,” was Black.

Islam in America. Islam was in the Americas before Protestantism even existed. Many Africans who were enslaved in the Americas were literate Muslims, including Omar ibn Said, who wrote an autobiography about his life as a slave in Arabic.

Three trumpeters, all facing left. They're all on horseback, and their trumpets bear the standard of Henry the 8th. The middle trumpeter is Black.
Scholars agree that this image from the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll almost certainly depicts John Blanke.

John Blanke. Blanke was a Black trumpeter in the court of Henry VIII. He played at the funeral of Henry VII and at the coronation of Henry VIII. Records exist of his marriage and of his request for a raise. The king doubled his pay. Tudor London had a thriving Black population, many of whom married white Londoners. Click here for an article about the book Black Tudors: The Untold Story. 

Indians in London. There’s documented history that people from the Indian subcontinent lived in London beginning in the 16th century. A man called Suleman Noor was buried in Westminster in 1550. An Indian man named Samuel Munsur married a woman called Jane Johnson in 1613. There’s much more.

Abraham Pearse and John Pedro. Pearse was almost certainly a Black Pilgrim, and John Pedro was definitely Black. Click here to learn more about the Abraham Pearse controversy, which features white people claiming the “prestige” and “fun” of being descended from Pilgrims was “ruined” if their ancestor was Black, and subsequent DNA tests that focused only the Y chromosome, carefully avoiding tests of Pearse’s matrilineal line. Test results showed that Pearse’s father was European, and the white Pearse descendents claimed a victory for white supremacy. They seem nice. To this day no one has tested Abraham Pearse’s matrilineal line.

Lemuel Haynes. He was a Black Puritan who became the first ordained African-descended person in America. He was a Minuteman and an abolitionist as well. Read more about him in this book.

A Black man in spectacular full armor. His helmet is off, so you can see his bearded face. He holds his sword in his left hand and a standard in his right. His body is angled away, but he looks straight out at the viewer.
This isn’t related to the text; I just really like it. “The Black Knight” by Hans Krell, 16th century Germany.

Zipporah Potter Atkins. Zipporah Potter Atkins, a free Black woman, owned land in colonial Boston. Click here to learn more about her.

Colonel Tye. The most feared and respected guerilla commander of the Revolutionary War was Colonol Tye, a Black man (formerly Titus Cornelius) who took the British Army up on its offer to enslaved men— escape slavery and come fight for the Loyalists, who will pay you and see that you remain free. The unit he commanded focused on enslavers– including his own former master. They were known for hitting hard and fast, eliminating the Patriot target and liberating the people he had enslaved. The British paid him well for this, and as the war went on, his unit was given increasingly important missions. By 1780, he was a major force in the war, raiding militias and escaping with prisoners and plunder virtually undetected and with few casualties.

The Harlem Hellfighters.The 369th Regiment of the US Army was one of several Black units in WWI. These young men first went to France in 1918, and soon distionguished themselves as fighters and as ambassadors of Black American culture; introducing jazz to the French. They saw more time on the front lines than any other American unit, and suffered horrific casualties, losing half the regiment. When they returned home in 1919, they were given a parade down Fifth Avenue to celebrate their heroic deeds.

Speakeasies. To speak to a Bay Area controversy of old, there were many people of color in speakeasies. Even in segregated clubs, they were there as employees. White New Yorkers flocked to Harlem speakeasies to see their unparalleled performers. Many speakeasies that were known as “black and tan clubs”– clubs that welcomed patrons of all races– became important centers for the development of jazz and remained open for decades, such as the Sunset Cafe in Chicago and the Black and Tan Club in Seattle. Black-and-tan clubs were in cities all over the US.

There’s so much more that I didn’t include here. I have a lot about trans and genderqueer people. I have a lot about women. I have a lot more in general. Native people fought in WWI. The most decorated unit of WWII was the 442nd, made up of Japanese Americans, and remains the most decorated unit of its size in US military history. Viking shieldmaidens were real. One third of pirates in the Caribbean were Black. The oldest human culture that left written records had transgender priestesses and taught that the goddess Inanna could bestow any one of several genders on people to match their “hearts.” The world’s first known author was an Akkadian priestess, Enheduanna. I’ve now spent about a bazillion hours on this post, and I have to force myself to stop. But there’s so much more.

