Every week, the culture critics at Token Theatre Friends bring their fresh perspectives to the performing arts on their podcast and video series. You can find the podcast on Spotify, iTunes, and Stitcher (look for the all-red logo). The video series is available on YouTube. The TTF theme song is by Sean Mason (with vocals by Angela Ramos). The video animation is by Brad Ogden, with logos by Jason Simon.
In this episode, Ayanna and Alexi get in their feels as they reminisce over the last in-person shows they each saw before the pandemic began 1 year ago (for most of us). They have high expectations for the first season of in-person shows and make one request: NO musicals about pandemics please! That means no theatrical adaptation of Michael Bay’s Covid-19 drama, Songbird.
The Friends review Monuments, a short film directed Sara Aniqah Malik in collaboration with Donmar Warehouse in the U.K. The film features the oral histories of BIPOC youth in London as they recount their experiences with racism. Ayanna gushes over the production of Simply Sondheim at the Signature Theatre and tells us how “Being Alive” takes on new meaning in light of the pandemic
References:
Monuments directed by Sara Aniqah Malik at Donmar Warehouse.
Simply Sondheim directed by Matthew Gardiner at Signature Theatre.
For the past few years, one of my favorite pastimes has been to read the Money Diaries from Refinery29. In it, a millennial woman tracks her spending for one week. I’ve used it when I was making $40,000 a year in NYC as inspiration for how to make my dollar stretch in one of the most expensive cities in the world (hint: food prep ALL your meals). And I’ve also used it to judge people for the dumb things they spend money on (like being furloughed and using that stimulus money to buy… lingerie from Nordstrom).
But most of all, I love how frankly it talks about money. I tried to get something similar started when I was at American Theatre, when I found six different theater workers willing to give me their annual budgets: how much they made from their theater jobs and side hustles, and strategies they used to make that low income stretch. Through these budget breakdowns, I was hoping to make talking about money in the arts a little less taboo, and for people to talk more frankly, publicly, about how little theater jobs pay and how that leads to greater inequality along racial, gender and class lines.
That didn’t happen as much as I wanted it to. Because here we are during a pandemic, one that has put millions of arts workers out of work, and yet artists are still seen as un-essential, elitist members of society who don’t need federal help.
A recent New York Times article about the state of federal pandemic relief said this: “Hands are out as Congress is set to begin negotiating a new round of pandemic stimulus. Airlines, hotels and restaurants. Military contractors and banks. Even Broadway actors. These are just a few of the special interests already maneuvering to get a piece of the next coronavirus relief package about to be taken up by Congress, which is back in session this week.”
In response, Howard Sherman, an arts administrator and American theater thought leader, tweeted this:
“‘Hands out’? ‘Even Broadway actors’? These are people and families in distress. Live performing arts comprise a major industry brought to its knees. Do not dismiss what we do or our importance to the economy. This is shameful, @nytimes. Treating the performing arts, whether commercial or not-for-profit, as if they are a frivolity looking for a handout diminishes accomplished professionals around the country. Using the arts as a flip coda to a political lede is insulting, @nytimes.”
Sherman then tweeted out an update, saying, “@nytimes has removed the word ‘Even.’ But the sting lingers. People who work job to job, in a field that will be the last to come back from the pandemic, are hardly the same as banks.”
Yes those Broadway actors, who, if they’re lucky, will make $98,000 a year—a modest salary in a city like NYC (the true take-home pay is far lower considering fees to union and agents). And they’re at the top tier of the theater profession. Most actors in theater are lucky if they’re making a living wage.
Leslie Odom Jr spoke frankly to The Los Angeles Times about how in 2015, while working on Hamilton Off-Broadway and playing a leading role, he only took home $400 a week (for a show in a 299-seat house where the tickets cost $120 each). The cast got paid eventually, but it was only after years of little to no pay to help develop Hamilton—development time is an investment expected of any artist who wants to work regularly in the business.
Many Off-Broadway actors have told me they can make more on unemployment than acting (the maximum weekly amount for New York unemployment is $504 a week).
This past spring, backstage at her hit one-woman Off-Broadway show Dana H., I asked long-time, award-winning stage actor Deirdre O’Connell how she makes a life in the theater work. Here is what she told me:
“I have a rent-stabilized apartment and I live on my Screen Actors Guild pension. I had gone away for 6 years to do some TV series and TV movies and stuff like that. I didn’t want to do it, I was kicking and screaming, but I had no money. And I feel like every Off-Broadway actor, that you ask how they’re doing it, has some sort of secret sauce. If you have a great year where you work all year, that means you’re completely broke. Basically actors are giving a non-tax-deductible contribution to the theaters they’re working at.”
And that’s only the numbers for actors; those who work behind-the-scenes, either on Broadway or in Hollywood are not exactly living the champagne life. A mid-career TV writer will make $5,000 to $10,000 an episode but they still need to pay union fees and agent fees, and they don’t necessarily work all year. A life in entertainment will net you, if you’re lucky, a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
When I was first hired as an editorial assistant at American Theatre magazine in 2011, I was paid $30,000 a year (and when I left 8 years later, my salary was $46,000). When I wanted to write a piece about income inequality in the arts, the part about my own meager salary, was cut from the final article.
I believe that one of the reasons that the arts are considered frivolous and elitist is because the industry itself promotes that image.
It’s hard to walk into a theater building that costs $400 million, and not think that those working in it must be paid extremely well. It’s also hard, when tickets to an Off-Broadway show can cost close to $100, not to assume that the actors must be rich if the tickets are that high.
Like in many other industries, theater workers are not encouraged to disclose their salaries, and in many cases are reprimanded for it. Salary transparency is so toxic that the only time theater workers want to disclose how much they make, they only feel safe doing so in a public, anonymous Google spreadsheet.
When talking about theater, the industry places its shiniest faces forward: the glittering buildings, the lead actors, the star-studded award shows. That’s normal, after all, fewer people click on articles about stagehands and front-of-house crew—all of the other people who help make the work happen and whose incomes aren’t as high. Kids who love theater usually want to be actors first, before they realize there’s a wider theater world than on stage.
At the same time, it helps maintain the illusion that the arts, and the people who work in it, are elite. Theater has leaned into the glamour, to the detriment of its workers being seen as human beings. That is why funders and rich people would rather pay for new buildings than better wages for the people working in those buildings. And why because of that low-pay and long hours and passion required for the job, many people burn out and leave the industry.
Or as one arts administrator told me:
“One BIG problem in non-profits is that funders very rarely want to fund overhead. They want to fund specific projects, not staff salaries. And websites like Charity Navigator make a percentage of money to salaries/overhead a part of their rating, which means even individual donors keep an eye on that and are turned off by companies that a) actually pay staff reasonable salaries, and b) prioritize staff health.”
The theater industry is a microcosm of the entire country at large: a country that for too long has divested resources away from people and into things—buildings, larger budget shows, bigger galas. And it has created an ecosystem where a majority of workers are on contract, going from job-to-job with little financial security.
And like many corporations, during a pandemic, many theaters have laid off their lower-level staff members while maintaining the employment and salary of those at the top. The Kennedy Center, despite receiving a $25-million bailout from the federal government, has laid of 30% of its staff, aka 64 employees, while its president Deborah Rutter is taking a 75% pay cut from $1.2 million, so she now earns $300,000.
That is why in the face of a global pandemic where the arts are shut down and artists are jobless, disaster is looming. Because these workers had been living paycheck-to-paycheck. Said set designer Kimie Nishikawa, who helped launch the See Lighting Foundation to help immigrant theater artists during this time (I’m writing an article about them that will come out soon):
“I hope that people or institutions invest more in the people and not the product. There are so many shows that I have done, where my fee is $2,000 for a whole set design, and my [production] budget is 30,000. And just the gap between how much the institution pays for their people and how much they care about advertising and the product itself is too big. We were all hanging on by a thread. When this pandemic hit, most of us were like, ‘Wow, I don’t even have enough money to pay rent for next month.’ And we’re all working on big Off-Broadway shows. We are supposedly the ones who made it but the industry cannot support their artists and I think that really has to change.”
Many are rightly concerned with the well-being of institutions. After all, if these large theaters fold, where will these artists work after COVID is through? For me, I am more concerned about immigrant artists who may have to go back to their home country, about individual artists who have no job security—people at risk of leaving the field and finding new employment, whose creativity and vision cannot be easily replaced. The death of institutions may be tragic but an exodus of artists and workers will be catastrophic.
I was recently asked by two different people about what I think will happen to the theater industry in the future, post-COVID. I answered that I’m not in the prediction business. But I can tell you all what my hopes are. What I hope for are more frank and honest conversations about how difficult it is to make a living in the arts. I hope more people follow the strategy of the #FairWageOnStage campaign and openly talk about how much a life in the arts pays, or doesn’t pay. I hope those who give money to the arts understand that funding personnel, payroll and overhead is just as important as funding a production or a building. I hope in the future, our society as a whole will value people more than products.
I hope there is a conversation around class, alongside the conversation around race and equity, and more strategies for eliminating the class barrier in the arts (aka pay your interns). If theater is truly for everyone, then everyone must be able to make a life in it, and everyone must be able to afford to go see it.
Let radical honesty be a regular artistic practice.
The arts are nothing without the people making it happen. So I hope for a humanity-driven artistic practice, even a slower artistic practice, that prioritizes the well-being of the people making the art happen. I hope for care and love that starts from the bottom up.
Already I see some change happening. Baltimore Center Stage in Maryland recently announced they were eliminating 10 out of 12s (which is 14-hour days for technicians and 12-hour days for actors, during tech rehearsals), and instituting a five-day rehearsal week instead of the typical six. Producers shouldn’t be announcing productions for the future, they should be figuring out how they can help artists survive right now.
And if in the near future, universal basic income and healthcare become a reality, then perhaps a life in the arts will seem less elitist and more normal. If we’re all more frank about how much money we make, then those who work in creative fields will be seen as part of society, instead of above it.
I hope when this is over, people will realize that while it was doctors and essential workers who saved our lives during COVID-19, it was the people in film, TV, theater who created work that nourished our souls.
And in the words of two-time Obie Award-winning actor April Matthis: “When the dust starts to settle—and I’m not talking about just theater, I’m talking about TV and film—let’s support small businesses. I’m a small business as an independent contractor.”
Every week, culture critics Diep Tran and Jose Solís bring a POC perspective to the performing arts with their Token Theatre Friends podcast. The show can be found on Spotify, iTunes and Stitcher. You can listen to episodes from the previous version of the podcast here but to get new episodes, you will need to resubscribe to our new podcast feed (look for the all-red logo).
Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s epic (and very expensive) musical has moved from the stage to screen thanks to Disney+. A musical as big as Hamilton deserves a big discussion, a cabinet battle, if you will. The Friends are joined by actor and composer Heath Saunders, and theater critic Kelundra Smith. They discuss how Hamilton hits differently in 2020 than it did in 2015 when it premiered, how it’s OK for art to be problematic, and whether Hamilton could win the Oscar. This episode was recorded on June 6.
Here are links to things the Friends talked about in this episode.
What Kelundra thought of Hamilton when she first saw it in 2018
Below is the episode transcript.
Diep: Hi this is Diep Tran.
Jose: And I’m Jose Solis.
Diep: And we’re your Token Theatre Friends people who love theater so much that Jose owns not one but two Judy face mask that you could see if you are watching this on YouTube instead of listening to it.
Jose: And I’m wearing my mask for a very special reason. I’m so excited that today we have like a really extra super special—is that even a word? Probably not. We have a special very special episode because it was so big and so long. That Diep even called us Infinity Wars, which is like a straight thing, right?
Diep: Yes, it is very straight. It’s Token Theatre Friends: Infinity War, Part One.
Jose: We have a very long episode and we want to share all the good stuff that we have for you. So we ended up deciding to instead of like, super editing our episode, we are going to give you two pods instead of one this week. We have part one, which is going to be an interview with George Salazar, who you know from Be More Chill and if you were lucky enough to see him in Little Shop of Horrors in California, which is why I’m also wearing this.
Diep: Which you also cannot see if this is the podcast.
Jose: I’m very nerdy today. I’m sorry. But George is doing Night of a Thousand Judys on July 14, so we’re going to be talking to him about that and what he’s been doing in quarantine. And in a part two Diep, what are we doing?
Diep: During part two, we have our Hamilton Congress, where we have two very special guests come in to talk to us about wait for it, Hamilton, because we’ve noticed that just like in 2015 right now, most of the people critiquing Hamilton are white people, which is pretty problematic because the show is written by a person of color and is starring people of color. So why are there very few people of color who are not named Soraya McDonald writing about it? Who knows, but we decided to do something about it by bringing in two amazing guests to talk about it. First we have Heath Saunders, who is an amazing actor and composer and you may remember them from Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway. And our second guest is Kelundra Smith, who is an arts journalist and friend to me and Jose. And she critiques theater and Atlanta for ArtsATL and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It’s a really long discussion, but we promise you it is worth it because we go in, we’re going far, we almost didn’t come out.
Jose: Will that be satisfied?
Diep: We hope you’ll be satisfied. But you know, we will never be satisfied with our Hamiltondiscussion because we could have gone for longer.
Jose: Oh, my God, we could have, yeah. And we put in a lot of work, work.
Diep: Who’s Angelica in this relationship?
Jose: I guess we can both be Angelica and Peggy. None of us want to be—Eliza’s so boring, right?
Diep: Eliza? Eliza is really good at her job, just being a wife.
Jose: God bless her. I want a revolution. Not a revelation. Okay. Welcome to part two. This is our Hamilton Congress. The house is now in session.
Diep: Okay, we are here for our cabinet battle number one with our very special guests, Heath Saunders and Kelundra Smith. Can someone introduce themselves and tell us who you are what you do. When interesting, Hamilton?
Heath: Hi, I’m Heath Saunders. I’m a composer, writer and an actor. I saw Hamilton on Broadway in previews, and then I didn’t see it again until the Disney+ film. So I have a long standing relationship. It’s also been very interesting to me because Hamilton was one of those things that people told me I had to see because they were like, “You can be the next Lin-Manuel Miranda because when you act and you write, and you act in the things you write.”
There’s a very limited context for what you can do when you’re a person of color. You’re a person of color, you write, you act, you must be a Lin-Manuel Miranda. And I was like, Lin and I do very different things. But you know, what can be done? So I have a long a long history with the Lin-Manuel Miranda world, deeply impressed by him as a general rule.
Kelundra: Cool. I’m Kelundra Smith. I am a theatre critic and arts journalist based in Atlanta. I freelance for a number of publications around the country, including the New York Times, Food and Wine magazine, American Theatre and Arts ATL. I saw Hamilton in fall of 2018 in Charlotte, NC when it was on the first round Equity tour. And funny story, actually, the reason I saw it in Charlotte is because I was unable to get press tickets to see it in Atlanta and raised a stink about it on Twitter and had a lot of support and raising a stink about it on Twitter, which led to me getting a call from the national press agent for Hamilton, who then said, “you know, we have been trying to get more critics of color in the room where it happens. And we are deeply sorry.”
That is how I ended up seeing it in Charlotte. So that’s an interesting tidbit there and so seeing it on Disney+ was a different kind of experience because that’s not the cast I saw. And so I’m not only comparing the live experience to the on-screen experience, but also the cast I saw compared to the original cast, which I have to say there are some performances I liked better from the tour cast.
Diep: Jose, did you see it at the Public?
Jose: No. By the time that I wanted to go see it, it was too popular and I never won the lottery. So I saw it for the first time on Broadway in January 2017.
Diep: I saw it at the Public. And then I saw I saw it again on Broadway. And it’s funny that they were talking about trying to get critics of color in there because I fucking had to, like, practically sell my firstborn in order to get a ticket. I’m actually writing about this. I’m not freeloading.
Jose: The first bill that we’re going to introduce to the session today is, let’s talk about the difference between seeing the show on stage live, you know, back when we were allowed to see other people in public and brush against them. And seeing it on television or your iPad or your iPhone or wherever you saw.
Heath: Yeah, I will offer that of the pro-shot musicals that I have seen, the Hamilton film is very effective, if not translating the exact experience of seeing the show live, it does translate the sort of thrust of a live performed show, which I found really nice. Because as a person who like, you know, adores musical theater, it is interesting the ways that it’s shot often make it seem significantly worse than it is.
And I didn’t really feel that way with the Hamilton film, which I sort of liked. But one of the things that I thought it lost is, is actually it’s both a criticism of the original show and the sort of thing that I liked about the original show, which is that the original show was so much information constantly. Act One especially is just like an assault of visual information and aural information that makes it quite difficult to follow at certain points, and it actually makes it so the parts of it which I think are expertly crafted, we all love the “Helpless” into “Satisfied” and moments. I can’t actually technically speak for you, but for me that moment of stage craft was so impressive, and so just like stunning, I knew exactly where to look. I knew what was happening over. And where my eye was going. Everything about that moment was so thrilling to me.
And while in the film, it captures the sort of story moment of it, the aggressive shifts of camera made it so I wasn’t able to appreciate what I consider the stage craft of that moment. And so it ended up being a little bit like, Oh, yeah, that happened. And, like what happened for me in the show when I saw it, when I was like, out of my seat, like this is this is expertly crafted. Anx, you know, that’s a little bit disappointing. But again, it’s sort of a double edged sword here that we’re talking about, which is like, it is not meant to be a film. So this version of it, I think, was a really effective capturing of it in this new medium. And also, I lost some of the things about theater that I love.
Diep: That’s a good point. I actually don’t think the choreography was best served through it because most of the time, the camera wasn’t on the ensemble who was doing the brunt of the movement. It was on the main performers because yes, that’s who we want to see. But like there’s the moment where Hamilton gets shot and Ariana DeBose plays the bullet and you barely even see her do that epic slow walk across the platform because you’re constantly on Lin-Manuel and so like I feel like that’s the thing about film, the camera tells you who is important. But in theater you’re allowed to look wherever you want to look and take in the entire stage picture. And so I kind of missed a lot of the wider shots I remember in the theater, because Tommy Kael was telling me I need to look that right here at Lin while he’s talking. I’m like, No, I want to like Ariana. I love what she was doing right there.
Heath: As a general rule I always want to look at Ariana DeBose.
Kelundra: Yeah, I would agree, I think that if anything, I think the focus of the camera helped to clarify story in some ways, if you had missed it when you saw it live. And then of course, there’s closed captioning on your TVs, so then you know, you’re like, Oh, okay. So I think there’s some clarity there. But what I really missed, in addition to I think one of the strengths of Lin-Manuel’s musicals in general is all the stuff happening, the background, he loves a street scene that looks very realistic. So we’re now going to be on a street sidewalk in New York, and there will noww be people going by in the background. And some folks are going to be holding umbrellas, and maybe it’s raining.
And so that’s some of the stuff that you didn’t get by watching it through the screen on Disney+. And then I think the other thing that I miss too, is the energy of the music doesn’t come across through the screen because there’s something about that live orchestra, that sound is all around you and you’re swallowed up by it. Now the numbers that did come across like the room where it happens, is still, it was amazing in person, is amazing on screen like you’re just like, it’s in your head, you’re jazzy, you’re singing. But then there are other musical numbers that I really liked in person, but the energy of that live instrumentation is what boosted them, but you didn’t get on screen.
Jose: The movie version I feel is a great example of what you’re saying which is you know, movies are like a director’s medium right? And yeah, like choosing what to focus on is I mean, I really admired this first one because it must have been like hell because like, yeah, Lin loves all his Eaaster eggs, which are usually happening all over. And I thought that this would be a great example of a movie that—remember back when DVDs had this like, multi-angle option where you can choose where to look? This would benefit from that. Because if we had gotten, you know, that standard shot that we get when shows are recorded to preserve them at the Lincoln Center library, you know, those are terrible. Like, we don’t want to look at the whole thing all the time. So I was really impressed, actually. And I went, did you hear that people were talking about whether this movie was gonna be eligible for Oscars or not? Because like Oscars are bending the rules this year to let, no it’s true, to let movies that were ỏiginally—
Kelundra: No.
Diep: Wow, controversial opinion. Kelundra. Tell us more.
