Courage, Capacity, Earth-Diving: Riting Safe(r) Spaces Down in the “Muck”

Aaniin! Kwei! Tanshi! Way’! Bonjour! Hello! The time is now. The “reckoning” is upon us. The artists with whom you are preparing to engage within these digital pages have issued a Call. With what actions will you answer? Admittedly, the participants in this event arrived “late to the table,” having witnessed and perhaps retweeted expressions of outrage from the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been gathering momentum since its inception in 2014; from April Reign’s 2015 #OscarSoWhite campaign; from the 2020 We See You, White American Theater’s crusade; from the digital gauntlet cast in the teeth of Canadian Arts Leaders in June 2020 by Harvey; and from the increasingly urgent expressions of institutional refusal from Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) and otherwise marginalized artists and artists in training. CATR enters these conversations late – albeit no later than the mainstream theatre companies and professional training institutions in which its scholars work and about which they write. Educators and theatre companies have striven to “diversify” their programs by seasoning their curricular and cultural offerings with plays by IBPOC artists and / or by an occasional instance of “colour-blind” casting. And this is perhaps a well-intentioned beginning. But conversations toward such a beginning have been going on for far too long. And to what end? The intentions of these artists who train artists were undeniably laudable. They hoped to subvert an oppressive canon. They hoped to open spaces that would allow the stories of the othered to live and breathe. But what, did they hope, would actually shift within the realm of theatre? What shifts have occurred since that 2016 gathering? Not enough, I contend, as recent events and activations have come to show. Across Turtle Island, the spaces of actor training are still terribly unsafe for racialized and otherwise marginalized students. That is, if they even gain admittance to these spaces at all… Although a gradual shift has begun, entry requirements to a Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies (DTPS) Program (where practical training is offered) remain much as they have always been: perhaps, by way of auditioning, a group will be brought in to play theatre games, but what if you have never played such games before? What if the traumas you carry prevent you from playing “trust” games or silence you in the face of loud voices or aggressive language (embodied or vocal)? What if you are asked about the best production you have attended in the past eight months? And what if you have never been to a theatre in your life? You just know you want to be a storyteller, but you can’t point to your favourite script or favourite production, although you may have participated in performative ceremonies from birth and you are prepared to read, to work, to visit, to witness, to try… What if your body doesn’t perform like other bodies? What if you need supports that others in the audition room do not require? What if the auditioner just cannot see you in the final performance – because of your skin tone, or because of the way your body takes or doesn’t take space, or because the auditioner cannot read the signifiers you perform through subtle facial movements, vocal intonations, or myriad other gests, which could be read by one from your own culture? What if you have been traditionally raised and cannot invoke certain words (in certain seasons or at all) or tell certain stories (in certain seasons or at all), or place your instrument into service of a violent story when you haven’t had time or space to …