Questions as we rebuild from the coronavirus and antiblackness.

The coronavirus stopped American theater.

Then Black Lives Matter demonstrations reminded us how broken it already was.

It’s not enough to flatten the curve if we let another disease fester, returning to the same antiblackness that previously stunted our art form and industry at every stage. We must rebuild from pandemic and from oppression at the same time.

As we rebuild, I pose the questions below to theater leaders, but I also pose them to myself. I hold a position of power in the theater world, and I am a beneficiary of white privilege. I vow to continually interrogate it and work to dismantle it.

In Part II of this column, I shall amplify the questions local black theater artists have for the industry. For now, I offer my own voice, however flawed, in solidarity. These questions aren’t mine alone; they come from years of reporting on and conversations with the Bay Area theater community. From recent weeks, I particularly credit the online open letter, “We See You, White American Theater,” which is signed by hundreds of artists across the country and should be required reading for theater lovers everywhere.

Where do we go from here?

Who has to be present? And when, and where?

What can take place asynchronously, or at different places?

What other kinds of togetherness are there? What do we cherish about liveness, and how might we translate those qualities, however imperfectly, to different media?

What different story structures might best fit these new media?

What gets to count as a play? Who is it for? And who gets to make it?

Which forms and traditions count as artistic and worthy? Which do we discount, and why?

Who can theater welcome now who couldn’t or wouldn’t attend before? How can theater belong to them (so that they want to stay)?

What would it look like if we welcomed those audiences on their own terms?

Who gets to have power?

What kind of power do you tend to cow to, and which other kinds of power might you start recognizing? Whose good opinion sways you when you’re flying high, and whose good opinion do you court only after you’ve been called out?

Who decides which stories are told, and how, and by whom? Who adjudicates what blackness gets to look like in your theater? What would it look like if you shared that and other kinds of power?

Who gets rich, full stories?

When you present one race or culture’s trauma, who is that pain for, and what is that audience supposed to feel and do?

Who gets to see not just their pain represented onstage, but their mythology, their past, present and future, their poetry, their beauty, their joy, their fantasies, their intellect, their specificity, their silliness, their weirdness?

Which characters get to love and be loved? Whom are they allowed to love?

Who gets to have more than one character trait, more than one line?

Who gets to have an arc, a journey?

Who gets to be angry and deviant, and whose anger and deviance do you consider too scary to stage? Too scary to whom?

Why is that fear so powerful?

How do we allocate worth?

When a theater worker of color walks into your rehearsal room, onto your stage, how do you immediately peg that person?

What do you require of them that you don’t ask of your white workers? Which resources do you unquestioningly allocate white workers, neglecting their counterparts of color?

To whom do you give the permission and the freedom to experiment and to fail, forgiving and continuing to support them afterward, and who’s out after one strike?

Who mysteriously, inherently seems worthy of a more lucrative contract, and who should just be happy with what you offer?

What channels have you actively cultivated to ensure you get feedback from your team, and how do they know you want their honesty, that they won’t be punished for it, and that you’ll take it seriously?

If someone in your theater has a grievance, do they have a clear, logical and wellknown protocol for which to file it — a protocol that has a track record of accountability? If you receive a grievance, is your first instinct to fix it, or is it to protect yourself ?

Where does activism end?

You’re probably not a social service organization, but if your art is political, does your activism stop at your footlights?

When your artists and audiences are marching in the streets your theater stands on, what do you owe them?

If you offer words of support, do they come from a place of fear?

When you tabulate your resources — space, materials, intellectual and artistic capital — what are you uniquely positioned to offer?

How can you support your black workers as they’re daily barraged with images of statesanctioned violence against people who look like them, as they fear that statesanctioned violence against themselves?

A liberated theater

What would it look like, and what would it take for you to get there?

As you evolve, what measurable numbers can your board hold you accountable to in your next performance review? Perhaps in terms of hiring people of color? Or giving them power? Perhaps in terms of salary equity? Which numbers are you ashamed of, and what would happen if you made them public?

If your black workers were truly free, what would they do, and how could you support them?

Steven Boyle / The Chronicle