Kelundra: No, because there’s going to be a film adaptation of Hamilton that is not the Broadway show.
Jose: But I mean, right now, this is the movie that we have. So
Kelundra: I’m all about genre-busting media, right? Like I want media to be multi multimedia. I love that we sort of blur and blur the lines. I think the challenge that I have with the idea of this particular I mean, I even have a hard time calling it the Hamilton film. I’m like, it’s not really a film. I know. I appraise it. It’s funny because as soon as I go into the like, do you want me to appraise this as a movie?
Then I go into a little bit of the like, there’s camera things I’m like, it’s not like cinematically an extraordinary work beyond the idea that the job is to convey what’s happening on stage. So, I mean, I think about like, you know, Lars von Trier does some movies that are like staged. But to me, what he’s doing is a film, like they’re not meant to be watched live. Hamilton remains a show. It feels to me, the Hamilton film feels like a really, really great archival recording. More than a piece of art on its own. Now that it’s coming out of my mouth, do I really think thaht? But I think, you know what, I’m gonna stand by it. I’m gonna stand by it.
Diep: That’s art criticism. You don’t know until it comes out.
Jose: I’m glad you brought up Lars here because that’s gonna challenge this notion, Manderlay and Dogville are shot on a soundstage. Have you seen those movies?
Diep: No, but I remember the Anna Karenina, the Joel Wright, the one with Keira Knightley. That was done like a play because there was a stage and that was like a metaphor.
Jose: And Lars Von Trier films, basically shoots them in a completely empty soundstage. And it’s very Brechtian. And that he shoots from above, you can see, like, the outlines of what the buildings are, for instance, telling you what’s there. So it’s a movie without sets, without objects, without props, and you have to imagine things and there’s a few sound effects. They’re like fucking fantastic. I was not the Academy when I was talking about this, but this is a real conversation that people are having and if the Academy deems that this is right and that the movie can be eligible for Academy Awards, it will be eligible for Academy Awards.
Heath: Even if it is, there ain’t nothing we can do that about.
Kelundra: Yeah, I will I will not be happy about this. I think it is its own product. Because I mean, unless it’s creating a new genre of film like what category does this go under? Is it documentary? Is it feature what is it? I mean, I’m okay if we’re saying we’re going to make a new category of film for Broadway or theatrical, you know, shows shot? What is that? Like? I need somebody to tell me what category it falls under. Because to me it is not a feature film. And I don’t know that it’s fair that you would put Hamilton in the same category as something that had a bigger budget, and CGI, like I just don’t, I don’t know, what do you do with that? I’m curious, I’m genuinely asking I’m not, you know.
Jose: Kelundra, since you’re saying that, isn’t categorization precisely what keeps people of color from participating in all these things, you know, are they even making real theater if it’s not this or that, you know? And if we go and like, try to categorize even something like this for a year, where, you know, a lot of movies aren’t being released at all, it would give, you know, actors of color the opportunity to compete in the Oscars race, which is usually extremely white. Why this need for categorization, when being classified is how racism started, how we are kept from participating.
Kelundra: Our desire to remove categories from the Oscars doesn’t remove categories from the Oscars, they’re gonna put this movie in a category. I’m not saying what Kelundra wants, I mean, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is going to put this movie in a category whether we like it or not. My question is what category does it go in? And does that category set this film up for success? Is it fair or is this something that we need to channel into like a Golden Globes or an Emmys if we want to award it with something, to give it its best opportunity for a win?
Because I can foresee the moment where there’s all this hype around, oh my god Hamilton recording is nominated for an Oscar and then all of these people of color are like ready with their accepted speeches. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, and the Oscar goes to insert name of Russell Crowe film or whatever, you know. So I think that I want us, I mean, if we’re gonna dismantle, dismantle but I don’t think the academy will dismantle just by letting this be eligible. I think they’re going to put this in a category and be like, well, if it’s good enough, it’ll stand up. And it’s like, actually, if the category itself is discriminatory, then it’s not gonna stand up.
Jose: Yeah, I mean, there’s only two categories. Basically nonfiction, which is documentaries, and then everything else
Kelundra: This would be like a documentary, right? Why? Maybe I don’t know.
Jose: For instance, the movies that Keath and I were talking about, the Lars Von Trier movies, which were shot on a soundstage with chalk outlines, were movies you know, they’re not like documentaries. That’s different.
Heath: But for me, but what for me is really important to differentiate between the Lars Von Trier movie and the Hamilton film is that the Hamilton film I mean, if we want to talk about like the flow of money and the way that things happen and why the Hamilton film was made when other shows that are put on stage are not made into movies in this way. Hamilton was not designed, they did not direct this musical to be the thing that it is—that is literally a capturing of a different category of media. And that for me is where I’m like Lars von Trier was making a film, he was making a film using a set of techniques that were based on the art, the direction of the actors was directing them toward the idea that this thing was meant to be a film. It was the whole creation of the soundstage was designed, it wasn’t like people were meant to be in watching the thing. He was making a film. And that’s not to say that this piece of art, the Hamilton film, is not a film unto itself.
It feels like we’re having more and more steps of removal from what the thing is, right? We’ve created a musical and then you like film it, and it’s like if I took the recording of the movie, the Hamilton film and then I like recut it myself, would I be making a new piece of art? It’s a valid thing to do as an artist. And then for me, what becomes most disingenuous about that in the context of like giving bodies of color opportunity to compete in these spaces is that these actors are not performing as though they’re—for me as an actor I get really worked up because I do believe that performing on film is different than performing on stage. And I would argue in the Hamilton film, there are performances that are served by this new media in a way that other performances are not, and it is not one to one. There are performances on the stage that I think are really solid musical theater or Broadway performances that I think and again, this is not to be disparaging, saying that one is better than the other, it’s just they’re different. And I feel like I’m a little bit with Kelundra where I’m like, are we setting this up for success? Because who actually wins out of this. We’re not giving these actors of color, this opportunity to compete in this new space that they otherwise wouldn’t, we’re giving a bunch of white people who in fact budgeted and funded the entire thing, the opportunity for clout within their white system.
Kelundra: Right and to your point, the Schuyler Sisters performance is a musical theater performance. When they come out on that stage and the vocal prowess that those singers have, I mean, it’s chills up your spine, I mean, the notes that they’re hitting, but that performance would not be the same if this was shot to be a film. Then you also I wonder what that does to folks like Anthony Ramos, right? He is a formidable film and television actor, he’s going to be in the In the Heights movie, not the film of the musical, but the actual Universal Pictures movie. And so then, I mean, his performance that he’s giving you in the musical Hamilton is different than what he’s already proven he can do in other films, and in other television shows because I mean, he’s been working, you know. So I think that there’s something to be said there too.
Jose: Yeah, I want to say that right now, I’m so happy right now, because I’m imagining white people, if you’re watching this, or if you’re listening to this, can you imagine if this was like the actual House of Representatives, and the Senate looked like, I’m sorry, like, like, holy shit, like what a world we would be in. I am very happy with this conversation. So thank you for being here. The second bill that we want to introduce is the difference between you know, 2015 and 2020. You know, it’s been five years since the musical first showed up. I’m wrong. It showed up as that at that press dinner first. Yeah, but even since like the stage version, the final version was presented, it’s been five years. Let’s talk about the difference between how it was received back then. by us, and by people, and what it feels like to be seeing the show in 2020. Let’s go first.
Diep: We’ve switch president since then. This is a very much an Obama, the only musical that could be written in an Obama administration, where we’re all feeling very positive about—relatively positive. I mean, generally, I’m not speaking for Native Americans or immigrants in cages, but we’re all feeling, I know in 2015 like, I was feeling pretty good about the country. This musical made me feel so patriotic, and so represented, because here’s two things I love. I love period dramas. And it just makes me so sad that POCs are never in period dramas because they’re usually with white people. And I’m just like, oh my god, there’s this gorgeous Black woman and she’s wearing a Regency gown. Like that is everything I have ever wanted.
And I love reading about history and being able to—in 2015, I thought the musical did successfully what in was trying to do, which is to reclaim history in our image using these figures that we were taught in school as Americans to revere. And I think what Hamilton did was like, make them seem more human. Like at the time, it was like, Oh my god, how dare you portray, you know, Thomas Jefferson as someone with an actual personality? And I th I ink, right now, this is what’s interesting about art. In just five years, it became something that was so revolutionary to something that’s so problematic, and the thing hasn’t changed, but we have. Watching it for me, it’s different now because I don’t really feel particularly proud to be an American. I do feel like things hit differently for me this time around. Like the theme of cultural revolution. And the notion that it was only ever okay for white people to be revolutionaries, but this musical showed that the people who are on the streets right now, people who look like us, like we are the revolutionaries. But at the same time you can’t disagree with the fact that it is still about white people, and so, what is the next step towards representation?
Jose: I might be the only person who migrated, who was born outside the US who came here as an adult. It’s really interesting to me, because when I saw it even, you know, it is very Obama. But Obama was disastrous to the rest of the world. Obama was putting kids in cages except the media didn’t care that much. Obama was bombing Syria constantly, Obama was creating a lot of war and chaos in the Middle East. And as I’ve talked to you about before Obama is in many ways, the reason why I’m here—he and Hillary Clinton backed up a military dictatorship and a coup that led to the Honduran president to be removed from power, and established a military dictatorship.
And that’s how I ended up here eventually, you know, because I can’t live in my home country because the number of LGBTQ murders and you know, the violence that was caused because of that Obama, Hillary-backed coup was disastrous. So to me, even seeing this musical and seeing how happy everyone was, I was like, well, maybe, you know, we should be more open to listen to all the damage that Obama caused in 2016. It’s so heartbroken, because, you know, I saw how people had to decide between voting for this monster that’s currently the White House or voting for the women who was helped by the government to destroy my own country. So America, for me, has always been a very complex, very heartbreaking concept. So I never had this hope, even Hamilton, because I knew, you know, it was very much about what America sells itself, like what America says that it wants to be. And in 2020, it is the reality of America where, you know, this is the musical that whitewashes history by using colorblind casting.
It’s been so eye-opening to me. I’ve been telling this for a lot of people. How so many of the things that are happening right now with police brutality, with corruption in government, with immigration, obviously, with the military, and the cops unleashing their violence on people. I never thought that I would see that in America because those are the things that America does to the rest of the world. And it is really terrifying for me to be here and recognizing some of the things that I’m seeing, you know, the fireworks and the sound torture they’re using right now. The way in which this President’s family is like, you know, disregarding the Constitution completely, just like emptying their pockets and so much corruption, the disaster that there is right now with COVID-19. Those are things that I never thought in a million years that I would see in America. Those are the things that America helps cause in the world. So right now, every day, I’m thinking, Okay, if I went to the place where I was going to be safe from these things, but now I’m seeing the government do these same things to its citizens, where the fuck am I going to migrate next? Right? Like is outer space the place for me to be in?
Heath: One of the things that’s really interesting with Blackness in America is that the thing that you’re describing about the things that America would never do to its own citizens, that story has never been true for the Black body. And that for me, I have a little bit of a reactivity to the notion that America would never do this to its own citizens because that’s just a difficult thing as a concept for me. And one of the things that I think is very interesting about Hamilton, and this is sort of, for me specifically, what’s different about Hamilton in 2015 versus Hamilton now is for me, I have better contextualized the American relationship to the Black body in a way that makes it so when I saw Hamilton before, what I was witnessing, as a Black person was looking at the possibility of achievement given to the Black body. So I was witnessing Black bodies achieve things and I was, like this is a glorious coup. This is amazing.
I am so thrilled to see Renee Elise Goldsberry on stage being a complicated and interesting character in a way that Black bodies are not afforded that space. I think Leslie Odom Jr. delivers a performance of a lifetime in the show. This is an exciting thing for me. For me, within my own understanding of Blackness and America, when I now look at, with the sort of newly opened reopened eyes about the way that this country treats the Black body, and I put that story on top of the story of Hamilton and I go, Oh, so what has happened in Hamilton is not a celebration of the Black body. It feels like the use of the Black body to better make a story about whiteness, more palatable to us. And that, for me is the thing that’s like, very different. And again, as a person who loves the musical theater, and I love well-executed musical theater, I’m like huzzah musical theater. I love this thing.
But then when I sort of think about the context of what I’m seeing, which the show does very little to actually acknowledge, or sort of point out to us, when I think about the context of using Black bodies, and I mean, specifically Black bodies in this context, there are spaces in which the BIPOC experience is in fact, a holistic and a gathered experience. But within an experience of America, the experience of the Black body is unique and the way that this show specifically erases the experience of the Black body at that time, the cognitive dissonance that I have to put into the watching of the show to buy into the story to say that, “Yes, I as a black body can be concerned with my own legacy, beyond my concern with my literal survival” is a is a really hard it’s a hard space to carry those two stories together. Which to me has nothing to do with historicity of the show. An article came out today that was talking about how it’s a fanfiction, but it’s a it’s a deliberate reclamation of history. The thing about fanfiction is that fanfiction is taking an established story that we know and we culturally understand as a story and then reclaiming a story. The problem that I have with the history in Hamilton is that we’re only just now I feel reckoning in a real way with the fact that history is in fact a fiction. So the relationship between the story that is Hamilton and the story—that is the fictional history. I love that people are like, Yay, this is wonderful, people get to sort of take apart and reclaim pieces. And like, I love that. Like if you tell me Harry Potter rewritten with Black people, I’m like, oh, sorry, not Harry Potter. We cancelled that. I don’t want to deal with Harry Potter. Oh, everything is not safe.
Diep: Everything is canceled.
Heath: No, but if we take if we take a story, like, you know, let’s let’s take any fictional story. Cinderella, like Cinderella, right? And we reclaim Cinderella. We’re reclaiming a fairy tale. And the power in reclaiming fairy tales is about the open power of changing the myth. And for me, we’re not explicitly doing that with American history, or at least it doesn’t feel like everyone is doing that. And I’m very interested in shattering the myth of American history right now. So for me, Hamilton in 2020 doesn’t actually actively work to shatter the myth of America.
And in fact, it continues to reassert the story of American exceptionalism, the story that there are individual men, always men, who impacted the change of the world in great and inspiring ways. And Hamilton does not confront that version of history. The thing that Hamilton confronts is that you can put a different body on stage and a different story can be told, and that for me is the thing that’s like, deeply Obama era, which is like, yeah, we have a Black president, and therefore, we have worked to dismantle these things. Yeah, we have a Black person playing Burr, therefore, we have sort of moved beyond this thing.
And I think right now we’re in this wonderful and terrifying moment, where we’re able to look more deeply at that relationship and actually say to ourselves, wow, I don’t know that history went like this. I don’t know that it’s the story of these extraordinary white men who did things. I think they might have had blind spots to. And again, it’s not to say that Hamilton doesn’t say that these people have blind spots, that they’re not people. It is a great story, right? The story of Hamilton is great. But my question is, how does it contribute to what our culture is saying about ourselves, about our relationship between the bodies in our country right now, about life? And that, for me, is where the sort of difference really lies, which is like, I don’t want to I don’t want to talk about whether Hamilton is good or bad. Hamilton’s great. Like it’s just so well done. Like, the craft on display is extraordinary. But but the insidious thing, what we’re actually saying, which is you know, that America is amazing, specificly that America is a genius project is like, ahhhh, white people love that story.
Kelundra: But I wonder if the way that Hamilton has been received is so much because of who had access to see it. So I will say that I saw Hamilton in October I believe of 2018. But I think earlier that year, I had already seen John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Moronswas almost Latin history for . So actually seeing Latin History for Morons, before you see Hamilton, I feel like totally changes the way you see Hamilton! It’s on Netflix, too. But I saw it in New York on stage at, what was it, Studio 54 I think it was. And I will say that that theater experience, at Latin History for Morons, was the kind of theater experience I wanted to have at Hamilton. Because the audience at John Leguizamo’s show was all brown all around, to quote Sandra Cisneros. It was the first time I’ve ever sat in an audience on Broadway that was all brown all around like that. And then it’s like John was almost giving you this context and his history inside of his own personal story. So I definitely had the experience of carrying that with me before seeing Hamilton.
Now, when we talk about the world of 2015, versus the world of 2020, I think that all of you have made salient points. I will say that when I saw the musical the first time, I was impressed by the stage craft, I mean, the technique. I mean, it’s Western musical theater done exquisitely. But it was always a fiction to me. In the way that the Schuyler Sisters story was handled, the misogyny was just more than I could stomach for one sitting. And the first time I saw it, and I felt the same way when I watched it on Disney+, even with the woman who he has an affair with—comedian Katherine Ryan does an excellent bit in her stand up comedy special Glitter Room where she talks about how, this woman went to her representative because her husband was abusing her and he ends up sleeping with her. It’s like yes, this is only the way a man would write this. Like what do you mean, say no to this? Like she’s desperate! Say no! So that was always like problematic to me.
And then the handling of the three fifths compromise and the way it’s kind of like glossed over, but you know, Eliza redeems the legacy by being an abolitionist. And it’s like, no, the three fifths compromise is literally what we are dealing with in the streets of everything in America right today. So when we talk about 2015 versus now, um, I think that the only difference for me and how I view it, is that looking at the Revolutionary War scenes in 2020 versus the Revolutionary War that’s happening on the streets of America right now. The war scenes struck me differently because it seems as if we are on the verge of another sort of revolutionary war, and we don’t know what our Constitution and what will the Federalist Papers right of 2020 be, versus what they were in 1776. I think that’s where it’s a little different for me because the issues have not changed for people of color in this country between 2015 and 2020. The issue was still higher unemployment rates and equitable access to health care, ICE and immigration detention and deportation being absolutely out of control, police brutality being out of control. I mean, we have to remember that during I mean, police brutality against Black folks has been an issue since the beginning of this country, you know what I mean? Right? I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s like, we had killings of unarmed Black people happening in 2015, and in 2016, and 2017, and they were happening in 2000. And they were happening in ’95. And they were happening to ’85. And they were happening and, you know, I think that we have to reconcile that. Another thing that I will say is different though, is I think that we have critical mass behind ideas today that we didn’t have in 2015. I think generally speaking, we have more critical mass around the idea that ICE needs to be abolished.
More critical mass behind the idea that the way policing currently works in this country doesn’t work, and that stand your ground laws in this country enables white people to kill people of color without consequences. I think we have more critical mass behind that. I think we have more critical mass behind women’s bodies and how women have never had full agency over their own bodies in this country. So I think we have more critical mass behind the ideas that the founding of this country didn’t honor today, than we did 2015. But I don’t see Hamilton I guess for me any differently today than I did in 2018, because it was always a fiction to me. And it was never something where it was like—it all felt like a metaphor. It all felt like satire. It all felt like comedy of manners. To me, it doesn’t take away the brilliance of the stage craft. It was always a work that was flawed.
Heath: I love everything you just said. I want to underline something that I or rather, I’m interested in making sure that, as I look at Hamilton, that in all of the spaces in which Hamilton is problematic, I also think that Hamilton also happenedou know, in 2015, and I think it represented a shift in a conversation that I think it was absolutely, that cannot be taken away. The importance of the shift that Hamilton did, which was about divorcing character from body, which was a defense of white American theater. That for decades, right, as long as as white American theater has been around, they’ve been defending the fact that these characters would never look like XYZ thing.
So Hamilton did an amazing scalpel-like attack on that particular institution of white supremacy. And I think that we would not be in this conversation, this beautiful conversation between the four of us wouldn’t exist without the existence of these sorts of things, right? The critical mass that you’re referring to, it’s like Hamilton contributed to that move if nothing else, even if it’s still problematic. Even if it’s an all in, in the face of all of those sort of, it’s problematic spaces. I think we got to just keep moving forward, we got to keep thinking about the things that we can change rather than being like, no Hamilton was it. Because I think that it’s just obvious that Hamilton wasn’t it. It was just a really great moment.
