In June, Theatre Communications Group kicked off a yearlong celebration of its 50th anniversary. Throughout this year, TCG will explore and celebrate four core values that are important to its own work and to the work of the theatre field: artistry, diversity, global citizenship and activism. American Theatre has commissioned four reflective essays, each touching on one of these values. In the second in this series, actor/educator Marissa Chibas shares her thoughts on aesthetic diversity.
One freezing January night in Manhattan a few years ago, Dawn Saito, Daniel Alexander Jones and I met for dinner and began lamenting the lack of support for aesthetically innovative work in the American theatre. “It’s as if we in the theatre today don’t want to recognize that modernism happened,” Daniel asserted.
Yes, my colleagues and I agreed, there are many companies out there creating adventurous, aesthetically diverse work, but they are largely self-producing. And yes, there are a few houses presenting this work—but not our resident theatres. The distinction between producing and presenting is significant, since in the latter, the theatre gives space for the work but does not fund its creation. We felt strongly that a national conversation on this issue needed to take place, and so with Dawn, I led a passionate and well-attended panel on the subject at the 2009 TCG National Conference in Baltimore. On the panel were Moira Brennan (MAP Fund), Sharon Fogarty (Mabou Mines), Diane Rodriguez (Center Theatre Group), and independent directors Chi-wang Yang and Lars Jan.
What do we mean by aesthetic diversity? That we recognize and take into account life in the 21st century. It means looking at our population and doing work that speaks to their condition by embracing technological advances and forms outside the Anglo-European narrative. There are many ways of storytelling in this world, but our major theatres currently reflect a very narrow range of it.
Aesthetic diversity also means acknowledging that our multilingual population is growing, that our work needs to reflect that community, and that it may be alternative theatrical forms that appeal to them most strongly. On our panel, Chi-Wang spoke about how he, as a Chinese-American, cannot help but experience the world as collage—and therefore prefers and needs abstraction. When he expressed this idea, I felt a world open up for me, because I knew, as a multilingual Latina, that this was true for me, as well. I sensed the exciting possibility of a tantalizing relationship between adventurous form and ethnic diversity: more abstract forms appealing to multilingual audiences.
Research shows that there is a neurological basis for aesthetic preference. Tests for cognitive abilities reveal that people operate according to a predilection for either the left or the right brain hemisphere. According to Anna Lee Strachan, writing in The Harvard Brain in 2000, there’s a “significant correlation between those who performed well on the left-associated tasks and preferred realism,” while “those who performed well on the right-associated tasks conversely correlated with a preference for abstraction.” By leaving out abstraction from our programming, we leave out an essential and vital segment of the population.
Indeed, for years we have heard speakers at theatre conferences talk about how “the future is here.” And yet the programming at our major institutions remains essentially the same.
Demographic charts demonstrate that multinational and multi-ethnic citizens are becoming more and more the norm. Yet these potential audiences are being ignored rather than developed. When I see some of the most talented theatre directors around being recognized and given opportunities in museums and film festivals but not by our major theatres, I know something is deeply wrong. We’ve become a sort of club shutting out the energy and vitality of the culture. And to preserve what, exactly? Nothing but stale thinking about the elements a “good story” must contain.
The panelists and attendees of our aesthetic diversity panel identified the following challenges and needs:
- More funding possibilities for alternative, innovate work. The Rockefeller MAP Fund is one of the few foundations whose mission it is to support such work. Its applicant pool has increased substantially, and it currently funds 5 percent of submissions. Clearly there are too few options for artists working in this way.
- Awareness of each other’s organizations to promote adventurous work and to create co-productions. TCG-2.0 could make the virtual gathering of these organizations a reality.
- Insistence that larger, more generously funded theatres expand programming to include hybrids such as dance-theatre, visual theatre, multidisciplinary work and projects that push the formal boundaries of the stage.
- True criticism that is expansive and acknowledges work on its own terms, not a narrow idea of performance. For example, in a review of the CalArts Center for New Performance’s Brewsie and Willie, a play by Gertrude Stein that was part of this year’s Radar LA festival in June, one critic wrote that it lacked dramatic action. That is tantamount to criticizing Pinter for having too many pauses. The reviewer was applying her idea of what theatre should be with no regard to the artist’s intentions.
What else can we do? We artists must stand up and demand that programming in our theatres be more inclusive. We have to insist that the way to attract younger and more diverse audiences is to program work that speaks to an evolving consciousness transformed by technology. We have to look at our communities and engage with them in more meaningful and broader ways. We have to acknowledge that we are not all wired the same and that abstraction, while it may be uncomfortable for some, is home for many.
For the sake of the survival of our art form, we have to find ways to be a part of the global conversation by doing multilingual, multidisciplinary and adventurous work. We need to encourage and support singular voices, not workshop plays to death. We have to stop surveying these works as if creating theatre is like making a good bar of soap, in which the value of the work is based on the number of audience members that like it. We need to create international collaborations that help move us to a more central place in today’s global culture.
Most of all, we need leadership in our theatres that truly reflects our communities racially, ethnically and aesthetically. It’s a tall order, but the time is now. The future is already here.
Marissa Chibas is an actor and an instructor of theatre at California Institute of the Arts.
The Diversity Gamut
What does diversity in the theatre mean to you? American Theatre asked our more than 10,000 Facebook fans, and here are some of their responses.
Deborah Emmy Nowinski: I have a theatre that includes actors with disabilities and those who are non-disabled—can’t get any more diverse than that (Dionysus Theatre, Houston, Tex.).
Iain Culp: Warm and cool lighting….
James Fisher: It means room for everyone—and every kind of play/performance. It means that no one kind of anything is better or privileged over any other. Theatre is for everyone and should be about everything and presented in every way we are creative enough to imagine.
Roger MacDonald: It means yet another amorphous concept to deal with, albeit one that can be used to enlighten, bludgeon, or justify some new outrage.
Jason Bennett: I’m no longer shocked that even in an otherwise liberal state and liberal city, a major regional theatre cannot take many risks at all—in terms of provocative messages and material—without losing major funding. It’s why so many of us want more government funding for the arts. So, I’m thinking of diversity in term of cutting-edge new material that rattles cages and wakes people up.
Rikkie Garner: You can’t force diversity. Only give it the opportunity to be!
Monique Mosley: When I think of diversity in theatre, I think access. American society is still restricted in who gets access to resources, rights and benefits. In this way, sadly, American theatre does reflect American society. In both arenas, certain groups—mainly non-whites, non-straights and the disabled—are still marginalized. Basically, who’s on stage?
Tim Bohn: Close your eyes and open them again; this time without preconceptions.
Kevin T. Morales: Both kinds of liberals.