If you don’t see something here, that doesn’t mean BIPOC weren’t there. BIPOC have been erased from history, both through negligence and through deliberate malice. Time to set the historical record straight.

If you need something you don’t see here, I have reasonable rates for dramaturgy. Head over to Melissa Hillman Consulting to learn more. If you’re an artist who needs evidence to take to a gatekeeper who has told you that you won’t be considered for a project because “it wouldn’t be historically accurate,” I will work pro bono to get the information you need into your hands. 

Parts of this post were originally patron-only content on Patreon. Become a Bitter Gertrude patron! Your support of my work makes posts like these possible.

“Portrait of a Moor” by Jan Mostaert, c. 1525-1530. The name and rank of this elegantly dressed nobleman have been lose to time, but we do know that he was a courtier in the court of Margaret of Austria, the Duchess of Savoy and Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The symbol on his hat means he made a Christian pilgrimage, popular with the court at that time, to venerate the Virgin Mary.
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Sep 01 2020
Theatre

REVIEW: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Seeing Place, NYC

Pictured: The poster for the show depicts the silhouette of two women, facing each other closely, with a rainbow-colored rose covering where their lips meet.

While this pandemic is, as the youngsters say, for the birds (my imaginary youngsters are all living in 1943), one of its silver linings is the accessibility of performances all over the world. As a Californian, I would have had no access to a production in New York. Now it’s as easy as clicking a link.

Artists always find a way. You can’t stop art, and the supposed “death of theatre” has been breathlessly reported many times, with the cause of death listed first as radio, then film, television, and, of course, the internet. Art is life, and life– according to the sage Jeff Goldblum– finds a way.

So I was excited to see what The Seeing Place Theater in New York had done to make Midsummer, often a very physical show, work on the Zoom platform. I know many people decry Zoom-based theater and long for a return to in-person shows. I long for in-person shows as well, but the creativity artists are showing as they play with this new format is, honestly, delightful.

Pictured; the logo of The Seeing Place Theater, white lettering on a black background, accompanied by a white S-curve with a blue eye in both parts of the curve.

The Seeing Place’s Midsummer is a small-cast show with each actor playing multiple roles. TSP utilizes animation, designed by Erin Cronican and Brandon Walker, as costuming, and while its execution was not always perfect, it was a lot of fun to see. The standout effect was Bottom’s animated ass head, which was a lot of fun. The fairy ensemble– Moth, Mustardseed, Peaseblossom– were animated fairies with the actors’ faces. Major character fairies like Titania & Oberon had animated effects that gave their eyes, hair, and/or faces magical elements. Again, the technology wasn’t perfect, but I would have killed to have the ability to make lightning shoot out of a fairy’s eyes in any of my live productions of Midsummer.

The actors appear in individual squares against a magical forest background. Puck is wearing a black lace shirt and Oberon has lightning shotting out of his eyes. Titania wears a flower crown. Two of the three minor fairies appear as tiny, flying fairies with the actors' faces. The third is human-sized with digital fairy makeup.

Pictured from left to right: Top row: Jon L. Peacock as Puck, Erin Cronican as Peaseblossom, and William Ketter as First Fairy. Bottom row: Weronika Helena Wozniak as Moth, Laura Clare Browne as Titania, and Brandon Walker as Oberon.

One thing that’s challenging for some actors is code switching from theater acting to camera work, especially the monologue-like format of Zoom theater. Most of the TSP actors had this down, but the star of the show was co-director Erin Cronican, who played both Helena and Peter Quince. Her character creation and immaculate comic timing were a real treat to watch. I was constantly engaged by Cronican’s performance, and found myself laughing out loud alone in my Ready Room at Cronican’s well-crafted and deeply detailed comic moments. Cronican’s Peter Quince monologue at the top of the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play-within-a-play is one of the best renderings I’ve seen in years. Cronican knows exactly what’s funny about every moment of this play, and serves it up to her audience masterfully. Other standouts were William Ketter’s blustery and egotistical Demetrius, Brandon Walker’s fatuous Theseus, and Laura Clare Browne’s joyful Titania. The adorable Ellinor DiLorenzo had some very nice moments as Hermia as well, but there were some moments she seemed to lose focus, which, admittedly, is really easy to do in this new format, where actors are juggling technology in addition to acting directly to a camera. Perhaps the greatest challenge of this kind of acting is to maintain your focus on the camera when your scene partner is (generally speaking) below it. But overall, the cast was solid and enjoyable to watch.