Kelundra: Absolutely. I think that you’re 100% correct. And I think that like I said, there are things that Hamilton to me and Lin-Manuel Miranda, I would argue did this within In the Heights as well. I still love the book of In the Heights more because I think Quiara Alegria Hudes gave it a nice balance that is missing from Hamilton and she’s just a bangin’ playwright. But yeah, um, you know, I think that Hamilton raised the bar, as people of color immigrants in particular always do, like shocker, that as soon as you give a Black and brown cast a bunch of money and investment they raise the standard for all musical theater for the end of time.
We can sing? Shut up. You know what I mean? You should go to a church on a Sunday. We could dance? Stop it. Um, you know what I mean? So I think that, you know, it showed off what we are capable of when invested in 100%. And I think that’s something that Hamilton does well, and I think also providing jobs is something that has done well. I mean, we can’t deny the fact that when you have three touring cast going simultaneously, how many hundreds of people is that employing that otherwise would not have been employed? So I think we have to give that credit, but also acknowledge you know, the spaces in which there are plot holes, and a hero has been made of someone who did horrible things as a result of having a musical named after him. Again, though, that goes back to the point I made earlier of, I’m not sure if a hero would have been made of him as much, had the audience that had access to see it early on been more reflective of this country, as opposed to the elites who could afford the ticket.
Jose: I want to say Kelundra that I love that you brought up, it’s not unique. It’s like immediately after going to that show, I remember saying, Hamilton is, for me, at least, the most boring, dull character in the show. And I’m like, how are all of these super cool, interesting, complex women in love with this guy that’s so bland? I was like, I couldn’t get it from the beginning. So it still doesn’t work. I still don’t know how, you know, I still don’t get it, but whatever. So we were talking about how Hamilton is the perfect musical, you know, to have come out of the Obama era.
So in many ways, Lin-Manuel also is very much like Obama and that you know, for people of color, for people who are Black and non-Black people of color also, we have so you know such few number of people that we can look up to, that it is very difficult for us to then acknowledge that they have a bad side, that they have that problematic side. And I mean, I’ve told Diep many, many times how much I have a problem with Hamilton. And it’s been refreshing for me to see now that the musical is available for everyone to see, Oh, God, I wasn’t alone, all of this time. And it’s important that we address what is our third and final bill for today’s session. And it’s the burden of representation. How when we have a person who’s not white, become, you know, be under the spotlight. By default, they end up having to represent everyone, and we are not giving them the liberty to be human beings, to be complex, to have both negative and very positive sides, like we just want them to be perfect.
And this leads to poor Lin, for instance, or even poor Obama to become holy cows. Were we to question their choices, we feel sometimes like we are betraying ourselves and that we are siding with the people who have oppressed us for so long. It was very heartbreaking for me to see over the weekend, when I am sure, for the very first time ever, Lin-Manuel Miranda was reading people react negatively to a show that was received with universal acclaim—Kelundra, like you pointed out, by mostly white press. And I wonder now even if those critics would have felt comfortable saying if they had any problems with the show? Not that I want more, you know, reviews by white critics. And it’s very heartbreaking because, you know, this man for the first time over the weekend saw, oh, wow, that people maybe don’t have only 100% positive feedback to say about my musical. And I don’t know if all of you saw that for a few hours over the weekend, he made his Twitter account private.
And, you know, as a human being, you can’t help but be heartbroken for someone to read bad things about themselves. And I realized that, you know, it’s impossible to be a holy cow, it’s impossible to be a saint. And why we are not giving artists who aren’t white, and people who aren’t white, basically, the same opportunity that we give, you know, other people where we’re like, okay, like, let’s separate the art from the artists, from the Roman Polanski and like Woody Allen, all that stuff. And instead we want, no one’s saying that about Woody Allen and Roman Polanski for instance, or Harvey Weinstein or like, enter like X number of problematic men—white men and women, right? But we expect our people to be perfect. And that is not fair. So, I wonder, you know, for the sake of transparency, if all of you would be okay with maybe answering the following question. How are we, in our own way problematic because we are Lin, we are Obama, we are every person who’s not white, who has had to carry that weight. And first of all, I was presumptuous, do all of you feel that you have to represent everyone, from your community and everyone from—like, if I fail at my job, they’re never going to hire a Latino again, in my case. Like, I feel that, if I fail at my job, they’re never gonna hire an immigrant again. And I wonder for artists, if that’s true for all of you, and if it is, would you be comfortable talking about what makes you problematic? Should I go first?
Diep: Yeah.
Jose: Okay. I’ve extremely problematic in the many ways in which I have refused to see that I am not wanted, perhaps in white institutions and white organizations and instead, I have tried to bring in more people of color to join me. In part because I want to see more people of color and non-white people join me in those places, right. But also I’ve been wondering, as I’ve been thinking about this question, is it also because I’m just tired of being alone and I want to share my misery with these people, like why should I be the only one suffering?
One of the things that led me to, I’m in the process of creating a theatre critic institution, you know, organization for critics of color. And I said to myself, stop bringing, you know, your people in to share the pain with you and instead just like create something new. I have been very problematic and not learning that I don’t need to please white people, that I can please myself and I can please the people who need to be pleased, actually, instead of like, imposing the same rules of whiteness. And obviously, you know, these are things that are ingrained in us. I was trying to explain to someone over the weekend that Latinos are extremely problematic, because we are raised on anti-Blackness and, you know, we only get to see movies and TV made in the United States, where we see ourselves as drug dealers, Middle Eastern people as terrorists and we see Black people as you know, criminals and like they’re always the person who’s really bad. And because we’ve become brainwashed by all that media that America is exporting, we aspire to be white. And I am very grateful to have come to the United States because I can see that how we’re being taught to not fight with our brothers and sisters, instead to fight for whiteness when we are at work. So, thank you for listening.
Kelundra: I will say that for me, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt the need to represent my entire community and carry my own whole community on my back. But I also don’t know what it’s like to not have been taught that I am doing that at all times. Anyway, so I can’t even distinguish between my own feeling versus what I was brought up to know and believe, which is that you know, you are are always a representative of X of your community, of the Black community and you have to make sure not to come off as like unintelligent or angry or what have you. You’re busting up stereotypes every door you knock down. So I don’t know, like I can’t even distinguish between my own feeling about that versus what I was taught my whole life to be honest with you.
And then as far as where am I problematic? I would say that, I think that I am have been problematic in, I think I can agree with you in some ways Jose, in and trying to integrate spaces that claim to want integration, but actually weren’t willing to do the work of integration, right. So I think that there’s definitely some of that there. And I also think, in maybe not pushing harder for art created by people of color to get the same type of coverage as work created by white folks.
Because I think one of the sinister things about trying to come up in media in particular, and as you all may know, you as the writer of color, have to prove that you can critique the white work before you’re allowed to only critique the work created by people of color, right? It’s usually one of two experiences: either you get your way in the door by developing your voice, critiquing work and writing about people of color, or you have to prove that you have a knowledge of this white canon because your canon isn’t enough, right? To be able to be taken seriously by certain publications. And so it’s like, Okay, if I can see my byline in as many places as possible, to prove that I’m able to write about these things better than my white peers, because you can’t be just as good, you have to be better. Then I can start to write about Asian stuff, the Black stuff, the Latin stuff, the Indigenous stuff and start to pull more of that in there. And I think buying into the idea that like, those were the steps to being able to do that. This may be a place where I have been problematic. Now I will say, today right now, I think I’m just like, I’m with the rest of the world. I’m like F it all, and there’s no more censoring, there’s no more playing nice, there’s no more just like, whatever. But I can honestly say, especially throughout my 20s feeling like okay, if I can get in here and get them comfortable with this, then I can be able to do this. When it’s like, instead of going from point C to point A to M to K, just straight shot it. I don’t know anything I just said make any sense.
Jose: I hear you. It was great. Thank you for following me. I was like, oh god, no one’s gonna say anything.
We’re gonna leave having Jose be like, I’m problematic. Thank you. Bye.
Kelundra: We’re not canceling, I’m not in favor of cancellation unless you don’t want forgiveness or to do better. People who want to do better can be redeemed. if you don’t want to do better then you’re cancelled.
Heath: Yeah, I would connect the two questions you’ve asked. I’m going to answer the second by answering the first, which is, I think I hadn’t really felt a responsibility toward my identity. And I believe that that’s actually one of my most problematic traits. I am very loath to lead with my identity in any context. So much so that I aggressively will not lead—for many years, I actually actively didn’t tell people my race, because in theater, what I look like is the thing that mattered. I never get to play—as an actor, I very rarely if ever play my ethnicity tonicity on stage, because people see me and they see something else.
And so I get called in for, and cast as things that I am not, which has made me very interested in the authenticity question for many years. Because if the question is that, if the statement is that people can only play the thing that they are, I basically have no career as an actor because nobody sees the thing I am as what I am, which becomes this whole complicated thing, which actually results in my presentation being very much interested in—I’ve always been really interested in fluidity and fluidity is it for me, I use a trick that I call slippage, which is that I let somebody else define me and then I explained to them how I’m not that thing, which is very different than me stepping forward and defining myself. And the thing is, what I’ve sort of recognized in the last month or two especially, the ways in which that story that I tell myself is actually a tool of the white patriarchy, that my ability to defer, to sort of dodge questions of who I am is actually about my proximity to whiteness, that because I believe that whiteness is a thing that allows people to define themselves for other people. So if you have the privilege to define yourself by whatever you want to say you are, rather than by what people see you as—I think that that’s a real profound space of privilege that people have and people don’t question. And it has only been very recently that I’ve actually been reckoning with the fact that I have played into that story by actively trying to dodge questions of my own identity.
And that’s, I mean, it’s a really tough concept because on one hand, I don’t want to. It’s really easy for me to sort of be in a space and see myself as in the space because of my body of color or because of my sexuality or because of my gender identity or because of my neuro divergence. I can basically take all these things about myself and be like, the reason I’m in this space is this thing. But what I have tended towards doing is basically pretending like those things don’t matter. And pretending like those things don’t matter, I think is, again, a tool of the ruling class, the ruling class keeps itself in power by pretending like these things don’t matter. So that if you don’t get a job, it’s not that you’re a Black person. It’s that you didn’t work hard enough. That story, that’s the illusion. That’s the story of white supremacy that I’ve been told, and reckoning with the ways in which my own sense of exceptionalism, like the ways in which I am different or better than another person is tied to that story as told by the ruling class. And that’s a deeply difficult thing to reckon with. And I like talking about it in terms of theater because it gives me a nice structure that has language that I can use to talk about the system of theater. It is much harder to talk about that in terms of my own self, my experience of self in the world.
I don’t know if any of that made sense. It’s a challenge to be alive.
Diep: Yeah. It’s like the difference between what you want and what you’re willing to settle for. And I think in terms of like, you know, all of us working in white spaces and working within this industry, and you know, to take you back to the Hamilton conversation, I think the reason the musical was so impactful was because we had never seen that kind of complexity from bodies of color on the stage. And so at the time, it felt like something revolutionary when maybe I think—that kind of ties in what makes me problematic, was the fact that for so long, I’ve accepted incrementalism in exchange for progress. And we all thought, oh, Hamilton happened.
So therefore, we will get to the next phase. And then now in 2020, we’re realizing, oh, no, there’s mainly only white people being produced in 2021 on Broadway right now. We are never going to get to get to the next phase. Maybe it’s time to actually burn it all down. And I feel like for me, especially I’ve been really late to that part—having to turn my brain onto that part. Because I had been so obsessed for a long time with getting approval from white power structures and thinking I can fix things within those white power structures. And that’s the only way to do it. And now I’m wonder, and now I’m thinking perhaps Hamilton wasn’t enough. Like these small steps were not enough. And we need to be asking for more. And by we, I mean me, I’m not really telling you, I don’t wanna tell you guys what to do.
Kelundra: No, I think you’re absolutely right. I always say I want my mansion in the sky. The cabin in the sky is not enough. I want the mansion I was promised. I’m with you 100%.
Jose: Well, thank you all. I know it sounds crazy. But my idea of a perfect world that I guess, like a perfect America would be one in which all of us are, you know, whether white or not white are allowed to be problematic and complex and we are so far away from that. Thank you Lin-Manuel Miranda, Obama and Hamilton, for giving us an opportunity to have a conversation like this. It’s been very moving. Thank you all for sharing. And I’m sorry that I dropped that on you.
Kelundra: Thank you all for having us on and sharing your platform. I’m very proud of you and what you all have done over the last few years, you have shaken up the conversation. And I think, given some artists, even the inspiration to shake up the conversation where they can, so kudos to you.
Heath: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. This has been an inspiring 90 minutes.
Diep: Yeah, I cannot believe it took 90 minutes. I have so many thoughts that—
Heath: I have a whole list of things that we didn’t even talk about.
Jose: Yeah, we have four bills originally, but I was like, let’s skip to the last one because that I feel it’s very important.
Kelundra: Can you tell us in this last two minutes before you hang up, what was the bill we missed?
Diep: Like talking about the backlash, talking about what the musical didn’t address, and how it could address it Or maybe not. Because do you expect Lin-Manuel Miranda to talk about slavery in the nuanced way that was asked by everybody?
Kelundra: Oh, no.
Heath: Absolutely not. But I also want to clarify, one of the things that we have done is we have done a slippage point where we talk about Lin-Manuel Miranda, as though he’s the primary creator of this show. Lin-Manuel Miranda is in fact a body of color. So go him, but the four creators of that show are in fact, for cis men, or white. So it’s really important for me that in all of our conversations about how great Lin Manuel Miranda is, we recognize that the structure that Lin represents is that a group of white men have basically put him at the forefront of the story. Within the context of this genius narrative, to allow him to be the unique and exceptional person of color, in a system that serves a set of white bodies, a set of white male body, a set of cis white male bodies, a set of straight cis white male bodies,
Kelundra: And as a caveat to that, I think it’s worth saying that within the Latinx community, right, Lin-Manuel is a white Puerto Rican. He’s not Afro Latino. He does not identify as Afro Latino, okay. The reason he was cast as the chimney sweeper in Mary Poppins is because he’s not Afro Latino. I think that is also just an important thing to note is that he is a person of color, he does speak from a specific lens, I like I said, not discounting the inclusion of what he’s done with like Freestyle Love Supreme, In the Heights and Hamilton and, blah blah blah.
But he has proximity to privilege, by virtue of not being Afro Latino and is educated in you know, in the way that many of us that most of us on this call, with the exception of Jose you know, educated in PWIs and learned the way to navigate them. You know, there’s a set of tips and tricks, that code switching gives you a toolbox. You know what I mean? That everybody doesn’t have access to, where you know how to get things out of people, because you’ve learned how, because you studied them,
Heath: And there are bodies that can codeswitch with different effect than other bodies.
Jose: Yeah, you wouldn’t be surprised because I went to the American school in the Honduras and I know everything about the American Revolution, and I don’t know who the Honduran national heroes are. We’re not taught anything about the indigenous tribes over there. And I lived in Costa Rica when I was an adult, in fact, I had someone who lives in Costa Rica who told me blank-faced that there are no Black people in Costa Rica and my mouth just like, you know, my jaw fell like that. Yeah, you wouldn’t be surprised with how much America influences the way the rest of us all over the world are educated and what we are taught and what we are allowed to think and not think about so. Thank you both. Again, for this. It was such a pleasure. It was such a joy.
Diep: Oh, thank you. Thank you all like this is longer than we thought and so I am so appreciative that you both took the time to do this with us.
Every week, culture critics Diep Tran and Jose Solís bring a POC perspective to the performing arts with their Token Theatre Friends podcast. The show can be found on Spotify, iTunes and Stitcher. You can listen to episodes from the previous version of the podcast here but to get new episodes, you will need to resubscribe to our new podcast feed (look for the all-red logo).
The Friends recorded on June 23 where they discussed the news that Broadway will not be back until January 2021 (at least). They also went into a deep dive on 2666by Seth Bockley and Robert Falls—a five-hour play adaptation of the Roberto Bolaño novel, that is currently available to stream for free at the Goodman Theatre’s website.
Then they hop on a Zoom call with Raúl Esparza, where Jose manages to hide his excitement and act like a professional. The four-time Tony nominee, and Law and Order: SVU cast member, has been doing a lot of virtual theatrical experiences, including hosting the Stephen Sondheim birthday special, Take Me to the World, and doing a monologue from his kitchen. Esparza talks about getting type-casted and how he hopes the theater of the future will be cheaper. This weekend, he will be doing a live reading of the comedy Tartuffe, produced by Molière in the Park.
Here are links to things that Friends talked about in this episode.
Diep: And we’re your Token Theatre Friends. People who love theater so much that I actually had a dream about being in the theater last night and and it was just me and a bunch of actual plants. Oh no, it wasn’t a dream it was actual reality. Did you see that article about the classical music hall in Barcelona that just put actual plants in the audience while the musicians played. Oh my god, it’s so heartwarming. I will send it to you. Okay.
Jose: Did you see that thing? I think it was in Korea where they filled the stadium with little plush toys because there’s no audience. We’re probably gonna say the same thing, imagine like having like Beanie Babies instead of like angry old white people shushing us at theater.
Diep: Yeah. Oh my god or imagine when you go to the theater you also get a free houseplant.
Jose: Oh, that’s a big responsibility.
Diep: They’re very relaxing. I’ll send you a houseplant.
Jose: Okay, but it’d be like plastic cuz I was gonna die.
Diep: I didn’t have a green thumb either. And then quarantine happened. And then I realized, Oh, I get my coffee in the morning. And then I water my plants. And then I feed my cat. Maybe not necessarily in that order, cat usually comes first. And there are certain plants I’ve discovered where you can where you can not water them for like weeks and they’re still alive.
Jose: Are they plastic.
Diep: No, I wrote about it in the newsletter, which obviously you did not read Jose.
Jose: Oh, I read it. I just I’m forgetting my facts right now.
Diep: Okay, well, how are you feeling? What are you thinking about?
Jose: I’m sweaty, I’m exhausted. Oh, these fireworks are gonna kill us all, are this crazy in Astoria as they are in Brooklyn?
Diep: No. What are your theory about the fireworks because because I’ve been hearing some conspiracy theories.
Jose: It has to be someone in power cuz every time I hear them and just been like many instances where I feel like I’m going insane, like I feel like I’m being gaslit clearly because there’s some times when I’ll be like, you know, like just chilling at home and it’ll be like two in the morning and I hear this like explosions, all the fireworks and I go to my window and there’s nothing to be seen. And what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard and seen many times, when I hear the you know the sounds, but I don’t see anything. There’s like helicopters also. So I wonder if they have like one of those, machines they use when they invade other countries, and they just blast sounds to terrorize people and to keep them awake and keep them you know, angry, not even angry because I’m so tired. I can’t even be angry because I’m too tired.
Diep: Yeah, agitated. I mean, I feel like it’s no coincidence. And you know, we’re going into conspiracy theory land. We don’t have not have any proof of this. It’s more like anecdotal evidence of a shit ton of people having fireworks issues, people in New York are like, popping off fireworks all night into the early morning. And where are they getting these fireworks? They’re illegal in New York, and why are the cops not doing anything about this? Why aren’t they investigating this? And so it makes you think, Hmm, maybe it’s someone inside giving these these terrible people free fireworks so they can light them off so, that we’re all too tired to protest and to call and to, you know, do all the activism work that we’ve been doing.
Jose: Right? It’s also, they mostly happening in neighborhoods where a lot of the protests were happening, you know, why aren’t they happening like the super rich white neighborhoods.
Diep: Maybe if they happen in the rich white neighborhoods, things will actually stop because you know, when things affect white people, that’s when change happens, right?
Jose: And coming soon to podcast near you, Token Conspiracy Theorists.
Diep: You should hear my theories about ancient aliens.
Jose: Okay, I can’t wait.
Diep: You know we miss theater. But a firework show every night is not the kind of theater we want right now.
Jose: A friend was telling me just yesterday, and I’ve never read it so I don’t know what it’s called. But he says there’s a short story by Kurt Vonnegut that said in the future in a dystopia where the people who have thoughts outside of like the system have like some sort of chip in their brain and every time they start to think outside of the box, the chip triggers sounds of fireworks. So like, I don’t know, maybe get like Katy Perry to sue the cops or something like, baby you’re not a firework.
