Giving Black artists the stage
Stratford Festival wrestles with its white guilt.
The Stratford Festival has started a very public conversation that could change Canadian theatre forever.
Last weekend, on Saturday, it issued a statement that was unprecedented in admitting its “complicity in unjust systems” and upholding “white supremacy” as protests against antiBlack racism raged around the world.
The festival acknowledged its own systemic racism “in solidarity with those demonstrating for justice” in the wake of George Floyd’s death while under arrest by Minneapolis police.
The festival then handed its social media channels for 72 hours to a group of Black artists and artisans, including a YouTube town hall-style discussion called “Black Like Me, past present and future: Behind the Stratford Festival Curtain.” Within three days, it had been viewed more than 17,800 times.
On Twitter, the hashtag #inthedressingroom became a meeting place for Black artists to reveal their experiences of racism throughout Canada’s theatre industry: in casting and rehearsals; with administration and in marketing meetings; in media interviews, with audience members and white cast mates; in theatre training, and in ill-equipped makeup and hair departments.
Vanessa Sears, a Dora and Toronto Theatre Critics Awardwinning actor, tweeted about “being told I shouldn’t have my role because I was Black, by a reporter, minutes before a 7 a.m. live television interview. Had to promote the show, perform and then go backstage for a cry.”
Ojibway actor Dillan Chiblow tweeted that after a performance of the musical “Children of God,” which is about residential schools and features a mostly Indigenous cast, an audience member remarked that the cast members were “good enough to be in real musicals.”
Actor Micah Woods wrote, “Not exactly #inthedressingroom, but a teacher from my acting program told me in front of my entire class that he wasn’t listening to my sonnet because he was distracted by how dark I was.”
Dora-winning performer Peter Fernandes wrote, “AD (artistic director) once said to me ‘what your community doesn’t want to admit is that you don’t have the numbers of the talent to fulfil what you’re asking for … actors of color are getting opportunities they don’t deserve’ then told me to read Baldwin.” It goes on. The Stratford social media takeover also pointed toward specific practices that are harmful to actors of colour, in particular the “as cast” contract that allows directors to place actors in smaller roles during a rehearsal process rather than stating roles at the point of hiring. Actor E.B. Smith, who has worked at Stratford for10 years, tweeted that this policy, held by major Canadian theatres like the Stratford and Shaw festivals, “amounts to the forfeiture of all agency for actors who seek to work for them.”
Smith wrote of his acute discomfort with an “as cast” contract requiring him, as the only other Black male cast member, to play a character who attempts to kill Othello, who is Black, for marrying Desdemona, who is white, in Chris Abraham’s production of Shakespeare’s play in 2013.
In a joint interview with Abraham, Smith said that during that production, “because I was on an ‘as cast’ contract and because I was early in my career, I didn’t feel empowered to put my foot down, so I raised my objection to that particular piece of business and I was unsuccessful in making a case for that changing. What that caused was a situation where I had to execute that role for the next several months, and in fact executing a moment that felt disingenuous and not appropriate.”
In response, Abraham said, “I deeply regret and feel very sorry for that, and the legacy of that with E.B.”
Stereotypical or constrictive casting practices at Stratford affected other actors, like awardwinning André Sills, who left the company after years of being cast, in his words, “as scenery.” He only returned to play the title role in Stratford’s “Coriolanus” two seasons ago.
“There needs to be policies and procedures in place that make it very clear to actors that there are no consequences to not being able to proceed with a bit of business. A lot of the power to change this lies in the hands of institutions, but also in the hands of directors,” Abraham said.
On Tuesday, using the hashtag #CastingByConsent, Smith tweeted that progress is already being made around “as cast” contracts, reporting that he was having “great talks” with Stratford artistic director Antoni Cimolino and Abraham about abolishing the policy with the goal that no actor in Canada will ever have to agree to sign such a contract.
Feeling the need to keep their points of view to themselves in order to make a place for themselves in Canadian theatre was a shared experience among the “Black Like Us” participants.
“I’ve been hard to work with; I’ve been fired for having a voice,” said Allan Louis, an acclaimed television and stage performer who was to have made his Stratford debut this season in “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Wolf Hall” and “Hamlet.”
That also explains why the participants and other Black artists — either on social media or in interviews — have described this moment as feeling different: Their voices are being prioritized and listened to.
Smith, who is a board member of the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., as well as a Stratford actor, raised concerns about the sincerity of arts organizations’ attempts to consult with Black and other minority artists and artisans: “Gaslighting happens, or at least the perception of it, which is just as bad,” said Smith. “Black people are brought in to give their experience and state their case, and then white folks determine what to do.”
While expressing gratitude that the Stratford Festival enabled the current conversation around racism and marginalization, Smith said in an interview he was frustrated about having served on Stratford committees on diversity and inclusion that then led to decisions made behind closed doors, and policies that “were never quite what we discussed.”
“These diversity conversations about representation and inclusion cannot happen in the shadows,” said Smith. “The Stratford Festival serves this theatre community. Their struggle can be a cautionary tale or an example of how other organizations can follow suit.”
Asked to respond, Cimolino pointed out that the current discussions are “already a public process,” and said that actions and processes in the future are “not going to be internal. It’s going to involve all the people who care about the festival and about theatre.”
“I knew that going into this, that was a vulnerability we were opening ourselves up to,” said Stratford executive director Anita Gaffney of the unfolding conversation. “This was the time to do it. I feel enormous admiration to these individuals for their eloquence and their openness, and for calling us to task for things that have happened in the past.”
Stratford has offered a similar platform to Indigenous members of the company on June 21, National Indigenous Peoples Day.
Soulpepper Theatre artistic director Weyni Mengesha said the “Black Like Me” discussion was important because it affirms the experiences of many Black artists and artisans who have been “traumatized in different ways … they did not imagine it, it was not exaggerated.”
“I am energized by the way that it’s not just a Black problem right now. Everybody’s sharing the burden in this,” she said. “Everybody is entering the conversation with more vulnerability than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”
The fact that theatres are closed during the pandemic, and are likely to stay closed into 2021, has also created a context for questions about anti-Black racism in Canadian theatre, and beyond, to come to the surface and to be considered further.
“There is something about this particular time that can help us all,” said Cimolino. “It’s a time of pause, a time to take stock, to plan, to start acting differently.”