I’d like to tip my hat to stage manager Shannon K. Formas, who made the tech smoother than most Zoom performances. She had a lot on her plate and pulled it off seamlessly.

The LGBTQ+ theme was evident in the Hermia/Lysander love story, as both were cast with women. Some of the minor fairies and Puck were given androgynous looks, and the actor playing Puck, Jon L. Peacock, identifies as nonbinary. Pronouns were included in the program, which should be industry standard. Importantly, this production is a benefit for the Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBTQ youth.

The actors appear in individual squares against a nighttime forest background.

Pictured: Top row: William Ketter as Demetrius and Erin Cronican as Helena. Bottom row: Weronika Helena Wozniak as Lysander and Ellinor DiLorenzo as Hermia.

One of the main reasons I was interested in this production is that two of the actors– Cronican and Ketter– are people with disabilities, and PWDs are deeply underrepresented in theater. Both of them have invisible disabilities, often glossed over in discussions of disability outside the PWD community. In a culture in which PWDs are relentlessly bombarded with accusations of “exaggerating” for “attention,” “drugs,”or “special treatment,” and often go through months (or even years) of doctors insisting symptoms are “imaginary” until finally running the right test and landing on the correct diagnosis, those whose disabilities are invisible face a very specific kind of cruel marginalization.

The fact that the disabilities of the actors aren’t visible doesn’t make their identities as PWDs any less real or important. What I appreciated most about Cronican and Ketter in this show is that their disabilities aren’t the focus of the story. When PWDs are represented in the theater, it’s almost always a story about disability in some way, and cast with an able-bodied actor. PWDs haven’t even reached the most basic level of inclusion in theater, let alone equity. Disability is still almost entirely ignored even just in discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Including actors with disabilities in roles that are not defined by disability, in a play that isn’t about disability, is a refreshing change.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable production of Midsummer, and it couldn’t be for a better cause.

A recorded version of The Seeing Place’s Zoom production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is streaming through September 5th. Click here for tickets. Click here for more information about TSP’s 2020-21 season.

Want me to review your Zoom production? Email bittergertrude@gmail.com.

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Aug 29 2020
Theatre

Autonomy and Disability on Stage: The Seeing Place’s Midsummer

Pictured: The poster for the show depicts the silhouette of two women, facing each other closely, with a rainbow-colored rose covering where their lips meet.

The Seeing Place’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream plays August 28 at 7PM EDT and August 29 at 3PM EDT. For tickets, click here.

Yesterday I sat down (virually) with Erin Cronican and William Ketter of The Seeing Place Theater in New York to talk about their upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opening tonight! The production is, of course, on Zoom, so wherever you are, you can still grab a ticket and attend. I’ll be attending this afternoon’s performance (7PM Eastern; 4PM Pacific) and doing a longer write-up later, but I wanted to give you some highlights about why I’m excited to see this piece and give you a chance to see it with me before the piece comes out. (If not, one of the live performances will be recorded and posted online after the show closes).

First of all, it’s a benefit production for homeless LGBTQ youth. To quote their site: “This play is being presented as a benefit for The Ali Forney Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting LGBTQ youths from the harms of homelessness and empower them with the tools needed to live independently.” What’s not to love about that?

aliforney_logo

The Ali Forney Center is located in New York. Learn more about them by clicking here. 

But here’s what really hit home for me: This production of Midsummer is part of their 10th season, themed around “The Body Politic.” They’re presenting Midsummer as a story about the fight for autonomy and self-determination.

In this production, Lysander and Hermia are a lesbian couple, foregrounding the difficulties faced by LGBTQ youth in accessing the community acceptance needed to support self-determination. You can only determine your own destiny if people with power are not hostile to that destiny and using their power and privilege to disrupt it.

Hermia is given the choice to marry the man her father chooses, become a nun, or die. And while this play is 400 years old, many LGBTQ youth are forced into similar choices. Some legal progress has been made, but LGBTQ youth are still 140% more likely to experience homelessness than their peers. Parents are still throwing their transgender kids out into the street, or abusing them because they can’t perform their gender or sexuality according to parental specifications, driving LGBTQ youth to run away to seek a safer environment. The Ali Forney Center has a waiting list of over 100 kids a night just looking for a safe place to sleep.