Diep: Speaking of theater, did you hear that news about from the Broadway League saying that theater might not return until January 2021?
Jose: I know. And that’s why we’re very, I don’t know if I’m grieving because like, I mean, we kind of knew that this was gonna happen, right?
Diep: Mm hmm. I think you and I are the same way about this. Like, we always prepare for the worst case scenario just so that we’re not surprised and, and heartbroken when it happens. But it’s just been so frustrating to me, like the lack of leadership from the Broadway League about this. Because I know financially, they’ve already sold tickets for you know, for the rest of 2020. And they don’t want to like cancel all 2020 right away because then you have to give all that money back and you know, money’s very tight, right? Except of course, if you’re a producer and you’re hanging out in the Hamptons. Yeah, that’s another thing. Yeah. Where are you, Jordan Roth? But, but anything would be better than what’s been going on right now, which is just nothing, which is just “okay, well, we may be come back in July. Oh, wait, we may be coming back in September, or we may be coming back in January 2021. We don’t know.” Like, isn’t the point of being an industry leader is to lead the industry towards a better future or vision for it and not just fly by the seat of your pants.
Jose: But I mean, just remember the way that Broadway just like pretended #MeToo never happened. So they’re kind of doing the same with COVID. And everything that’s happening right now, they’re pretending that you know, everything’s normal. And it’s just like a, I don’t know, a dark, very dark, you know, a very long dark night at the theater and I don’t know why because it’s clear that things are never going to be the same. So why are they doing this? Like, how do we get new leadership on Broadway? I mean, can we vote them out? Like we hope to with the Republicans in November?
Diep: It’s appointed by like a bunch of Broadway producers. I mean, granted the Broadway League, it’s not like they own a theater. It’s basically a conglomerate of our producers trying to come together to make a decision about something and I guess no one wants to make a decision about anything.
Jose: I mean, they can pay us and we can make the decision for them, right.
Diep: Yeah, right, right. Okay, So enough about that. Why are we talking about today?
Jose: We talked about the very sad thing, but now we’re going to talk about a very long show, which is a good thing, right? We watched the Goodman Theatre production of 2666. It’s an adaptation of the Roberto Bolaño novel, and the Goodman made it available for free, for people to stream and it’s split into very handy, like miniseries, vegetable sizes. And I think we both did it like over a few days, right?
Diep: Mm hmm. I did over two nights. Yeah.
Jose: And we’re gonna talk about that and how we both love marathon theater. And obviously this this made me think so much about that.
Diep: Mm hmm. And then after that we have an interview with Raúl Esparza. Jose is very excited to talk to Raúl in Spanish. And this Saturday Raúl Esparza are will be doing a reading of Tartuffe. Tartuffe is being produced by Moliere in the Park, and you can find the performance on their YouTube channel. They’re doing two performances on Saturday, June 27 at 2pm and 7pm. And the video of the performance will be online until July 1 At 2pm. So once again, actors acting in their own home, making themselves up.
But first, let’s talk about this five-hour play that we saw. Oh, and just for some background, the Goodman Theatre is one of the biggest theaters in Chicago. And they brought a number of productions to New York, including a four-hour production of The Iceman Cometh, starring Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy, which was wonderful, like surprisingly wonderful. Yeah, so I was really excited to see 2666 because it’s adapted by Seth Barclay and director Robert Falls. And you know, it’s epic. It takes like this novel that’s very, it’s a very fragmented novel, like each section can basically stand on its own. And what the adaptation basically did is just make a full a five part show.
Jose: I was reading about all the, you know, other reviews from Chicago and people like saying how the breaks were structured and all that. And that made me really want to, you know, experience it in the theater, you know, with all the people. Because if we sat through 24 days of The Inheritance, I would certainly sit for five and a half hours.
Diep: I wasn’t the only one comparing this to The Inheritance! And if you follow us on Twitter, you know how we feel about The Inheritance. Did you like this Jose? I feel like you’re better equipped to speak on this production than I am because I haven’t read the book, which is 1000 pages, but you have so I want to hear your thoughts first.
Jose: Well, I mean, that I don’t think that makes me better equipped technically, because that book like Roberto Bolaño, like I love Roberto Bolaño so much, and it’s one of those authors that, so I can comfortably say that I love him, but I don’t get him. I mean, I don’t get him, he was so like, remarkably strange. And at times, like getting lost in his books feels like, okay, I don’t know where I’m going with this. But then like, it’s like been two hours and you’re still reading. And you’re like, I don’t know, I don’t know who any of these people are, what’s going on right now but the language is so rich, and the ideas are so wonderful that you keep going. And this production made me think about that, like, in a way when you get into one of our Roberto Bolaño books, it’s kind of like getting lost in a tree, where the things overall don’t necessarily connect to each other. But at the end, you know, the next morning when you remember everything you’re like, Oh, yeah, like you get some really profound, really wonderful insight. And there’s also like a richness of the way in which he, you know, craft something so epic out of this. It’s almost like a vestige of like Latin American history and like Chilean history, and he just like, I don’t know, it’s like this world building that makes me makes me very sad that he’s no longer here.
Diep: Yeah, it was his final novel. And well, I’m gonna try to sum this up the best that I can the plot because there’s really no plot
Jose: Break a leg.
Diep: You know, it’s very much in the modernist novel vein of a bunch of things happen. They may be connected by a theme, but you’re not in it for plot, you’re in it for language. The first part is about these European authors who are really obsessed with this German author named Archimboldi and they’re trying to find him because he’s a recluse. And they’re super fans. And they traveled to Mexico to try to find him because they heard that he was last seen in Mexico, and then they get to Mexico and then they get roped into this kind of mystery novel about how like 500 women are being murdered in the city in Mexico, which was based on a real life event. And the government and the police have done nothing about it. And these things kind of, they do come together. At one point, kind of The Inheritance, it’s kind of a meditation on, like the ability of literature to take us outside of ourselves and to help us escape and to help us find meaning in our chaotic lives. And on the other hand, it’s also a mystery slash a record of collective trauma. Is that, did I do okay?
Jose: Is this the first Bolaño adaptation you’ve seen?
Diep: Yeah.
Jose: Your summary made me think of a few years ago when there was a production of another adaptation of a Roberto Bolaño novel called Distant Star in New York, and I did it interviews with the people behind it. And I remember when I went to the rehearsal space where they were doing it, they had like, this table full of clippings, of like references and stuff that they use for the the show. And his novels and also like this show, that production Distant Star kind of feel like that where, you know, like, it’s like this, like wealth of things like spread all over that somehow they seem very overwhelming at first, but you’re always able to, like, you know, find something really, really valuable in it. Mm hmm. So, yes, it was a great, great, great summary.
Diep: Yes. Did you like it?
Jose: Yes, I mean, I was very impressed by how, again, this stuff was like, you know, it took me like, a decade to go through the whole thing because it’s so long. So I was like, I really admired the way that they, you know, made it make sense on the stage, especially like things like that that are super heady. Like after an hour or so you start getting exhausted so maybe it was the fact that it’s like perfectly split into several episodes that made it more manageable or digestible, I guess but yeah, I liked it. I mean, I was very I actually I was more impressed than—yeah, I have like more admiration and love for it. It’s like holy shit that people can do stuff like this right now.
Diep: Game recognizes game. Yeah. No, like I really—okay so I cannot say I enjoyed this experience. I can’t say like what I got from it the thematically resonated with me on, I can’t say it resonated with me on an emotional level. Which, I just have that feeling about most modernist literature because they’re just so written, the way they’re presented, it’s just so much at a remove and it’s so nihilistic about human behavior, and just so hopeless that it’s not an enjoyable experience to sit through. I do appreciate that I didn’t have to, like you know, spend 10 hours reading a novel. I only have to spend five hours with bathroom breaks. So I appreciate that. I appreciate how like every section was different stylistically. Because when the whole thing first started and they presented it like a panel discussion with a bunch of white people who are narrating the action, I was like, “Oh my God, if this is gonna be if it’s gonna be five hours of this, I’m gonna shoot myself. Like, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to this experience.” But every single part had like a different set, had different styles. Like part three, which was my favorite part was was kind of like a movie—it was so much about silence and so much about the characters reacting and taking in this new city that’s very chaotic, and the music. So I appreciated the narrative diversity of the entire thing, it kept it really interesting to me and I appreciate all the actors were able to transform it to different characters and time periods very seamlessly. I just, I admire to thing, I did not like the thing.
Jose: I mean, that’s that’s not a bad thing. Right?
Diep: I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s more like what what what did I spend five hours doing? Like what was what was the point of that Jose? What is the point of this?
Jose: I dunno. I mean, at least you were you were entertained, right?
Diep: Yeah, there’s some parts where I was very much like, this needs to, we need to wrap this up. I don’t know where we’re going and now, oh, wait, there’s no point. I just sat through this boring ass scene for nothing. Why, why?
Jose: I’m just right now imagining you as Roberto Bolaño’s editor telling him, “stop writing after like the 400th page, like, stop, like, give us the ending right now.” I appreciate right now, you know, like something so heady and something so, because yeah, I do love that and I’m glad that you mentioned the styles because one of my favorite things about the different styles was that they’re not, I mean, they clearly like very specific and very different, but they’re not done in like a very showy way. It’s not production is congratulating itself, or like being like, you know, well done and well crafted and stuff. It’s very seamless. Um, and again, that reminds me also, like, Bolaño’s books, which are like, genre-defying. Someone might read this book, for instance, or Distant Star and call it a mystery like you did, or call it like, you know, like an intellectual brainy novel or, like a political piece, you know, and it’s like, I’m not that that something’s like so it’s a puzzlement. You know, so I don’t think the possibilities are so like, endless that I’m like, oh, okay, it’s exciting, you know, to have, it’s exciting when artists invite audience members to think a little bit, and not just like, give them like a bunch of like, you know, tiny suggested ideas for them to just like, learn a lesson, for instance. And that’s why I was like, so jealous of the people who got to see this in real life.
Diep: I’m wondering because what was really disturbing to me, the most disturbing moment for me was the fourth part, the part about where they, where they list all the crimes that happened to the women and, and, and it gets—it’s a lot rape happening, a lot of recounting of rape and strangulation and just generally, you know, trigger warnings everywhere if you’ve been a victim of, you know, of sexual violence, here’s a section for that, especially because there’s these terrible men in that section who make really, really, really disgusting jokes about women. And I hated the audience. Whoever recorded that audience. They were laughing, there’s some of them were laughing at the joke, and I hated all of that. And so maybe this was me, you know, taking on some of the nihilism of the novel where I was like, you all suck. The creators of this place just showed all of us how much you all suck, and it doesn’t make me feel good. I think that was part of it. It was just showcasing violence and showcasing like, how numb people are to it, especially men and how they’d rather laugh at it than do anything about it. But then it also started to troubled me that we don’t there’s no, I mean, in real life, there’s no resolution to this kind of violence. It still continues to happen, no one does anything about it. And there’s no resolution in the novel either instead, you just kind of take like the hard left in the next section, and you don’t really go back to that ever again. And I don’t know, I don’t know what to make of that.
Jose: Well, I guess that’s the whole point about it. Like, you know, it’s so frustrating because there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just a little bit of existential dread for you take home. Well, I mean, you saw at home so to live with already. After five and a half hours. It’s, you know, it’s a it’s a place of complete discomfort. And I think about for instance, remember what we went to the theater in the past and someone laughs at like a gross joke right? I always wondered like, Who the hell was that person because I want to see who they were. So I can like know it was them, and that whole thing about the anonymity of you know, like sitting in the dark and being able to like let out like your most like basic impulses, almost like your basic instincts and like laugh at like gross jokes and like laugh at sexism and violence is, it’s disturbing. And do you think you would have felt differently about this show if you had seen it pre quarantine and pre right now?
Diep: Not really, only because, you know, we had the #MeToo movement in 2018, which is basically a compendium of women recounting their trauma hoping for change to happen. And my problem with these displays of violence on stage, or even on screen, is there’s a very fine line between between education and exploitation. And I feel like this experience, maybe the novel but I didn”t read the novel. But the theater experience, it veered a little bit closer to exploitation for me, just because you don’t say anything that a woman doesn’t already know about men’s capacity for violence. And so that nihilism is just like a fact of life that you know, women just live with. And it then becomes like, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. So that means you’re talking to the men in the audience. And I don’t really feel included in this conversation. So why, what am I doing here? Where are the women on the creative team? Where are the women?
Jose: I never thought about that. That’s so interesting. I mean, I guess that speaks to my male privilege. Like just last week. I was saying some things to a girlfriend of mine and she was like, I know everything you’re saying I know everything you’re saying because I’m a woman and we live with it every day. And yeah, you know, it makes me very sad because I think of myself as someone who is a little bit more in tune with women and, you know, non straight male people. Apparently lots of lots and lots of male privilege over here also, cuz I was like, my mind was like, even right now that you were saying that I’m like, which is sad.
Diep: I know, which is why we started the podcast so we can, this is an exchange of ideas. But then also, where are the women on this creative team? It’s two white man adapting a novel by a Chilean man and and there’s a casual rape on stage in the play, and we just never talked about it. Who okay-ed this? Why did you think it was okay to do that and just never acknowledge it, just have it be a throwaway moment like that is artistically irresponsible. It’s artistically irresponsible. And it’s morally irresponsible.
Jose: None of those things I thought about I’m like, I was mostly impressed that you know, a Chicago theater head adapted Latino writer and I was like, that’s where I focused my attention. And now I’m like, holy shit, like, I need to work on a lot of removing my maleness, wow. That’s a lot to process when it’s so hard, right now.
Diep: I know. Well, that’s I guess that’s why we talk about the male gaze. You know, and we talked about—this kids is a great conversation about biases and what you have more, and the things that you’re more sensitive to based on your, you know, lived experience, like I’m just more sensitive to these kinds of things because because I live in a different body than Jose does.
Jose: I’m just nodding because everything you’re saying is true. Yeah, it’s very revealing. Hmm. I feel like it’s therapy. Coming to a podcast near you. Token Therapy Friends.
Diep: At that point we really need to need to start charging people.
Jose: Yeah, see none of these things I thought about, that’s so fascinating cuz I was just so into like, admiring the craft and admiring the work of adaptation, I’m a huge, huge, huge like a lover of adaptations, not like Broadway, you know, musicals about movies and stuff like that. But like when you take like something that’s like, impenetrable, and heavy and so like, you know, like intellectual and stuff and like, you turn into something else that works in a different medium. I’m like, bravo. I never thought about any of these things, and I’m very well very ashamed of myself.
Diep: You don’t have to be ashamed. You didn’t see it. Yeah, you can’t apologize for things that you’re not able to see, you know? But, but I had a better time than I did The Inheritance.
Jose: I mean, there we can both agree.
Diep: Oh my god Matthew Lopez is just never gonna talk to us.
Jose: We have done nothing wrong. I mean, there’s plenty of plays that we don’t like, and we don’t know him. We don’t dislike him. We just don’t like his play.
Diep: What the other thing this made me think about was the you know, how it’s going to be so long until we can actually sit and do like these kind of five hour experiences. When the theaters reopen, I can’t imagine that producers will want to produce anything more than 90 minutes because COVID spreads in contained spaces so you should not be in contained spaces with a bunch of other people for very long. And so I wonder if, like, this video 2666 is just gonna be like, in five years time it’ll be like, “ooh, remember the before time when you could do these long ass plays and it was just safe to sit in an enclosed space with this many people, hundreds of people for so long. Remember that time?”
Jose: But I wondered actually because this made me think of The Irishman which I’ve never seen. I never saw it because I never got to see it at the movie theater. And then I was like, I’m never gonna watch it at home. But this made me think of The Irishman, remember when it came out at the end of last year? There was this like controversy because like some people were advocating when it came out on Netflix, some people were advocating to split it like a miniseries and someone even came up with the right places to split it. So it worked as a miniseries. And all this, like, you know, snobby cinephiles were like, this is murdering Martin Scorsese while he’s alive, how dare you do this to him? And with this, I think that the segments work really well, you know, split the way they are. And I wondered if theater comes back that way, if it’s gonna start trying to emulate television more, because right now television is what’s pulling everyone’s lives. And maybe it’s gonna be like trying to get people to feel like they’re watching TV when they go to the theater and splitting longer plays—I honestly don’t want to sit for another four hours of Long Day’s Journey Into Night ever again. If it was like, you know, split into four nights, and maybe different actors were playing the characters or there were different directors doing each part, you know, something exciting, you know, something that leaves you wanting to come back and not be afraid of dying.
Diep: Yeah, no, I always feel so proud of myself though, after I get out of a marathon theater experience. Because it’s a love hate relationship. It’s like going to the dentist, you know, like I dread. I dread the experience going in because I know like, that’s, that’s gonna be a huge chunk of my life just like taken up and I have relinquished that time. And I won’t be able to get it back. But at the same time, when I finish it, I always feel like very accomplished, like, ooh, I did something, I went on a journey today. I committed to something today. And I’m going to miss that feeling of satisfaction and exhaustion that comes after a six-hour play experience because it’s epic. People don’t do that anymore because our attention spans are so low that we can’t watch anything longer than 90 minutes. Not even film you know, a 2 hour film is so rare these days that you have to like, put up articles about this is where you can go pee.
Jose: I mean, maybe you can take some novocaine when you go to see the 90 minutes show, and you’re gonna feel like you’re at the dentist.
Diep: Oh, god. And I do want to say that the free online access to 2666 is made possible by the Roy Cochran Foundation. And so I’m assuming that they helped pay for all the artists so that we can all watch it and I hope this is a model in the future if we can’t all be back as soon as we want to where foundations, maybe the NEA can fund a bunch of grants so that people can film and then stream their shows.
Jose: Do you know when until when is this available? I didn’t see that on the site.
Diep: Oh, yeah, I emailed the Goodman. They said indefinitely.
Jose: That’s very generous. Thank you Goodman for you know, allowing us to see this theater should be accessible for everyone.
Diep: Mm hmm. Anything else, any closing thoughts about this experience?
Jose: No, I just have new things to think about but I would recommend it for people to check out, you know, it’s probably a little bit more idea rich than a lot of stuff on TV, and a lot of other stuff that you might be doing. So it’s, if you like heady stuff, like you know, like Novecento by Bertolucci and Martin’s novels, this is for you.
Diep: Yeah, and it’s filmed very well, there’s a lot of close ups. It’s like a multi camera setup you can get really great details of the set that you won’t be able to get otherwise. And so yeah, I did not like it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see it. It is worth is worth spending your time with it. And if you really like it, then give the Goodman some money.
Jose: Yes. Thank you Goodman.
Diep: Thank you Goodman. You want to intro our guest?
Jose: Yes. I’m gonna hug him also. So next we are going to talk to the just really wonderful, marvelous Raúl Esparza. I don’t even know what to say about him. I love him so much. He is a genius. He knows how to sing, dance, he knows how to act like a freakin God. And you know one of my favorite moments in quarantine so far was seeing him in the Sondheim tribute. He is, you know, he doesn’t need like a bunch of sets, he doesn’t need like a bunch of lights or anything to just like do like something incredibly compelling and, I’ll just stop gushing over him and let’s go talk to Raul.
Raúl: Hey there. How’s it going?
Diep: Have you voted today?
Raúl: Yes, I did. I did absentee ballot actually. Is that background too busy? I mean, it’s my apartment. I’m not gonna do a virtual one, I think. It is what it is.
Diep: It’s been months and we’re done being whimsical.
Raúl: Who cares?
Diep: We’ve all seen the inside of celebrity apartments at this point. So it really doesn’t matter.
Raúl: Sometimes I stand in the hallway and I’m like, I haven’t used this corner of my house yet.
Diep: Jose and I both watching your 24 Hour Monologue. And so we’re like ooh, Raúl’s kitchen is a very tight.
Raúl: It is crap. The kitchen, this apartment isn’t bad. But the kitchen is crap. crap crap crap. And I had to try it in the kitchen. I didn’t have to make the frijoles, but I went ahead and made my aunt’s frijoles. I wrote to Matthew [Barbot] and I was like, you gave me a great excuse to make the frijoles.
Diep: How was it? Does it taste like hers?
