‘Well, here we are again, but this time feels different'

Kimberly King is the managing director and dramaturg of TYPA Theatre Co. (Teenage Youth Performing Arts Theatre Co.), an arts educator, a teaching artist at the Old Globe and a board member for San Diego Junior Theatre.

“I went down to the crossroads

Tried to flag a ride

I went down to the crossroads

Tried to flag a ride

Nobody seemed to know me

Everybody passed me by.”

— Robert Leroy Johnson

It’s not as if we haven’t stood at this crossroads before. Year after year, we witness majority White casts of White-authored, Whitedirected and White-produced “classics.” Folks see with their own eyes which stories and voices the American theater community treasures enough to keep alive, treasures enough to espouse and allow it the narrative dominion of a bully, a master.

Well, here we are again, but this time feels different. I don’t believe The Woke are going to silently ignore another season of 70-year-old misogynistic musicals laden with microaggressions while Micki Grant, Amiri Baraka, Dominique Morisseau, Idris Goodwin, and a ridiculously untapped wealth of BIPOC playwrights wait on the sidelines for the one “ethnic” slot of the season. I believe theaters that refuse social justice will suffer a continued pandemic of empty seats. Disenfranchisement can be reciprocated.

But we fear correction. When I was a student, those red slashes on my homework indicated a failure to glean. But the failure was the lack of opportunity to commune with my mistake, learn what was wrong, fix it.

Many of us are encouraged by the corrective actions of theaters who have developed articulate maps to social justice. More than simply noticing problems of inequity within primarily White institutions, some have publicly published statements of action. Great! Let’s skip the tired lip service and cut to the chase: invite accountability.

I look forward to more local and national theaters publicly outing their inequity — passive or otherwise — and turning the corner to embrace their own map to correction.

It’s not a crime to make mistakes, but it’s the oldest of clichés to defend and refuse to rectify the mistake. Feedback and correction is wherein lies growth and improvement. That is the teacher in me talking, so you can bet that is what I’m telling your kids.

“Let’s skip the tired lip service and cut to the chase: invite accountability.”