While LGBTQ-focused productions of Midsummer are admittedly no longer rare, what is rare is The Seeing Place’s understanding that these issues are intersectional in casting two actors with disabilities: Erin and William.

ErinCronican2

Erin Cronican is also the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place. (Source: seeingplacetheater.com)

People with disabilities, especially PWDs whose intersectional identities include other marginalized aspects, such as queer PWDs and BIPOC with disabilities, face enormous roadblocks to bodily autonomy and self-determination. Youth with disabilities must struggle against an ableist society that relentlessly seeks to infantilize PWDs, deny our self-determination, deny our autonomy, and frame us as sexless beings whose primary purpose is to provide a framework for able-bodied people as they perform “generosity” and “gratitude.”

Disability is routinely– even aggressively– shut out of discussions of privilege and marginalization. In my last teaching job, I pointed out that we had disability mentioned as part of our “commitment to diversity,” but that we had not even done any information gathering around disability, let alone begun anything approaching equity and inclusion work. Instead of committing to beginning that work, they responded that they would just remove disability from the list.

Disability is almost invisible in discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, exacerbated by the fact that PWD representation in media is almost nonexistent, and when we do appear, it’s mostly inspiration porn.

So I’m very excited to see how they approach this play with these issues in mind! I’ll be posting a longer write-up about it early next week. See you at the theatre!

Theatres! If you would like to me write about your Zoom production, contact me at bittergertrude@gmail.com. 

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Aug 24 2020
Theatre

Your Best New Employee? A Theatermaker.

black-angels-over-tuskegee

Pictured: The cast of Black Angels Over Tuskeegee takes a bow, as seen from backstage at The Actors Temple in New York. (Source: TripAdvisor)

This pandemic means a lot of theater professionals are out of work. I know most corporate people think “flaky actors” and “workplace drama” when thinking about theater people, but the truth is exactly the opposite, and now is the time to jump on actors, playwrights, directors, casting directors, designers, technicians and more who have found themselves newly out of work.

Working in professional theatre requires intense discipline, the ability to leave all your issues at the door, and a level of multitasking and focus that most employers only dream of finding in an employee. Allow me to give you nine solid reasons to see years of theater experience as a major plus in a new employee.

1. Discipline, Focus, and Grace Under Pressure. I don’t care what’s happening, that curtain is going up at 8PM, and you must be ready for it. There’s no “Can I get it to you Thursday?” That schedule is utterly unforgiving, and every aspect of your work will be scrutinized in real time by hundreds of people, some of whom are journalists specifically there to evaluate the quality of your work and publish their evaluation on the internet for all to see, forever. Focused, disciplined work is the only way we function. If you can’t work efficiently with a team to deliver excellence on an unforgiving deadline, you won’t get far in theater. We are focused, disciplined, hardworking people, because there’s no other way to function in our world.

2. There’s No Drama in Drama. Theater workers are human beings and have messy lives like everyone else. But our work is deeply collaborative, and we work long hours in close quarters. The type of people who thrive in the disciplined, deadline-focused collaborative work we do are usually the kind of people who leave their drama on the stage. I’ve experienced far more drama working outside theater than I have within it. Everything you’ve seen in the movies about theater professionals being “dramatic” and “flaky” is as realistic a portrayal of our professional work as The Witcher is of medieval Europe.

Anya Chalotra as Yennefer of Vengerberg, a light-skinned woman with dark eyes and long black hair parted down the middle, from the Netflix series The Witcher.

Actually, very few people with disabilities were purchased by the headmistress of Abusive Hogwarts and trained as professional court witches. (Source: Netflix)

Oh, and don’t believe anything Jared Leto says about “method acting.” Actual professional actors don’t “become” their characters all day long off set. It’s embarrassing that this is such a prevalent myth that even actor-adjacent people like Jared Leto believe it.