Raúl: It’s phenomenal? Yeah, it does taste like hers but I’ve been making those every every night.
Jose: Do you usually keep all that Goya in the house or was that just for the play?
Raúl: Ha, I had a bag. I had a bag of frijoles. Because also when we were working on Seared they gave me a bag of them. Have we started yet? You guys want to just film shit?
Diep: Yeah, let’s do it, doesn’t matter. Yeah.
Raúl: So when I was working on Seared, they gave me a whole bag of frijoles to learn, Seared was this play I did by Theresa Rebeck. I did last year at MCC and I played a chef and in order to learn to do all the like flipping of hot onions and things you practice with frijoles. So I have this like huge bag of them. Hmm. Anyway, so I just use that.
Jose: What were the scallops in Seared made out of because I was like—
Raúl: Plastic. They were made of plastic. That’s sad isn’t it? Nobody eats the scallops.
Diep: The sizzling sounded like it was real.
Raúl: The sizzling was real. There’s a lot of stuff that I cooked in Seared, a lot. But the scallops is the one thing we did not cook. You did heat the oil. And that that thing was incredible because Tim made it look like a real kitchen. And he made it look like the burners were gas from the audience. And I have friends who were set designers who would come up and go, I can’t believe you guys fooled me. But all of that was fake. The lighting was fake. They were basically like, you know, little electric like hot plates that your grandmother would take to the beach. You know to make cafe con leche. So that’s that like these little tiny hot plates. And that’s what we used. There were four of them, or six of them, sorry. And they would turn them on, stage management and control all of it, and everything was faked, but they would get hot enough when they started the play, or at any time that they would do the timing for it that it could sizzle. You could cook things, you could make a full meal. The salmon that I made in the play, everything was fresh and real. Plus, we had a separate kitchen, going backstage, doing all the prep. So we were actually running a restaurant, it’s nuts. And the food was good. Actually, the food was really really good. We were at the chef named Ben Lickett who created these recipes. They were sensational, but nobody ate it.
Diep: They’re theater people. Why is no one eating the food?
Raúl: I know it’s a good question. They composted everything. Nobody on stage actually ate it. It all would just get tossed into the prop bins.
Jose: Oh my god, mi mama Latina would not—
Raúl: I know, no way.
Diep: I was, at the time that I saw you in Seared, I was dating a chef and he would always talk about how anyone can cook. It’s not about ability, it’s just about practice and about learning technique. And so how would you compare your cooking at the beginning of it versus, you know—
Raúl: I would say that it got substantially better, substantially, substantially better., I’ve always liked to cook and I learned to cook actually, because after I went to NYU, for undergrad, and then I, when I graduated from Tisch, I got a job in Chicago not long afterwards. And I was living in Chicago and kind of on my own there. I couldn’t find any Cuban restaurants. And I really learned to cook for myself because I would call home and be like, “abuela, cómo lo haces whatever, the frijoles or the masitas puerco or whatever stuff that I grew up?” I just wanted to learn to cook the food that abuela would make. And at first I sucked at it, but then I got better and I really liked it. And I love to follow recipes. So I find it very calming to be like, take these 10 things and you end up with this, nothing in life worse like that. So I like that. It’s predictable. Seared changed things for me big time. One, I learned to cook a lot faster. And I learned to cook without recipes. I learned to cook like, open the refrigerator and go, what do I got in here? Okay, we’re okay for dinner. Because usually it would take me two hours to be like, what am I gonna make? I gotta get this dish. Seared took the stink off that idea. So I still make the Cuban stuff. But I’ve learned to just take it easy and not stress out so much. And you’re right. Practice, practice, practice, practice, I’m a faster chopper, I’m a faster everything. But it applies to a lot of stuff. You know, we, the more you do it, the the better you get at it. And the more and the more you do it, the not the easier it becomes but the less sort of second nature, things start to get. And that’s nice. You know, it was a great way to act. I’ll tell you that because doing a play where you have to accomplish something like that on stage is the definition of like, a secondary activity where they talk about in theater school where you take an acting class: always have something to do, always have something to accomplish on stage. This was, I have to make a meal for two hours. You stop acting. You just stop acting.
Jose: That scene at the top of the second act, it’s almost like a like a scene from a musical, it’s like a you’re like dancing.
Raúl: Yes, that’s right Jose. At a certain point, people said that I was dancing to the music, which I didn’t even notice that, the music they were using Palmer the sound designer had created a piece based on how I was moving using Tumbao No. 5 by Cachaito, which is a beautiful bass piece. So without my realizing it, halfway through, I’m like doing this. And I don’t think Harry is in any way Cuban so I don’t know where the, between Kristina and myself, we’re like, alright, we like the music. It’s the Latin production.
Diep: Goodness. Well, we’re here talking to you about doing Tartuffe, the Moliere in the Park production. And you’ve been doing a lot of these virtual acting experiences.
Raúl: That’s a great description for them! They are experiences. Look, you know, it’s been a couple of interesting months for all of us. And this is not the way to make theater necessarily, but it is a way to make theater. So it’s not the only way but it is a way to make theater. And, honestly, the first month, the first month of the pandemic was intensely hard for a lot of personal reasons. We had a very big loss in our family of relatives on Sunday, Santiago Miranda who, who died in in Madrid and he died by himself. Speaking of Nochebuena, we used to spend Nochebuena at his house when I was a little kid, you know, so he was like an uncle to me and a dear, dear, dear man. And then I had a teacher that died in Miami and then relatives who were getting sick. And so the beginning of this felt like, what’s the point in getting up in the morning, and I know I’m not the only one who felt that way. And I personally did not get sick, but so many friends were suddenly getting sick or colleagues who had died. So in the midst of all that, I had the idea to create the Take Me to the World concert for Steve’s birthday. And that ended up being a crazy project to put together but a really wonderful thing. And for a week or two, it felt like we were in a room together. And then friends kind of like would reach out and say, “Hey, you want to sing a little song here?” And then you say, okay, because it began to fill the days in a way that was really nice and I can say about Tartuffe right now, unexpectedly, it feels like we’re in a rehearsal hall. Of course we’re not. But we get on these Zoom calls, essentially, that we’re rehearsing and we come up with ideas, and everybody’s talking and you’re reading the play. And you know, you’re not moving around and you’re still in your apartment. But you are creating something with Lucie, with Samira, with Toccarra, with Jennifer Mudge, whatever scenes we’re doing, we’re actually working together for a moment. And that’s extraordinary. It’s a great feeling. So all of this is a long way of saying that all these experiences have helped to fill my days. And they have helped to make me feel like I own a little bit of my creativity, and can share it a little bit more. Because as actors, we’re always spending our time asking for permission to do the thing that we know how to do. And I’m not saying this is the way to do it. But I think our future and our future opportunities potentially may change, given that we have all had to come to terms with the fact that right now, if we don’t create something for ourselves, there’s nowhere to go. So, yeah, I didn’t realize how many doors I had opened to this. It’s not easy, but at least it’s filled the time and has alleviated some of the sadness.
Jose: Other things that you are have been doing, you know, because you’ve had to be, you’re an art director, you’re a makeup person. You’re your own director at times, are there things that you’ve learned from the art that you’ve made in quarantine that you think you’re going to carry. If we ever leave our apartments.
Raúl: I feel that for the longest time, I felt that putting myself on tape for anything was a challenge and just the hardest thing in the world. It would take me four days to get myself on tape for an audition and that that’s just gone. Like any sense of this has to be perfect in any sense of, I don’t know what I’m doing or it’s not as good as what I want it to be. It’s not a real audition. That’s gone. Like, I actually called my agents and my manager and apologized. “I’m sorry ever put you through this shit. Like, I’m really sorry.” So stupid. Who cares? You know? So there’s that. On the other side of it is. Yeah, I’ve learned how to light myself a little better. I’ve learned that I can do it. I’ve learned that I can pick up a camera and, and come up with ideas. There’s a project that I worked on two summers ago, a musical adaptation of Virginia Woolf novel, The Waves, which we did a production of at Vassar, at New York Stage and Film. And that production was gorgeous to work on. And so here’s this musical. And it occurred to me it’s a musical about about six friends who grew up together in England, and who end up very very alone in their lives and wish they could all come together again and I thought we should do something with this play in quarantine. Now what comes with it? I don’t know. But the fact that I feel like hey, we could maybe make something out of this, we can maybe create something, turn on our iPhones and see what happens. That’s entirely new for me. So think of something that I did in life that was kind of workshop or a creative theatrical event that’s like, who knows what’s going to happen with it? And to think I can do something with it without having to have a producer in place. So that is another thing I can take from this experience. And I hope more actors actually have that sense of like, why not? Why not? Take charge of my own ability to create this.
Diep: What was the appeal of doing Tartuffe for you right now? Is it because the comedic aspect of escapism or is it like the righteousness of taking down someone who was terrible?
Raúl: Yeah, there’s a little bit of that, I’ve always loved the play. I really liked Lucie very, very much and we have talked about working on a project together. So she asked me to do this and I thought it would be kind of a fun thing. My very first professional job as an actor in Miami was at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in a Cuban adaptation of Tartuffe called Mixed Blessings written by Luis Santeiro, who was a writer for Sesame Street for many years, and who wrote a series that was seminal in my life called ¿Qué Pasa, USA? which was a completely bilingual sitcom about a Cuban family. And so I’m very fond of this particular play because it was my first professional experience. And I was also excited by the theme of what the play is about, because we’re living through a time right now where everybody feels, at least in terms of positions of power, it feels like we’re being led by a lot of con artists. And I felt that had something to say, something to say about how people take it back and say, “Uh uh this is bullshit.” And also then the last thing is, I wanted to see how this could work. I’m curious about, it’s a little bit of an experiment of a way to do some theater in the interim. And I think that what Moliere in the Park is trying to do here is really, really creative. Who knows what it’s going to be. But I think it’s just a really creative and interesting way to try to make something out of the limitations that we’re living through right now. And they’re bursting with ideas. So I wanted to see how that works. Because this is all very new sort of technology and new world.
Jose: I think one of my favorite things that’s happening right now is that there’s people for instance who know you from Law and Order, but they’re like, wait, he can sing? And have never seen you on stage. And you know, what’s happening right now is giving access to Latinos, to people of color, to people that are often kept from theater—we can be like very classist. And I wonder if you’ve encountered that, people are suddenly discovering this, you know, like probably the most, one of the most famous Latinos on Broadway. And they’re like, oh, wow, like why didn’t he sing on Law and Order?
Raúl: I’ve always thought we should have done a musical episode of “Law and Order.” Benson hits her head and then we all end up in the courtroom singing and dancing. Mariska would totally go for it. I know she would. She was so obsessed with “Hamilton.” I think she saw 22 times. How could she get tickets is what I want to know.
Diep: How many times did you see it?
Raúl: Three. But I saw it at the Public, you know. I still remember with Hamilton that because Renee Elise had worked on SVU and I’ve known Brian D’Arcy James for so many years and and Leslie is a dear friend and people would come in or I would see friends and they would say, “Oh my God, this musical, this Hamilton musical, oh my god, the workshops are so great.” And I would say, yeah, I’m sure it’s good. Whatever. Yeah, I’m sure it’s nice. “No, no, you don’t understand.” I’m like, yeah, you guys, whatever. You guys are being nice, Lin’s talented. It’s nice. We went to go see it at the Public. The very first second Leslie walked on stage, I burst into tears. And then I cried to the entire first act. The people next to me were like, are you okay? I’m like, sobbing. So, in terms of like, you know, theater has always been my, my, my love because I love the relationship to the audience. And I never thought that I would necessarily be an actor who made a lot of film or TV because I never really felt like I cracked it. Law and Order came out of the fact that Warren Leight and I had worked on Leap of Faith, and it was supposed to be a couple of guest star episodes. And then it turned into a really wonderful thing. Because he wrote beautifully. I really hit it off with Mariska. And they are just a tremendous group of people over there. They’re just a beautiful crew. And the surprising thing about television fame, it doesn’t happen immediately. But as the show goes on and on, you’re suddenly recognized all over the world. And that opened doors to people who didn’t know my work before. And that comment about, “Oh, I didn’t know you could sing.” It was constant, you know, it’s constant.
But if the work on television brings people to my work on stage or any of the other things that I’ve done, then I think that that is extraordinarily good in terms of what’s going on now, for instance, in the world of being a Latin actor, you know, I can’t tell you guys the number of times I’ve been told to, “Change your name. You don’t look like what we expect you to look like. You’re not Cuban enough. You’re not.” And what they mean by that is you’re not, you don’t look right to play drug runner number three. Because auditions for that, going for movies in Miami would be like, No, no, you don’t look Cuban. What do people mean? Coming out of Hollywood to tell me what Latin means. So it was a very big deal to me to hang on to who I am. And where I come from and to own that over and over and over again. And the very first time I saw my name on the marquee on Broadway, not the very first time but when I saw it for “Company,” actually, because it was so huge, and it says Raúl Esparza, over the marquee. All I could think about was like, that’s my dad’s name. And that’s my grandfather’s name. And that’s my great grandfather’s name. Because we’re Cuban, and we all call each other Raúl. Like, we’re very creative, but we’re all but that’s, there’s a whole history there of, of have men who lived in Cuba who came to this country. And then the fact that I get to be up there. And carry their name forward was just a really big deal to me. And I hope that whatever little bit I did helped open doors to more Latin actors getting the opportunity to play whatever parts they want to, instead of being told you’re not enough of what we think the stereotype is. So it seems to me it’s very important. And it’s also really great to talk about it now and to own it and to not apologize for it. I mean, not to ever apologize for it, but to just really be loud about it, which is wonderful. Because I do feel a little bit like we’re still pretty underrepresented in the theater world and on television and film, but I hope that it’s getting, we’re gonna, we’re gonna be able to take that into our hands.
Diep: Right, right. I mean, when I first read the anecdote about you seeing your name on the marquee for the first time and realizing like, I didn’t have to change my name, it made me think of like Lindsey Mendez’s Tony Award speech in 2018, when she got the same advice to change her name. And so, do you think the industry has gotten better in terms of, like you said, people being more open with it because I feel like right now there’s like a floodgate of people being really honest about the darker more racist aspects.
Raúl: No, I don’t think the industry has gotten better about opening doors. I really don’t. I feel that we are taught to expect a certain look from people and definitions of race and ethnicity are created a lot of times in this industry, particularly by what comes out of Hollywood. Like people who are very ignorant about what they’re doing. And I feel that it’s imperative to keep making a lot of noise about it. I told you about that Mixed Blessings playwright. The woman who played my grandmother who was huge Cuban star, Velia Martinez, who was on ¿Qué Pasa, USA?, was given an outfit, a costume for Spanish dancer or something as a joke at the end of Act One, they put her in a flamenco outfit. And they also put a big basket of fruit on her head like she was Carmen Miranda. And they gave her a serape, like a wrap. And she was like, “The hell is this?” And she was insulted about it, actually, you know? And this was many, many years ago, but that kind of thing comes at you all the time.
I remember when I did Evita for the 20th anniversary tour, which was wonderful to get to do and to play Che which is a complicated role for a Cuban actor to play, especially son of exiles. They would say to me, o”h, well, you know, this is a very authentic production of Evita.” And I’d be like, “why?” And they said, “Well, you know, because you’re Cuban. And everybody’s Latin.” And I was like, “Okay, so I’m Cuban. You’re Eva’s Puerto Rican, and your Peron I think has Mexican heritage. How does that make any of us more Argentine? How does that make us more authentic?” So actually, just because we speak the same language, we do not share the same values. And we are very different people. It’s the same thing I always felt growing up in Miami, where there’d be like, “Put your name, you know, you’re white, you’re Black, you’re Latin.” And I’d be like, “well, I’m white. But I am also Latin. What am I?” So it’d be like, “put other.” Other isn’t an answer for anything. So I really feel like, yes, the floodgates are opening. And that’s fantastic. But I think we have to get louder instead of getting quieter. I think we have to make a hell of a lot more noise. And I think that people need to continuously educate themselves about the assumptions we make, or the stereotypes that we have about what, who people are. I mean, the number of times I’ve been asked like, “hey, do you speak Cuban?” Really? Well, that’s not a language. But I do speak Spanish. Or they say, “You don’t sound Cuban.” And what do you mean? What does that mean?
Diep: Yeah you don’t sound like Ricky Ricardo, right?
Raúl: Yes. [in a strong accent] “Hey, I’m Cuban now, that’s what I sound like if I’m Cuban.” Look, some of that’s funny and some of that is extraordinary. Speaking of Ricky Ricardo, did anybody transform television more than Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. If you think about that man being the genius that he was, understanding that his wife needed that platform, understanding how to build a studio audience and a three-camera shoot, and do all the things that we took for granted forever for sitcoms, Ricky, Ricky, Desi Arnaz, created that, you know, and then headed a studio. So all that joking led to a great deal of power. But it’s a struggle that has to constantly keep getting renewed. And I think it’s important to know that we need to own that for ourselves and decide, you know whether the joke’s on us or we’re the ones telling i.
Jose: Did you ever play the part where you were actually surprised that you got it, because you thought that the cards are stacked against you?
Raúl: That’s a good question. I was surprised I got cast in play George Surat in “Sunday in the Park with George,” remember that? But that was because I was so new here. I was so entirely new. And nobody, nobody, I had only done, I had done, “tick, tick….boom!” I had done “Rocky Horror.” And that was like a huge, starring role and that opened so many doors but that was very surprising to me. I have to say that, no, I have never, I have never felt, other than things like that where I’m not famous enough or I’m not sort of well-known enough for you know, I’m not really seriously in the running. I have never felt like the cards are stacked against me in any way because I’m Lat necessarily. Except when it comes to Latin parts and then I just simply don’t get cast. They just will not. Barba was a Cuban character because Warren made him a Cuban character and we decided to go for that. And that was a part of his story. But I think that’s about it for major things I’ve done professionally, where someone will see me as a Latin, as a Latin. So the cards are stacked against me in the opposite way for Latin parts. Again, I don’t look like what the the expected stereotypes and I’m not really even sure what they mean by that, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure they know what they’re looking for. I remember coming in for Capeman to audition, when I was still living in Chicago, and that amazing music, Paul Simon—coming in for audition with Paul Simon and singing for him. And he said, “That was really good. But you’re Cuban, so you can’t possibly play Puerto Rican.” And being like, “Okay.”
Diep: Do you think it’s also like, part of the—and Jose, tell me if I’m like using the right language for this—what’s stereotypically Latin versus like, what the population, what the people actually look like, which spans a whole range? The identity is very, it’s varied. And American culture not being able to recognize the fact that there’s of a diversity within Latinx culture.
Raúl: Yes, I think Latinx culture feels too varied and too multiple to be contained. And people in Hollywood, especially I feel a little bit less so with the theater because the theater is a physical place where talent can really blossom. And the talented people can come in the room and kind of blow you away and they’ll get hired, hopefully. With Hollywood at least I think that there are constant efforts to put people in boxes because it is easier, because you are casting personalities, types, and not necessarily I mean, sometimes glorious, glorious actors. Of course, filmmaking is brutally hard when it’s well done. But they’re also casting inside a container of an idea of so that no acting is necessary, so that you can simply look at the role. And that’s the definition. And I think that also, in American culture, there is such a constant interest in things being Black and white, yay or nay, A or B, and there’s no room for complexity. And that means there’s no room for complexity in human experience either. There’s no room for the difficult explanations. I think of Hillary Clinton who kept saying, “I can’t give you an answer that is a soundbite about these issues. That man can, but I can’t.” And then they attack her for that. Or anybody—Obama was too intelligence, he spoke to well, you know.
They don’t want to hear the clear, more complicated version of things, they want to hear the easy answer. And I think it does also apply to this, to what we’re talking about here, that that multitude, multitudes with many different colors and shapes and sizes and varieties of experience within something that they want to call Latin is uncomfortable. It’s very uncomfortable and not at all the way that is easy for decisions to be made, particularly in entertainment and also in politics. My experience as a Cuban American growing up in Miami is very different from someone who is Nuyorican. You know, we share many things. But there are others, there are other aspects. Or someone who grew up with a Mexican family say in Chicago, or in California—everybody, we bring, we carry our cultural heritage with us and we carry our families with us, our ancestors, and all of the history that shapes us. But the cities themselves take in a very different energy. In Miami to be Cuban was to be king of the world. At least I thought, until I left and I realized, oh, wait a minute, that was just my version of Miami in the 70s and 80s. There was a whole other thing going on that I didn’t know about. You know, a whole other concept of what was political. It was what was political power, and what was the focus of life in the city at the time. Whereas I had met other kids who were raised to feel almost ashamed of speaking Spanish, of being part of the culture and had to sort of rediscover it later. I wanted to be so American when I was growing up among all the Cuban kids in Miami, and then I left and all I wanted to do was be Cuban. But I didn’t know that. So I think that yeah, I feel that we all, we complicate things on a bigger scale, than people are comfortable with.
Jose: Let’s celebrate our culture then what’s your absolute favorite word in Spanish? And if it’s a curse word, then we’ll love you even more.
Raúl: Comemierda! That’s my favorite. I’m always trying to teach people how to curse in Spanish because I was like, come on. English is alright, but you got nothing on us.
Jose: It’s music.
Raúl: Yes, it is. It is it also because we could say it so fast and emphatically. And it’s code. It’s true. My favorite words are always like, the curse words, but I don’t know a Cuban who doesn’t curse every other minute.
Jose: When all of this is over, are you looking forward to being in a show? Or to see a show?
Raúl: I’m looking forward to seeing shows. I really am. I took it for granted that I could just kind of go see my friends do stuff. And now, I wish I hadn’t. First of all, theater’s too expensive. So I hope that one of the things that changes right now is that nobody could afford a $300 ticket or $400 ticket or $200. Like, hopefully, this will make some intrinsic changes in the structure of how we price theater and who theater is available to, I hope. But that being said, I took it for granted that I could go to see stuff and support stuff and then it was so expensive, so I didn’t always do it. But now I’m like, I want to go back. I want to be out there and see what people are creating. This is the greatest city in the world. I think it’s the capital of the world, New York, and I miss the energy of it. It’s so inspiring. And I want to get out there and because Joe Papp once said that, “The artists need an immediate environment to create. You get chipped away at like a block, you know a sculpture. Well, there’s no more immediate environment,” he said, “than New York City.” And I think it’s true. And I’ve been so aware of it in the silence for the last three months of, god we live here so that we can all shape each other. That’s how we get better. It’s amazing. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.
This may be a controversial statement, but I’m grateful for COVID-19. Not because of the death toll or the economic instability for many. But because it’s given all of us something that we didn’t have before: time and focus. As I write this, in New York City, we’re on our 12th continuous day of protest. On June 14, over 15,000 people showed up to Brooklyn, dressed in white, for a protest in support of Black trans lives (Riah Milton and Dominique Fells were murdered last week). Would we still be protesting if we all had to get up and go to work? Or would the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks barely register in the minds of non-Black people and then fall by the wayside due to the distractions of regular life?
Last week, I was tuning into the New York Times’ Offstage broadcast on Youtube, where they were showcasing musical numbers from Broadway shows this season. The event opened up with a panel of Black artists talking about racism on Broadway. During one emotional moment, Adrienne Warren, the star of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical on Broadway, said this:
“I’m not thinking about Broadway right now. I’m thinking about how I can help my people. And that is what I care about right now. I will not perform. I will not sing a song that does not mean anything. When I get back to my art, if my art doesn’t mean something, then what am I doing?”
Adrienne Warren
For so long, artists have been told to stay in their lane, that audiences want them to entertain, not be political. But with the pandemic and no way to create art, art has become activism. Last week, Beyoncé wrote a letter to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron calling him to press charges against the three police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor. Taylor Swift called for the take down of Confederate monuments. More than 50,000 theater artists (including Sandra Oh and Lin-Manuel Miranda) signed an open letter decrying racism in the theater industry in a letter that read, in part:
“We have watched you program play after play, written, directed, cast, choreographed, designed, acted, dramaturged and produced by your rosters of white theatermakers for white audiences, while relegating a token, if any, slot for a BIPOC play. We see you.”
Last Friday, I was on a Zoom call with over 200 artists and we were phone banking, calling the New York City Council to tell them to cut the budget of the NYPD by $1 billion. At night, I signed onto the third night of the #BwayforBLM, a three-day virtual event organized by the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, to discuss racism in the American theater and what can be done to make change. Right now, artists are bringing their power to build community, and to sway hearts and minds, to bear. They are pushing for both societal transformation and a better theater industry.
The lanes no longer exist, because systemic racism affects everyone. At the same time, maybe those lanes were a function of white supremacy to begin with, as a way to tell BIPOC artists that their lived personal experiences did not matter. And allowed white artists to live in blissful ignorance. These productions and institutions call themselves a family, and yet in the past two weeks, countless artists have spoken up about the painful racism they have encountered in those very spaces. Being an artist doesn’t render you immune from police brutality, sexual assault or income inequality. When your own body is political and the powers that be tell you to not be political, it is an erasure of the self.
BIPOC artists are creating change through first-hand accounts of their experience with racism in the theater industry. Day one and two of #BwayforBLM was for Black artists to tell their stories, first for each other, then for allies. “I and every speaker on this program is risking something in honor of honesty, humanity and restoring justice into our community,” said actor Britton Smith, who is also the president and cofounder of Broadway Advocacy Coalition.
But for BIPOC artists, there is a cost to speaking out, whether that’s an emotional cost that comes from reliving trauma, or financial one that comes from the blacklisting that inevitably happens. Black pain once again being put on a platter for white consumption. At #BwayforBLM, Tony-nominated director Liesl Tommy spoke frankly about how she’s blacklisted from multiple theaters because she’s spoken up against racism in theater.
While Black artists are telling their own stories as part of a call to action, white people need to ask themselves: What am I risking? As Tre Johnson writes in the Washington Post, “When black people are in pain, white people join book clubs.” On Friday, a bunch of white Hollywood celebrities released a video where they said variations of “I see you” and “I take responsibility” to a camera. They were rightly criticized for their superficial display. Because what good are these phrases of solidarity when Black people are still being lynched? As author Adrienne Lawson wrote on Twitter:
“I encourage each of these actors to hire a team of BIPOC feminists knowledgeable on intersectionality to review and advise them on script choices. No more white savior films, racially tokenized roles, and stereotype-perpetuating shenanigans. Take responsibility AND take action.”
Adrienne Lawson
Last week, chef Sohla El-Waylly took to Instagram to call for the resignation of Bon Appetit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport, because the magazine underpaid staffers of color in comparison to its white staffers. El-Waylly’s white co-workers joined her in that call, refusing to appear in any more Bon Appetit videos. Rapoport stepped down from the magazine a day later, something that wouldn’t have happened had El-Waylly not bravely put herself on the line, and had her white colleagues not supported her.
In order for change to happen, it’s going to take every single person, BiPOC and white, risking something. Black artists are risking their careers and future employment. The activists on the streets are risking their health. What are white people risking? Are they able to call out the most powerful, and the most inequitable, among them?
During #BwayforBLM, Broadway Advocacy Coalition board member Richard Gray said: “In these moments, it forces you to rethink whether you actually are a good white person—you shouldn’t be thinking that. You should be thinking, how can I become a better one. You live in a place of change. If you just dwell on what you think you’ve done well in the past, you are never going to change because you are going to be satisfied.” He said that white people need to think about what they’re “not doing.”
The creators of the We See You White American Theatre campaign said in a statement that they are currently gathering a list of demands for the white powers-that-be in theater. Meanwhile, #BwayforBLM is collecting signatures for a Public Accountability Pledge that reads, in part, “I pledge to use my social, cultural, and financial capital to amplify institutions and productions led by people of color, and to call out those that do not involve this leadership.”
The letter ends with: “Hold me accountable.” But as we move forward, I hope it’s not just BIPOC artists holding white people accountable. I hope white people continue to hold each other, and themselves, accountable.
Every week, culture critics Diep Tran and Jose Solís bring a POC perspective to the performing arts with their Token Theatre Friends podcast. The show can be found on Spotify, iTunes and Stitcher. You can listen to previous episodes from the previous version of the podcast here but if you’ve been a subscriber to Token Theatre Friends, you will need to resubscribe to our new podcast feed (look for the all-red logo).
On the second episode of the Token Theatre Friends podcast, the Friends sat down and recorded over Skype on June 8. They discuss the recent discovery that Broadway theater owners the Nederlanders gave over $150,000 to the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and why we should care. Plus, they talk about two theater productions that were filmed: Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu (available on Amazon Prime) and American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown (available on Netflix). They compare and contrast police brutality as portrayed by a Black playwright versus a white playwright.
Their guest this episode is Jasmine Batchelor, whose film The Surrogateis out for virtual release starting June 12. Batchelor discusses how the film opened her eyes to inequality for disabled people and what’s it like for your mom to be played on screen by Tony winner Tonya Pinkins.
Here are links to things that Friends talked about in this episode.
Our friends at Broadway Radio, who made a sizable donation to Token Theatre Friends.
The transcript of the conversation is below. If you would like to support the Friends and their work, click here to donate to their Patreon.
Tonya Pinkins, Jasmine Batchelor and Leon Addison Brown in “The Surrogate.”
Diep: Hi, this is Diep Tran.
Jose: And I’m Jose Solis.
Diep: And we’re your Token Theatre Friends, people who love theater so much, that even after a week of protesting and collective action, we still found time to watch two plays at home. We’re not just doing this for all protesters. We’re also doing this for arts lovers. And for you listeners who, for some odd reason, are giving us money to do this. What are you thinking?
Jose: We’re so grateful, we were so excited about how supportive—it’s like such a beautiful counterpoint to all the anger and heartbreak and soul crushing-ness last week, so thank you so much for supporting us like it. It means the world to us. We’re so happy. I could cry. But I put on mascara, you don’t want to see that.
Diep: Yeah, after the inaugural episode, we realized that we both, it’s not just the female presenting part of this duo. Jose also needs to put on mascara. So thank you for doing that for our fans today. And at the end of the episode, we’ll read all the names of the people who have given us money. Out of all of the places that you can give money to and there are many really worthy causes right now the fact that you all are contributing to get this project off the ground like I am just overwhelmed and I would cry, except, except I don’t really cry in front of other people. But I’m crying on the inside. But we have a great show for you today. First off, we are going to be talking about this past week in theater news. There were some very interesting discoveries that were that we was going around Twitter about certain Broadway theaters, and who they contributed to in the 2016 election. Hint, it was not to Hillary.
Jose: Sad.
Diep: And then we’re going to be talking about two shows that we saw this week in our homes. We are going to be talking about Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu and American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown. And we’ll talk about their portrayals of police brutality, and which play gets to go to Broadway and which doesn’t. Hint: it was not the one written by a black woman. Surprise! And Jose, do you want to talk to us about our guests for today?
Jose: I am delighted that we’re going to be talking to Jasmine Batchelor, who I have seen on stage a couple times. But I absolutely fell in love with her work. And I saw her as Isabella last year at the Mobile Unit’s production Measure for Measure, where she did things with her face and her eyes that you know, Shakespeare, sorry, but Jasmine doesn’t meet your words to convey all of the things that she can convey. So we’re going to be talking to Jasmine about her new film, The Surrogate, directed by Jeremy Hersh, and one of my favorite movies that I have seen in years.
Diep: So before we get to the interview, let’s talk about what happened on Broadway this week. But first off, Jose, can you explain to us how Broadway works in terms of who owns the theaters?
Jose: Okay, certainly I can. So basically, there’s a three organizations, I wanna say corporation and I keep correcting myself but are they that different from corporations? Not that much really. There’s three organizations that own every theater basically on Broadway, The Nederlanders, the Shubert and the Jujamcyn, who own altogether, you know, one of them owns like nine theaters and other owns like seven or whatever and then five. It’s so interesting because one of the first things that you learn when you’re learning about film history, for instance, is that when movie studios started in Hollywood, movie studios owned theaters, so they own each theater chain. One of the first things that needed to happen in the industry, for it to work in a more democratic way—the government had to intervene and break up these monopolies. It’s never happened for Broadway, though. Broadway’s a monopoly, it’s run by three companies. Most of them lead and started, not most, all of them and started by white men. So this week, we saw that, thanks to, I don’t even know how all of like access to information things works. And I don’t even know how people are inspired to, you know, go look for very specific things. But we found out this week that four years ago, the Nederlanders made an obscene amount of contributions to the—
Diep: $150,000
Jose: —to the campaign of a certain man whose name I don’t say out loud because I break into hives. But he’s 45. He’s the president right now. So imagine this back in 2016, as all of Broadway was patting themselves on the back with like, love is love and everything’s wonderful and we love everyone and bye inequality The people who were saying all these things were celebrating love and how we were all the same. We’re performing in theaters owned by people who were supporting racism, sexism, homophobia, that disregard of human rights, etc, etc, etc. The problem is that, as with most things that matter to the rest of us, Broadway doesn’t talk about any of this. So people this week were shocked when they saw those numbers. And what’s appalling to me that a lot of people are saying that they have changed, you know, the man who has doing all that has changed. But if you look at the amount of contributions and the amount of money they’re now giving to Democratic candidates, for instance, it doesn’t even come close to all the money that went to support this man who is now trying to kill all of us.
Diep: And I know if you saw this but Karen Olivo, who’s a Tony winner and whose musical Moulin Rouge was on Broadway this season, but it wasn’t at a Nederlander Theater, right? It was at Jujamcyn, well she posted up of commitment saying and in quotes, “If the money I’ve helped the Nederlanders make is going to causes that directly and negatively impact our well-being, I vow to stop. I’ll need to see receipts from here on out.” And I feel like, and so far like, that’s the first person I’ve seen make, big Broadway star, make that kind of commitment to not be supporting the system because that’s where all this ticket money goes to. That’s like when you’re buying a ticket to a Nederlander show. And they own how many theaters on Broadway do they own? Nine, nine. Yeah, when you go see one of those nine shows plus any of the shows in theaters that they own around the country, you are contributing in some way to these political causes that you may not agree with. And so that’s why, that’s what we mean when we talk about theater can be political because we don’t operate in a vacuum of, “Oh, these people just make art.” No, at the very top, these producers get millions upon millions of dollars every year and what are they doing with that money? Well, you can go online at fec.gov and see what they’re doing with that money. What has the conversations been like online from people in the community besides Karen Olivo? Have you noticed anyone making that kind of stand?
Jose: Not yet but, I love that Karen came out and was like, show me the receipts. And it’s time for people to talk about it. It’s one of the things that I even mentioned to you. We were texting about this, but I was so horrified. It’s like, does Cher know, Cher’s one of the biggest like anti, you know, 45 people in the industry, she’s always talking about what a moron he is. And how do you like horrible he is, what a monster he is. Does Cher know, her show, The Cher Show, that told the story of her life was, you know, happening, at the theater where four years ago, all their money was going to the Republicans. Does she know that? Like, I kind of want to be like Cher, you need to know this. I wonder if she would be like, “If I could turn back time. I would not let my show happen.”
Diep: Though I do have to say I was on the FEC website last night. And I did notice that Jujamcyn, which is owned by Jordan Roth, they’ve been contributing to Act Blue campaigns and Democratic campaigns and such, but they own fewer theaters on Broadway.
Jose: Good for them. And also, it’s I don’t think it’s coincidence that they usually have the most humane and the best lines for when you’re lining up to go into the theater, it’s so efficient and you don’t have to stand in line like you do at the other theater, so good for them. That’s good karma.
Diep: And we’re hoping, you know, we know like Patti LuPone, Barbra Streisand. There’s so many people, Lin-Manuel Miranda, there’s so many people in the industry who have been very vocal against this president. And I would love to see them be as vocal about the fact that the people who own Broadway have helped contribute to the state that we’re in. Because it’s easy to criticize things that you know, happen out there. But is it as easy when it’s in your own backyard? Like I feel like that’s when the rubber meets the road? You know? Yes, Jose is nodding with me very vigorously. But did you see the the petition going around to try to make the Apollo Theater which is located in Harlem, which has like more than 1000 seats into a Broadway theater?
Jose: That would be incredible, that that needs to happen. I mean, they need to, it’s not fair for instance, that the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center which like, what, like 10, 15, 20 blocks almost further from Midtown, right, which is supposed to be Broadway. It’s a Broadway theater. So let’s fucking make the Apollo a Broadway theater and let’s have Broadway theaters in Brooklyn and Queens. Let’s break the monopoly of real estate because that is what all of this is in the end. You can’t win a Tony if you’re not a Broadway theater. So yes, I would love to make that, to see that happen. You know, I would love to see the Apollo become a Broadway theater. Yeah. And yeah, even just by, you know, by geography by itself, it can become accessible, it can give access to people who don’t feel welcome at the current Broadway theaters. Yeah.
Diep: And you know, why is Broadway important? Broadway is important because of the Tony Awards and the fact that every single year CBS broadcasts this award around the country to show people this is what theater in America looks like. And most of the time the shows that get put on Broadway, most of the time, are shows written by white people, performed by white people. Like this season there are only three shows written or directed by Black people that were on Broadway in an industry that’s very much patting yourself on the back for its you know, quote unquote diversity. Like how many pitches have you and I received about these shows being like, Look, here’s the first Black what, you know lead for, you know, Chicago on Broadway, for example. Like there’s always like these like, oh, here’s the, this is the first of this demographic. And, Aren’t you proud of us for doing this? But what’s interesting with this time is I feel like people are saying, no, that’s not enough anymore.
Jose: We’re not proud of you for doing the bare minimum. We’re not proud of you. Do more.
Diep: Yeah, exactly. Like tear down a monopoly. And we’ll link to the Change.org, that petition to make the Apollo a Broadway theater. And once we figure out how to how to make other institutions a Broadway theater, we will get back to you about that.
Jose: Now we’re gonna be talking about, we were wondering about what shows we could see that were available to stream that had something to do with what was going on right now. And we both thought about Pass Over, which is streaming on Amazon Prime. And it’s this production directed by Spike Lee. But it was important also to show like the contrast with something else. And we thought about American Son, which is streaming on Netflix, and how both shows are about white supremacy, police brutality and the effect that it has on Black Americans and Black men and women living all over the world, basically also. So one of them is written by a Black, female playwright, the other by a white male playwright. So we’re going be digging into how two things that on the surface looked like they’re dealing with the same subjects and issues, but are not necessarily doing that. So do you want to get started with summaries of what Pass Over and American Son are?
Diep: Do you want to discuss each individually, like give a summary the thing, and then discuss that thing and then we bring them all together at the end. Yeah. Okay. So Pass Over, it’s a play by Antoinette Nwandu. It was first performed in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre, and that’s where it was filmed by Spike Lee. And it was inspired in part by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which was about two men who are just stuck in purgatory and they try to get out but they can’t. But instead of being about two white man, it’s about two young black teams who are stuck on a very poor block. In the version we saw it was a poor block in Chicago and they’re trying to get out. But there are different forces that are keeping them there, from like poverty to, to over aggressive police presence who tells them that they’re useless or they’re violent every single time, bringing them down. And they’re sleeping in the streets. So it seems like they also lack you know, parental guidance or educational guidance. And it’s all of these things that prevent them from leaving this block. And the only way they can leave unfortunately is through violence. We’re not going to spoil it for you but I was really sad about it.