3. Making Magic Out of Nothing. Theater is woefully underfunded. I tell my students that most of directing is finding artistic solutions to technical problems, and the most common technical problem is lack of budget. If you want something done beautifully, quickly, and exceeding expectations given the budget constraints, you want someone with professional theater experience. If you want a creative thinker who can craft an elegant solution to an intractable problem after everyone else has come up dry, you want a theatermaker. That props person built a 10-foot long sea monster puppet that squirts “ink,” is fully washable, AND lights up, all for $200 in one weekend. They’ll have a soltuion for you before lunch, and it’ll be under budget.

4. Project Management. If you’ve never run a theater company, you might not know how organized and efficient your project management skills need to be just to be minimally effective, let alone to succeed in professional theater.  Let’s take casting as an example. To cast a single season, a casting director needs to know the types, abilities, union status, and availability of hundreds of actors and successfully interface that with the script and with the director’s concept for each role, then manage the audition process, often a combination of video and live auditions. She must constantly manage an enormous amount of interlocking qualitative and quantitative data that all needs to be analyzed, processed, and applied in a rapidly changing environment that also requires deep personnel management and, in most cases, developing and maintaining a network of connections all over the nation.  The casting director is doing most of this work solo, on a tight deadline with little budget. That’s just casting, and I have barely scratched the surface of it. It’s the same level of complexity to produce, direct, manage a set build, or stage manage. The best project manager you will ever have will be that theatermaker you picked up in 2020.

5. Program Management. Producing theater is all about creating programming and ensuring its success. Most larger companies have an education arm as well that requires in-depth management to offer value, service, and– importantly– community. Competition is so fierce for after-school and adult education programs that a sense of community and belonging are critical for both initial buy-in and later upgrading. Look for “Artistic Director” and “Education Director” if you want to go right to the top, but people at all levels will have deep, relevant experience, and there are many companies that have other types of programs, such as a script development program or a teen outreach program. Creating programming for a specific group of end-users that succeeds only when it exceeds expectatons is our bread and butter.

A smiling redhead wearing a black beaded sweater, a black dress, black-framed glasses, and red lipstick sits in a theater with her hands folded in her lap.

A picture of me in my theater taken for the East Bay Express by Stephen Loewinsohn.

6. Personnel Management, Sales, and Customer Service. Anything with “Director” or “Manager” in its title will be an expert in personnel management in the theater. Everyone is working very hard on a very tight deadline, and keeping staff spirits high and minds focused is a basic requirement of the job. Additionally, staffing is a perennial challenge. We don’t have high salaries or stock options to lure top shelf talent; we have to rely on our skills as personnel managers. We are nothing without our ability to attract and retain talent.

While many people already see the benefit in acting training for sales people who must be able to give engaging presentations (hence the many acting seminars designed for business people), what you may not know is how much of our administrative work relies on marketing, sales, and customer service. As a service-oriented field, customer service is a critical aspect of what we do, and every theater employs marketing people with expertise in storytelling– remember, we’re selling an experience rather than a product. But also look for people in development. These are the people whose job it is to convince donors, foundations, and corporations to give them money. Asking someone to just give you money is some next-level sales work that involves storytelling, customer service, and the kind of relationship-building that creates brand loyalty in families for generations.

7. Multitasking. Because our deadlines are so intense and our resources are generally minimal, almost all of us have numerous balls in the air at all times. Even when it looks from the outside like it’s one task, such as acting, the multitasking involved is intense. While onstage, the actor must remember the lines, the blocking (the pattern of movement), and the latest notes they’ve received from the director and/or stage manager, in addition to staying emotionally in the moment, listening and responding to scene partners, manipulating props, and timing out how long to hold for a laugh or a reaction, all with lights blaring in your face and 100+ people judging your every move. Just “staying emotionally in the moment” has several moving parts. In a fight scene, being a foot out of position can land you in the hospital. In producing, there are always fourteen things happening at once, and the need to hold them all in your mind, prioritize, and manage your time well in order to gte them all sorted within the timeframe you have available are critical skills. In professional theater, one dropped ball can mean getting to 30 minutes before the show and realizing an actor has no pants.

 

A young white man wearing a tuxedo jacket, white shirt, black bow tie, white underwear, and a smile. He's opening a bottle of champagne because of course he is.

KENT: “Is not this your son, my Lord?”