I knew this play from reputation when it was in Chicago because It was very controversial and then I saw at Lincoln Center and just and what’s really sad is even before even before I saw it, I knew this was not going to end well, I knew that they were not going to get out and I hate the fact that that is my assumption going in and I am not wrong. And what was really interesting to me about seeing it is like the biggest. So when I was reading the reviews for the play, a lot of it talked about the overuse of the N word in the play. And one of the negative reviews use that as a criticism of the characters. And it just made me think oh like by discounting these young people because their vocabulary isn’t as advanced as yours, you’re kind of proving the point of the play, because society keeps telling these young people that they’re not smart enough and they don’t have potential and so it becomes, this play shows like how it becomes a self perpetuating cycle. And what was really interesting to me is, is like, the playwright Antoinette Nwandu, like she shows us like, the different nuances behind the very repetitive vocabulary. Yes, they say the N word a lot. And they also use the word brother a lot, but it means a different thing, depending on how they say it. And like giving them the room to just not be like, you know, a Christian Cooper, an upstanding Black person who has really great vocabulary and who went to Harvard. So obviously, he doesn’t deserve to get called on by the cops by Amy Cooper. But by saying, just because like they don’t look the way that you want them to look or sound the way that you want them to sound, it doesn’t mean that they’re, they’re not deserving of humanity and of consideration and of love. Because like, that’s always the excuse. And so by putting these kind of presences on stage, I feel like that is the radical thing. Especially when they’re doing in some cases, I saw it Lincoln Center. So it was a lot of white people in that audience. So if you’re forcing white people to see that, to face that, to be comfortable with that, like that’s a radical act to me.
Jose: Right. I have noticed that a lot. A lot of the time, I would say, probably like, 90% of the time, or more. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about when I talk about numbers. But most of the time when I see white people, especially if white journalists and white critics obsess so much, but something like the N word, they’re forgetting that when we have that word in plays by black artists, they’re reappropriating a word that had been used against them through the entire history of Black people living in America. So what bothers those people that they would focus so much on the language of the characters in this way? It that they wish they could say that word as often as they think it. And it bothers them that these characters are allowed to say that because they know it’s not a word that they can drop themselves in public for their pieces. Of course, they’re going to be obsessed with civility and proper language. Of course, that’s what’s going to happen. So it says so much more about the critic, when they talk about something like that, than it says about the play. I love that Antoinette Nwandu does so much with this, like you said, this white frame that Beckett. And also the play might be inspired by that by that setup, and by that storytelling device, the world that she opens up, through magical characters, and through spiritual connection. It’s more heartbreaking and much more effective than anything that Beckett ever accomplished. Because it doesn’t just stay within the limitations of what aesthetics and symbolisms does. It’s a play that’s like almost crying out, that the pain of its characters is so strong, that the only way for the playwright to be even able to convey it and to be able to speak about it in a way that doesn’t destroy her in the process is through this almost magical setting. And I did not get to see this play when Lincoln Center did it. Thank you for not inviting me Lincoln Center. I will never forget that. I forgive you, just invite me to see plays at LCT3. Anyway, you know, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be there and after a we talk about American Son, I do want to talk about the different audiences that we sat in. When we went to this place. You didn’t go to American Son on Broadway, right? Okay. Do you want to go into American Son?
Diep: Yeah, yeah. American Son is a play that was on Broadway in 2018. It’s by Christopher Demos-Brown. It was directed on Broadway by Kenny Leon, a Black man. Christopher is a white man. And in it, Emmy Award winning actress Kerry Washington plays a concerned mother whose son goes missing. She’s at a police station and no one’s giving her any information about what happened to him. And her husband comes in and and the drama of being in a multiracial household comes up. And it’s once again, I don’t have to spoil it for you tonight to tell you what you think has happened, has happened. What’s fascinating about this play is unlike Pass Over, which concentrates on the two young men who are the recipients of violence, this play concentrates on the parents and how they react. And through that it tries to humanize a son. It also becomes a conversation among Black and white people about race in this country and about whether respectability politics, whether if you look a certain, if you change yourself, and you look a certain way, and you talk more like a white person, and you’re more, you know, deferential to police officers, does that prevent you from being attacked and do people who look, the way that the young people look in Pass Over, and the way that they sound in Pass Over, do they deserve the violence? And it’s a 90 minute debate that doesn’t really go anywhere. And if you’re the type of person who consumes this a lot in media, it feels exhausting. And what’s interesting to me is it feels exhausting, in a way that Pass Over did it.
Jose: I agree with you on that point like it, you know, again, they’re visiting the same topics and touching the same themes and stuff. For instance, something out that American Son does is that it frames the action also on the three men we see on stage, as well as the son that we never see. And it’s almost also again about how gender comes into play in because you know, the son in question was a mixed-race son. The mother is Kerry Washington’s character Kendra, but the father is played by Steven Pasquale. So one of the most grossest moments in the play is when there’s a police officer who’s been talking to Kendra, played by Jeremy Jordan. And he’s been talking to her about, you know, he’s not giving her any information, he’s not helping her. He’s being condescending and horrible. And when he sees this white man, Steven Pasquale, come in, he instantly assumes that this man is siding with him. He starts talking about how ghetto she is, and about how she went from zero to ghetto. And then the guy’s like, “Well, actually, he’s my son and you’re talking about my wife.”
One of the most effective moments in the play, it’s the look in Kerry Washington’s face, the look of disbelief and what the fuck is going on, when she sees her husband who’s an FBI agent, giving this cop, who has been treating her like crap, his business card because he says, “Hey, if you need help at the FBI, don’t hesitate to reach out to me, right?” And we see the way in which whiteness comes into play for this guy. This guy for instance, he doesn’t even think about the fact that he would have never been able to the same thing for his son, because his son is mixed-race. My favorite thing about this play was Kerry Washington, I have not really been—I’ve not seen her work on TV as much. But I remember sitting at a theater that night on Broadway, I couldn’t take my look off of her. Because as the play trivializes almost everything that’s happening to this character, she’s always above the action and she’s always above the fray. That’s incredible. It’s soul-draining and heartbreaking, just horrible. I felt her fury and I felt her grief. And it’s one of those performances that I know I’m never going to be able to forget. But it’s so interesting to hearing you talk about how white critics were, you know, policing the use of the N word in Pass Over. The reviews for American Son were interesting because all this like woke white critics and journalists were criticizing that the play was written by a white person. And they’re absolutely right. That is something that needs to be criticized. But my point is that if you’re telling stories about Black characters, white journalists, always find a way to tell you that you’re doing it wrong, even if it’s being written by someone like them, they’re gonna criticize it because it’s not the way that Black characters are. And if it’s written by a Black playwright, they’re gonna be criticizing it because it’s not up to their white standards. So can Black characters in fiction ever be, you know, criticized by critics and judged on their own terms?
Diep: Not within the current ecosystem where it’s white people judging the work. I was trained as a journalist and so you’re always told that you need to be objective. But there is always an assumption when you look at somebody who is not like you. Unfortunately that is the society we live in and the media that we consume, it helps feed our assumptions about people and there’s always, especially when it comes to, and you and I have noticed this, like whenever it comes to the works by playwrights of color that don’t conform to a very hyper realistic aesthetic—most people who criticize it in the media, don’t know how to talk about it and don’t know how to engage with it because it is foreign to them. And unfortunately, when you’re reading a lot of criticisms by white, white writers of Black work, it is from the viewpoint of someone from the outside trying to engage with this foreign thing. And so the play has to do a double thing of, you got to teach the person who’s not like you to do the thing. And you have to also hold space for your community. And unfortunately, it’s really hard to do both at once. And they shouldn’t have to do both at once.
Jose: I’m nodding, ah. I want to talk about the audience reaction. So I remember one of the things that spoke to about American Son with the white journalist, who was so angry that this was written by a white person—
Diep: Why because most of the most of the reviews I read by white people, they were very complimentary of it because it was just so, you know, it was like a procedural, right? They know know what that looks like.
Jose: Yeah, but you know, a couple of people were complaining about that. Anyway, I went out with this person. It is so rare to see a predominantly Black audience on Broadway, or a predominantly anything that’s not white audience on Broadway. I’m never gonna forget, the audience felt almost like it’s given them a chance to grieve. And I have never seen so many people cry. And I’ve never heard so many people cry and be as vocal as they were at American Son on Broadway. And you know, people would shout, “What the fuck? Don’t touch her.” People were very vocal. That’s the kind of thing that you don’t get to see on Broadway. Because there’s always going to be a white person shushing you, who’s going to be telling you not to talk. So the amount of liberty that the play even with its limitations, and even when it’s like a very safe procedural in a way, and it also sometimes exploits the pain of the Black mom for its on benefit. Even with all of these things, I had never seen a play that gave people color, and Black people in particular, the space to cry and to call for justice on Broadway. And that’s something that I was, it moved me incredibly. I was not expecting that, I was expecting people to stick to these respectability policies that Broadway, just by its very nature, evokes and imposes on people. But at American Son, no one gave a fuck about respectability on Broadway, people were yelling at the characters, people were crying, you know, this woman wailed. And it shocked me. And I love that so much. So even when this colleague of ours, saying that, you know, it should have been written by a Black playwright, I completely agree. I don’t think a Black playwright would have written that, you know, at all. It would not look like that. But I was very happy that audiences who are not always welcome on Broadway, were given this space, and that no one was trying to tell them how to feel and how to express their feelings. So I’m really curious to know, what it was like, usually at LCT3, they have a younger, like more hip, like more diverse audience. So I really want to talk to you about that and know what the audience was like at Pass Over when you saw it.
Diep: It’s pretty diverse because LCT3, the reason they have younger audiences is because the tickets are like $25. It’s so affordable. But the other problem is most of the stuff sells out really, really quickly because their subscriber base is mostly older and white. These plays are performing to multiple kinds of audiences depending on the night. But I got the feeling like from, you know, watching them both in the same day that they’re made for people who—if you are unfamiliar with the conversation around police brutality in this country, and the gaslighting that Black people go through, I think American Son is a very educational experience for you because it gives you a first hand look at what that might be like. And if you’re more further along on the conversation and want to talk about more insidious forms of structural racism, then Pass Over is a great gateway to that. And so for someone who is so exhausted because we know all the names of the people who have died because of police brutality, something like American Son was very much like Racism 101 to me. And so watching it, I was just like, “Oh my god, how long am I supposed to watch this poor woman suffer while all these men tell her that she’s wrong when and she’s not wrong?” Why am I? Why am I putting myself through?
And I didn’t have that feeling with Pass Over because it was just so refreshing to be able to see the presence of those two young men on stage because that is the radical thing, it’s not the fact that they’re in pain, it’s the fact that tragic things happen to them but they’re also able to find joy, they are able to have a build a relationship with each other. That was the most refreshing thing to me about it. Which one did you like more? Or like, how did you feel emotionally watching it?
Jose: American Son is manipulative, it’s racism for white people, racism 101 as you said. But with with all that said, I do think that Kerry Washington’s performance is worth watching, even if you already know, the gaslighting that that Black women especially have to deal with in this country. So that’s my take on American Son. But Pass Over artistically and aesthetically and everything is light-years ahead of anything that American Son does so if you’re ready to engage with that kind of conversation, and that kind of viewpoint. I mean, Pass Over is infinitely better. But American Son, like you said, it’s a good intro. But yeah, I mean, it’s not even a choice. Pass Over is a much better play.
Diep: Yeah. But what does it say that it was American Son that was the one that got to Broadway? And Pass Over was done in a theater that wasn’t even 100 seats.
Jose: Yeah, it was limited run. It says everything that we already know about about theater and why we were yelling at the real estate of theater before this. Pass Over belongs at the Vivian Beaumont in a way that many other shows that have happened there, you know, Act One remember that play?
Diep: The Moss Hart play, ueah,
Jose: And fucking Oslo, it even won a Tony, no, no. Plays like Pass Over are what should be on the mainstage. I want everyone to do better, you can do better, especially if you’re a nonprofit, to better to much, much, much better. And didn’t even like get into the fact that this production of Pass Over has Spike Lee’s signature all over it. And can you imagine what it would have been like to be in that live audience, he was a control of what was happening with the cameras and the shots and everything. Spike Lee, you are a god, and if you’ve ever listened to our podcast know that you have my eternal devotion.
Diep: I would have been so afraid to sit in that audience knowing Spike Lee was gonna capture my face. Because all of those close ups, how do you even act naturally when you know Spike Lee’s filming your face. But what I really want these theaters to do is just stop putting these plays by people of color, who are trying to do something new, stop putting them in the tiniest spaces and giving them the tiniest budget. Like when we’re talking about LCT3 and a 90 seat theater versus the Vivian Beaumont, a 500 seat theater, like, Antoinette’s play should be in a 500 seat Broadway theater. And the fact that it’s not, that artists of color are always seen as you know, upcoming. They still have a lot to learn. They still have you know, years ago before they deserve to be in a 500 seat theater, whereas Christopher Demos-Brown, this is his first fucking play. Because the first play that he’s ever written somehow gets to Broadway. What is that? Like Antoinette Nwandu’s been around, she’s had other plays before this and this is her big break but still like it can only go in the teeniest space that you have like. That is the marginal marginalization of voices that we are talking about, like they are not deserving of resources.
Jose: Absolutely. And with that said, I can’t believe I’m even gonna say this out loud. But I’m grateful to both Netflix and Amazon for putting them out there. So at least we can have this conversation. So that’s also something that’s really important. If there’s a play by a person of color, Black, Asian, Latino playwright, please at least give it production somewhere, you know, so people can stream it. I didn’t get to go to Pass Over. And if it wasn’t for Amazon, I would have never been able to see it. If you’re not going to give them the Broadway space, at least, film them and make them available to people.
Diep: Yeah. And I think those artists want them to be available. Can I tell you something that’s really interesting about Pass Over. Yes? Okay. Spoiler alert. If you don’t want to be spoiled by Pass Over, please fast forward five minutes. So at the end of Pass Over, when the white character is going, “we’re taking our country back.” So at the Lincoln Center production, like Antoinette actually change the ending monologue. And so instead of him saying that, it becomes like, “Oh, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to do that. I felt threatened for my life.” Instead of coming from a Trump supporter, that white person became Amy Cooper.
Jose: Which potato potAto right? There’s no difference in Amy Cooper and a 45 supporter.
Diep: Do you think it’s a different interpretation of a play? Or do you think it’s all of a piece?
Jose: That version that you just shared with me is speaking directly to them, Lincoln Center subscribers. I love it. Love it. Cuz like we often, you know, especially non-Black liberals, we often, like you mentioned in your column, we don’t do enough and we pat ourselves on the back constantly that constantly. So to be read like that, to be read to filth like that at Lincoln Center. Antoinette, you have you know, you have even more my respect.
Diep: Thank you for calling out the Nederlanders, Antoinette, all the Amy Coopers of American theater.
Jose: Ready to go to the interview? So next we’re going to be talking to Jasmine Batcelor, who is the lead in The Surrogate, a film by Jeremy Hersh, where she plays Jess Harris, a web designer who works at a nonprofit in Brooklyn, who has two very close, gay best friends. It’s a mixed-race couple. One is called Josh and the other Aaron, who is the incredible Sullivan Jones from Slave Play [by Jeremy O. Harris that was on Broadway in 2019]. He’s hot and super tall and also a really great actor. So kudos anyway. So they want to be parents and they asked Jess if she is willing to be their surrogate. The movie then turns into this moral study and this very adult film, in the way that movies were being made in the 1970s, where, you know, like you went to see things about philosophical argument and about like existential things, with characters who are also very human and very alive.
So I love this movie so much. And we have to mention that, your like Token Theatre Friends, why are you talking about movies? Well, like I said, Jasmine does incredible work on stage. But also, there are so many theater people in this movie. And right now while we are in quarantine, if you’ve watched The Surrogate you can get to see Jasmine and Sullivan, but you can also see Tonya Pinkins, who plays her mom. I don’t wanna spoil all the people who we’ve seen on stage who are in this movie, but it’s worth it. We are in quarantine, if you’re watching zoom readings, you can go watch The Surrogate and pretend it’s a play. Okay, so we’re going to talk to Jasmine.
Jasmine Batchelor, thank you so much for joining us today. I am such a huge fan of your work. And I’ve seen you on stage. And it’s so funny because like when I went back to do more research on you, I saw her in this and I saw her in this I was like, oh, wow, she’s the same actor! She’s like, so mind blowing. It’s such a treat to have you on our show today to talk about The Surrogate, which is one of my favorite movies that I’ve watched in years and years. And can you tell us a little bit about The Surrogate and who you play, and also you’re an executive producer. So tell us a little bit about that.
Jasmine: Yeah, um, first off, I want to say thank you so much for having me. This is both like, such a dream to be talking about a movie I was in, to be talking about it with you two is fantastic. And I’m like, how did I get here? So thank you so much. So yeah, The Surrogate was written by Jeremy Hersh and also directed by Jeremy Hersh. And it is about a 29-year-old woman named Jess who decides to be a surrogate for her two best friends. And they are played by Sullivan Jones. And Chris Perfetti—as you can tell, by the way I say their names, I love them dearly. They are fantastic actors. And along the way, about a couple of weeks in to their pregnancy, you know, because it is all their child, they discovered that the fetus has Down Syndrome. And from there on, it’s the kind of dilemma between them and everyone that would be impacted by the birth of this child to figure out, you know, if they’re going to continue with the surrogacy. And if they do, how can they be the best parents to the child, learning about the Down Syndrome community, learning about parenting community, and in that learning, learning about each other, and if I can speak just from the person who play Jess, really learning about Jessica Harris. I like to think of it as a an odd coming of age story for myself. Because sometimes, it’s not until you run into something that is so SO challenging in a way that you get to figure out who you are. And so I think that in this movie, she gets to figure out who she is. And yes. I am also a producer on the film. I am an associate producer, and it’s my first time producing anything and yeah, I feel so weird. Someone’s like, Oh, yeah. Jasmine Batchelor is an actress and associate producer of a film. Like, I’m not saying that’s me. Really, I did that? My job was partly helping to figure out, throw ideas in for casting. Erica Hart, who is an incredible casting director, got everyone on board from the New York theater scene, and really did her job so well.
Diep: And I love it when things are filmed in New York because then it becomes like a Who’s Who of New York theater actors and and everyone’s usually in bit roles. So film people may not know who these people are, but oh my gosh, us theater nerds, we know who these people are. Give them more lines. So can you tell me about the virtual theatrical release that’s happening on Friday for the film because you know, that’s unprecedented in terms of how these things are distributed.
Jasmine: Hi, y’all, I can’t I’ve never seen anything like this. But I mean, we’ve never seen anything like COVID. So we were supposed to premiere at South by Southwest this year, but in light of the Coronavirus, doing what it did and is doing, obviously South by Southwest was canceled. And so for a while, we did not know what was happening. And so about a month ago or so here, he told me that we’re now doing this thing where they are now putting tickets on pre order for actual theaters throughout the United States. Theaters like I can’t think of an indie theater—
Diep: Film Forum?
Jasmine: There’s one. Yeah, yes. Or like there’s one theater in Dayton, Ohio that I used to go to all the time when I was an undergrad. And I was like, Oh, I’m a cool person. Because I see the real movies. They’re like theaters like that, that are actually reaching out to independent artists and and cultivating a library of incredible and nuanced art. Those kinds of theaters, the mom and pop theaters, the theaters that you go to to see the movies that fellow theater artists really want to see. A lot of those theaters are going to be showcasing the film on Friday. So you can pre-order tickets, and you can order them through those theaters. And I think they’re like $18 each and you get to watch it from home. But you also get to support your local theater, which is a big plus and a big reason why Jeremy decided to do it that way. So not only are you getting to watch us and support theater artists making films and support Jeremy’s movie, but you also get to support your local theaters and they need it right now. So yeah.
Jose: Okay, so Tonya Pinkins plays your mom in this movie, and it is like it, I’m sorry to say this. But the scene where Tonya Pinkins is yelling at your character Jess were some of my favorites. I would like her to tell me what a bad offspring I am, I want that. So if you don’t mind taking a second to brag about the cast, everyone who we know from the New York stage because it’s mind blowing. So can you get us started with that?
Jasmine: Yes. And I don’t. So please forgive me. I don’t want to leave anyone out. Because you know, my brain is in a million different places. But we can start with Tonya. Because whenever like, yeah, we’re thinking about getting someone to play your mom and I went through like a long list of like, these incredible Black actresses that I have spent so many years watching on stage or reading about and being like, who, oh my god, how are they doing that? Like, that’s what I want to do. That’s who I want to be. And when they said she’s gonna be my mom, I was like, shut up! She’s incredible. And she has such a political voice and she’s so outspoken about the things that she believes in, and she’s not afraid to say what she feels and say what she thinks And that, as I guess the world is realizing now, for Black women can be a dangerous thing and an unwelcome thing. So the fact that she is so unafraid and who knows if she is afraid, but she is so bold in her approach and her words, as well as her talent is something, it’s something to be recognized. And, you know, obviously Jeremy was like, well, that kind of person should be Karen, because you know, the woman who plays Jess’s mom is unapologetic in how she feels and very direct, so it makes sense.