8. Improvising and Creative Thinking. With so much in flux and so many unpredictable possibilities before us, now is definitely the time to snap up some quick-thinking, creative, solution-minded people for your team. In a live performance, anything can happen, and you can’t lose focus, bail, or start over. Theater people do not lose their cool when there’s a job to be done, and we can quickly improvise a creative, workable solution on the fly and make it look like that’s what was meant all along. Ask any actor whose scene partner missed an entrance or went up on a line about improvising dialogue to cover– even in a Shakespeare play. Ask any designer or tech who has had seven and a half minutes to frantically duct-tape, rewire, staple, or drill a solution in silence backstage during a show. Ask any producer who was told a week after announcing a season that the rights to a script were pulled because Sony optioned the film rights. If there’s a problem to be solved and you need a creative solution, you need a theatermaker.

A serene swan on a lake. ABove the swan, it says "The Show." Below the swan, it says, "The Frantic Paddling You Never See."

9. But they’ll leave, right? They’ll go back to theater when this is all over? Any of your employees can leave at any time. But the truth is, most of us have some kind of day job, and even those of us without one spent years working a day job while doing theater. There’s no reason your new hire can’t continue working for you when the theatres re-open, and for decades beyond.

The next time your see theater experience on a resume, ask for an interview! You will not be disappointed.

Want more? Become a Bitter Gertrude patron on Patreon! Click here to learn more. 

 

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Apr 26 2019
Theatre

Arts Marketing and Alignment

Adam.Thurman

(This piece is by guest blogger Adam Thurman.)

It has been a while since I wrote something in depth about arts marketing but this current exciting moment in the field where new leaders are coming in prompted a moment of reflection that is hopefully worth sharing.

In marketing we talk about a lot of things like branding, audience development, the impact of social, etc.

I want to talk about alignment.

Alignment is defined as a position of agreement or alliance.

And when you look at great companies that earn more then their fair share of attention, dollars, etc., what you see is significant alignment.

The visuals, the messaging, the customer service, the programming all make sense.

The sales goals, the selected audience target, and the marketing mediums all make sense.

And of course the reverse is true. If key elements are misaligned then your marketing message will be too weak to break through.

So as you hit your new roles keep your eyes open for misalignment movements.

Does your pricing say elite but your message say “theater for all”?

Does your messaging say customer service is important but the level of pay and training for your FOH staff say “you guys are replaceable”?

Spoiler: That’s probably the case.

Note those things. Note them even though you may not be able to do anything about them yet. Talk about them before you have a solution. That’s the value of your fresh perspective.

And the spend your precious time and energy working to bring those things into alignment. That’s your opportunity. It’s your opportunity to create an organization that makes sense when you look at it critically.

When the marketing aligns with the goals, values, revenue model, people, etc., then the marketing can do incredible things.

I’ve got one of those fancy credit cards. You know the type, made of metal, high annual fee, that sort of thing.

Whenever I have to call that number I get straight through to a human representative. No phone tree, no holding. It takes me maybe two minutes to handle any need.

The same day I have to call one of those no-frills airlines to pay a fee. It is the exact opposite of the other experience. Call center. Long hold time. It may have taken 30 minutes.

It is fair to call the first customer experience good and the second bad. It would also be fair to call both experiences properly aligned.

The fancy credit card folks are making a set of implicit and explicit promises about what they offer card holders. So they have to make the significant investment of time and money to make it work.

The no-frills airline is making an entirely different promise. They don’t promise friendly or warm service. They promise a cheap flight. Being cheap about their customer service is one way to achieve that goal.

So let’s say an arts organization decides to highly value customer service. That implies a series of alignment choices.

You probably need to pay above market rate.
You probably need to invest in training.

If you can’t do that then you are out of alignment.

But let’s say you legitimately cannot afford the investment. Then a smart choice may be to reduce the emphasis on service and try the following:

Limit the hours your box office is open.

Prepare yourself for high turnover and make sure you have a good pipeline for finding new candidates.

Maybe you can change the way people enter or exit the venue in a way that reduces the need for FOH staff.

I’m not saying these are good ideas, but they are aligned ideas. They make sense when the end goal is considered.

But the mistake I see so often is to say one thing, do the other, and hope no one notices.

We notice.

Smart marketing is about pushing toward that alignment.

Adam Thurman is an experienced arts marketing professional and consultant. To contact Mr. Thurman, email mission.paradox@yahoo.com.

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