And Leon Addison Brown plays my father, and Leon and I were in a play at Baltimore Center Stage together. We met and we played love interests, and that was like such a weird first, that was my first play that I did out of Juilliard and he was so kind. I was just so lucky to have him as my father. He does a wonderful job. I think there’s a scene that got cut of him like, consoling me after Tonya yells at me. But that that was cut, but it’s one of my like, most favorite moments.
And let’s see, we got Brooke Bloom, who is, Oh, she’s so good. I have no words like, She’s so good. She’s so incredible. I think she was on set for maybe like, three days, but we have some very intense scenes together. And we just fell into a rhythm and seemed to really understand each other and she’s just, one of the talents that I’m really glad I got introduced to in this film. And, I mean, there are not enough good words to say about Brooke and I’m probably going to say this about everybody because I love everyone. Let’s see, I got to work with my classmate and my best friend, one of the most beautiful people in the world Brandon Micheal Hall, who is more of a TV guy now but he is from theater. He’s raised in the theater. He was going to be in Blue [at the Apollo Theatre] which is now postponed because of Coronavirus with Phylicia Rashad. He’s incredible. It was really great to have a best friend in that kind of situation because that was my first love scene on camera. So really glad that my really good friend and someone that I trusted is there for that.
Let’s see Chris Perfetti, Sullivan Jones, so good, which people remember from Slave Play [by Jeremy O. Harris on Broadway] and Chris from his Moscow six times [Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow by Halley Feiffer at MCC Theater]. Did you guys see that? He was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. There are so many. I mean, everyone is a theater person. Literally every person in this endless project, with the exception of Leon [Lewis], who plays a little boy, is from theater. And the performances are astounding. I mean, taking myself out of it, I can watch everyone else and be like, these performances are so nuanced and layered and beautiful, and really taken from the text in a way that a theater artist can do. It’s, it’s incredible. I’m in awe of all of them. I sound like such a fangirl, you guys.
Diep: I’m in awe of how like seamlessly you and the cast were able to, because we’ve all seen you on stage so we know that you can do like big vocal moments because that’s required for the theater. But to do these like really quiet, I feel like I’m just watching your face and your eyes most of the time in this which is so just so refreshing because you never get to. But I actually wanted to ask you about just the morality question in this, because it was just something that you never consider as really woke liberals as we are like. I feel like we really haven’t reached the complex parts of the disability conversation. And so in doing this, did it open your own mind to those, like how inaccessible the world is?
Jasmine: Oh yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. If I’m being honest with you, I started thinking about that when Jeremy and I were going through the scripts. When we would have weekly meetings, almost weekly meetings, like every Saturday we would go to like a park or something and talk about the movie or talk about our lives and get to know each other. And he started opening my eyes a lot to the simple things. Like there’s a scene in the movie where Jess walks by a bar and notices that the only way that you can come in are stairs. And, you know, like I live my life and I am an able bodied person as they say, quote unquote, and I never have to worry about that. And the only time that I’ve actually been woken up to things like that or are like, when I’m coming up in the subway side note, I really missed the subway at this point. So to say, like, I’m coming up from the subway with a huge bag or my suitcase or I see a mom and her stroller, or I see someone with the wheelchair on the train, and I’m like, they can’t get off at the stop. They have to take another, the longer route perhaps, or take a bus or go out of their way when the shortest route should be accessible to them. That stuff that if you don’t see it, if you don’t experience it, maybe you haven’t really thought about it before.
So I’m really thankful to this movie for just opening my eyes to that and understanding that, you know, right now a lot of people are opening their eyes to the Black Lives Matter movement, right? And because a lot of them have not ever had to consider the way that black people look at the world, much less the way that people of any color other than identifying as white look at the world. And now they have to. And so now there’s this great awakening of people reading books and people asking their black friends what’s going on, which please, I mean, people please stop doing that, or like sending emails. But in this movie, I had to check myself and kind of do the same thing and be like, I do, I care about these people. I care about this community. So in what way can I use the privilege that I have, which is you know, a person that’s just operating without having to question, and what good can I do for them? And that also applies to like the Down syndrome community.
So Leon in the movie, I love that kid so much he is, he’s honestly the star, I think his name should be replacing mine, he’s like the most adorable. When he was on set everybody was like zoom, like looking. Cuz he just, he has a light and so smart and so just like he’s very opinionated in the way that little kids give me. But we also took a shine to each other and I love him so much but in my relationship with him, and like hanging out with him and Jeremy outside of the film, I was like, there are things that are going to get there. There are people and situations, they’re going to be obviously against Leon because of the way he was born. And obviously that is not fair. And obviously, there’s going to be hard and he has no control over those things being there because he did not ask for this. Do you know? And like none, like none of us did. Like we didn’t ask you to to be born so why do we have to, you know, put up with the shit that comes our way. But in thinking about that, I was like, what I can do. He’s a kid right now. He’s a child. He doesn’t know about half of the things the stupid shit that’s gonna happen. But I think maybe get a head start on that. And helping that not happen. And helping, like in some way, he can be equipped to know that he is loved, that he is unique, is special, that he is valued so that shit doesn’t hurt so much. In the same way that I try to do that for like, my little brother, or, you know, anyone that would have to deal with that bullshit. Or even myself. That was a very long answer to your question. Yeah, the movie had a big impact on me. I mean, I’ve been sitting with this script since 2017. So I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
Jose: I want to talk a little bit for, you know, for this generation, I would say, of actors, your generation, specifically Jasmine, where there’s gonna be a world you know, pre COVID and post COVID. And one of the things that I sound you know, I feel horrible even say this, but one of the silver linings—and COVID has been that, it has revealed how much bullshit there is surrounding the way in which we have access to art. For instance, right now, suddenly everyone can stream their plays. And suddenly everyone’s just doing digital theater. When before they were telling us that we had to pay upwards stuff like $100 to go see an Off-Broadway show, for instance. And, you know, Diep and I, for instance, if we were not theater journalists, we would not be able to afford to go see any shows, actors wouldn’t be able to afford to go see theater. Theater would be only for like, super rich, Upper East Side and Upper West Side people, right? And right now everyone’s having theater delivered to their homes.
But also, the same happens with movies, you know, an independent film like this, for instance, would first have to go through the process for its release at Film Forum or the IFC center. And it runs there for months, fingers crossed. And then fingers crossed a campaign, an awards campaign, you know, backs it up, and then fingers crossed again, maybe you get like a Spirit Award now. Maybe you get Oscar nominations. But it’s always like waiting for something more to happen rather than just like valuing the work for what it is. So right now, as an actor, Jasmine, you’re given this opportunity to have both your stage work, if you were doing anything on stage that could be streamed or live cast. And also your movie, instead of having been in one theater, which coast, people all over the world maybe can get to watch your film right now. Yeah, yeah. Fingers crossed. I’m gonna yell at everyone I know to go see this movie. So what is that like for you, as an artist, you know, to know that you’re at this crossroads. Are you hoping that things are going to open in a way that this is just like, you know, the floodgates is like bursting, and we won’t be able to go back to what it was like before COVID because it’s not fair. Now that we know that it’s possible. They cannot take us back to what it was like before.
Jasmine: I really love that you brought that up because that is the theme I think 2020 right, is that we can’t go back to the way that things were before any of this and in literally anything that we’re dealing with. And so we’re seeing that in our little community of theater and entertainment. You know, I’m so I want to bring up someone that is with one of my heroes and I miss dearly. Jim Houghton was the artist. Yes, I heard that. Yes. He is a big reason why I was even at Juilliard in the first place. And I’ve never seen someone with that much power treat my family with such respect, and love and treat me with respect, and love and to see every single person as a singular person of value, but that’s a tangent, I’m just telling you how much I love him and I missed him and but he had a really great mission for the Signature, he wanted to make it more accessible. He wanted to make sure that everyone could see what was happening there. He didn’t want to make sure that the tickets were like $100, you know, to $300 per ticket because theater is not made just for the people who are of a certain tax bracket. And if it is, what the fuck are we doing? Do you know? Because we don’t do that. But like you said, I couldn’t see if I didn’t go to Juilliard. If I didn’t know the people in the shows 75% of those shows, I couldn’t see. I wouldn’t be able to even understand what an audition was for because I wouldn’t be able to see the play. And so his mission really is, when I was in school, opened my eyes to like, you’re right. This isn’t a fancy thing. This is a lot of work for us. You know, everyone who’s behind the scenes who’s on that stage, who programs. It’s a lot of work, but that doesn’t mean that it should just be for people who make over $100,000 annually here, you know, just to come in and chill and go home and not learn anything. It’s for the people, and it always has been for the people.
So now that we have experienced, like, oh, well, you know, we’re all at home, let’s just stream it now, which, I’m very thankful for. But I’m also like, so you guys could have been doing this the whole time? Like, like, I taught high schoolers, and I showed them this play that I was telling them about. For the longest time, they could have had access to this instead of me fighting for, for a blessing that we couldn’t afford, and fighting for transportation and fighting for parental slips. But like I could have actually given them the gift of this. Interesting. So now that we know this, we can’t go back. It has to be for everyone because theater is so often how we learn and so often how we express ourselves, but it’s so often how we learn about different views. It’s so often that we get to see ourselves represented. Like, I’ll never forget. I will never ever forget. And this is not a theater. This is a movie, but I’ll never forget. I was way too young to be watching this, but I saw What’s Love Got to Do With It with my grandparents. I think I was like, five. I was way too young to be seeing it. But I saw Angela Bassett. And I was like, Oh, that’s that’s what I’m doing. That’s that’s what, that’s what that is. That’s what that feeling inside. That’s what this story of Tina Turner and her life—it changed my little life. It changed my life. But it was only because I was able to see that I could. We couldn’t afford theater when I was little, I was living in North Philadelphia. We didn’t, I mean, we couldn’t do that. And I think about it. If I could have gone, if I could have seen theater sooner, I mean we’re robbing our communities, we’re robbing our children or robbing our neighbors and our friends and our parents of the opportunity of learning, of the opportunity of changing if we restrict theater. So yeah, we can’t go back and you saw that recent letter. That’s like, we see you white American theater. We’re not going back.
Diep: Did you see the Tina Turner musical on Broadway?
Jasmine: I haven’t seen it. And I was waiting. And now I’m slapping myself because I have friends in it. And I’m like, I should have seen it. I should have seen it before. But if and when Broadway comes back, please. Y’all come back because the clips I have seen, holy shit. That’s enough.
Diep: Yeah, yeah, I know. We wish we had Adrienne Warren’s energy.
Jasmine: I wish I had Adrienne Warren’s everything. She is a force. Oh my goodness.
Jose: Are you also trained as a singer Jasmine, do you have a good singing voice?
Jasmine: I do, but not that musical theater voice. So I always say if I were to quit acting to do anything, I would want to be like an R&B singer or singing in a jazz club. I wish I had a dream. I wish I was, right, I mean, that girl. If she hears this, know that I’m stanning very hard.
Jose: I wanna ask you a very technical question for a second. And this is, you know, based on what what you mentioned Diep also about, like, how much work you do with your eyes. One of the things that I’m always like so mystified about you is that you, you know, the stage isn’t very friendly for people to like focus on people’s faces, right. That’s why a lot of theater ends up being a lot of people. shouting, basically, people yelling at each other so everyone can hear. But the work of yours that I’ve seen, and I’m so excited that people can, you know, get to see your work, they’ve seen you on stage, and they’re going to be able to see your work in The Surrogate. Because you’re doing the same thing. I mean, not the same thing. That’s not what I mean. But you’re doing the same thing that you do on stage, which is so magical. It’s almost like you’re almost convinced audience members sitting, you know, in a theater that we have the ability to zoom into you. And that’s not something that any actor can do. And how do you do that? How do you pull it off? What kind of magic Are you working on stage?
Diep: We don’t like cameras here. So I don’t know how you can have a camera that close to your face.
Jasmine: Oh, I don’t actually know either. I don’t, I gotta be honest with you guys. I didn’t know I was doing that. So I’m very flattered. I literally am just trying to live. I just try to live in the moment and so often I will leave the stage and be like that I wish it was like, or like, I tried. But I really honestly I’m just trying to be, you know what, I’m actually trying to do—let me stop bullshitting and tell you like the truth. And I’m actually just trying to connect with my partner and make them look really good. That’s what I’m trying to do. I mean, that’s one of the first things that I learned as an actor and something that I keep coming back to, is that it’s not about me, and it is about the other person. And so whatever I can do to get them involved in the conversation or give them back, you know, the same energy or more that they’re giving me, the better this thing will be as a whole. So whatever you see coming from like me, whatever that is, that is literally just me trying to make the other person look or feel as much like they’re in the same world as I am. Or I am really trying to do justice to the life that I’m living at that moment. Which is why, which is why and this is gonna be a little weird tangent, which is why I think that we got to give actors, we got to give good actors the opportunity to do that with words and words that that the writers believe in. So we have to give writers, we have to give writers power, because they’re the ones that are going to take us there. I mean, it all comes back to them. So to tell my writers out there, you know, we hear you, we believe in you. But they’re the reason why I can do good work because of them.
Jose: Can you talk about that incredible column that you wrote for Talkhouse, “Say Her Name”? Just like, oh God, she can write this well also, like what can’t you do?
Jasmine: I can’t whistle.
Jose: You can, anyone can whistle.
Jasmine: Yeah, thank you for reading that. And I gotta be honest, it’s very nerve wracking to publish it. Because I guess pre COVID I might have been like, Oh, you know what will future employers gonna say. Or maybe I might not have. I got into quite a bit of trouble with Juilliard for that very reason. But I also struggled with like, is this selfish to publish how I feel in this moment? And because honestly, it’s not about me. But then I reread it and I was like, No, this is important because I might be speaking for someone else who had a similar, or is having similar experience. And I also think it’s important that people realize realize that it’s not just about one time. And it’s not just about the past, even though this one time and the past are so huge and so disturbing, and it should be a movement. It is also about our future. And it’s also about what’s happening in our lives daily. And so I’m just really grateful to Talkhouse for letting me write about it and for donating the money to a charity, which I want to thank you guys for that. Yeah, and for Jeremy for introducing me, to Talkhouse, for letting me write it. So thank you for reading it. I appreciate that.
Diep: And will you be protesting again this week?
Jasmine: Oh, fuck Yes. Yes. Yeah, yes. I try to balance being an active protester with writing and researching because I think the two for me go hand in hand. And I realized that I protest best with my words and with my brain. But sometimes the anger is, it’s in there and it needs to be exercised in a physical way. Um, so yeah, yeah. And I support the protesters and I think, fucking whoever hears this is going to hear the truth. I also think that people are more important than things. So if you are really concerned, yes, if you are concerned with things more than you are concerned with lives, then you need to take a second look at your priorities. That’s all.
Jose: Yep, yep. Okay, Jasmine, this is your time to plug your projects and let us know if you have any upcoming Zoom performances and tell people, also our viewers and our listeners were right. Where can they find The Surrogate on Friday?
Jasmine: Okay, so, um, I am in a Zoom project, it’s written by Emily Hannon. And I’m not sure when it’s going to come out. So as soon as I figure that out, I will let you guys know. Um, let’s see, I also am just living and protesting. So the thing you could do for me right now is to support Black Lives, either by protesting or by sending your donations to the various bail funds that are taking care of our peaceful protesters out there, whether they’re peaceful or not shouldn’t matter to you. And you can also educate yourself and and take care of yourself. And for me, this is such a preachy moment but um, for me, if I can shout out to other Black women, the thing you can do for me right now is to take care of yourself. That’s it, is love yourself and take care of yourself. If you’re looking for The Surrogate, you can find us at The Surrogate movie on Instagram. And there’s a link there to see where you can purchase tickets for any of the theaters in America. It’s right there. I know everybody’s on the ground. So hop in there. And, and yeah, I think I think that’s all the things I had to say for that. Yeah.
Jose: Thank you so much Jasmine, you are a queen among actors. So I salute you and thank you for joining us. It has been a true pleasure. And please give Jeremy my love also, and my love to you. And I hope we can grab a drink at some point even if it’s like with straws under our masks.
In the past week, as protests have raged across the country in reaction to the murder of George Floyd and rampant police brutality, we’ve heard the following things from many non-Black friends and colleagues: “I don’t feel like I’m doing enough.” This is usually accompanied by a heavy sigh and a discussion of what they’ve been doing. Have you been donating to Black Lives Matter, bail funds and other social justice organizations? Have you called your elected representatives to tell them to defund their police department and pass laws demanding accountability for police officers? Have you been speaking up when you encounter racist or insensitive remarks by the people in your life? “Yes, but I still feel so depressed.”
To which we say, good. As Jose said in our recent Token Theatre Friends podcast: “I feel powerless. I feel like I’m not doing enough right now. I wouldn’t want people to tell me, ‘Oh, you’re doing so well,’ this is not what this is about. I think I would be very unhappy with myself if I thought that I was doing enough. So the fact that I’m wondering if I’m too, you know, I take it as a very good sign.”
Here at Token Theatre Friends, we feel like we haven’t done enough. Because if we had, if everyone who has shown support the past week has done enough, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor might still be alive. Our discomfort, our rage, our depression, is overdue. It’s a minor taste of what Black people in America feel every day. Meanwhile, too many people have felt comfortable for way too long.
That statement applies to both socio-political issues, as well as to our own backyard. We love the arts and we love theater. But recent events have made the industry’s shortcomings, and its hypocrisy, even clearer. On June 1, Dear White People actor Griffin Matthews posted a powerful Facebook video detailing his experience working on his musical Invisible Thread, which was presented Off Broadway at Second Stage Theater in 2005. He started the video saying, “Amy Coopers are alive and well in the American theater,” referencing the white woman who called the police on a Black bird watcher, Christian Cooper, in Central Park.
Matthews then listed the racism he experienced while working on Invisible Thread, including an instance in the rehearsal room: “A song in Act One mentioned the fact that I was the son of slaves, our producers in the middle of a creative team meeting said, ‘Slavery is over, nobody wants to hear about that,’” Matthews recalled. “Not one single person put him in check.” Second Stage also promised to donate money to Matthews’ charity in exchange for him and the cast of Invisible Thread performing at their annual gala; “their donation never came.”
“That is why Broadway is racist,” he said. Second Stage has not commented on the video, which as of press time has been shared more than 5,000 times. But the company did post a statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. (Update: Invisible Thread director Diane Paulus also put out a statement.)
Matthews’ experience is not unusual. Because while the industry prides itself on diversity, behind closed doors it’s a different story. Award-winning actor/composer/playwright Daniel Alexander Jones wrote in a Facebook post that he’s been told by: “white artistic directors that: my work had no relevance to the contemporary American theatre, and told that I needed to write a white male into my play because it didn’t make sense that there wasn’t one in it, and being told that no-one would ever want to produce my work, ever, so is there something else I could do?” (We pity any producer who doesn’t understand the beauty of Black Light.)
Actor Cooper Howell wrote, in devastating detail on Facebook, the sexual and racial harassment he experienced at the hands of a white director while acting in Frozen at Disneyland. The first-hand accounts are too numerous to describe, as Black artists have taken to social media to voice their dissatisfaction with the industry, speaking up about negative work environments, microaggressions and outright racism that they’ve experienced while working in the theater. This stands in stark contrast to the many Broadway shows and theaters that have posted up statements supporting Black Lives Matter and vowing to be anti-racist. The Metropolitan Opera posted up a statement, yet it’s never produced an opera by a Black composer. A Black playwright has not won a Tony Award for Best Play since 1987. White actors and playwrights are overrepresented on New York City stages.
A public statement may be heartwarming, but it lets companies pull the curtain on their own hypocrisy. Like a black square on Instagram, the performance can be a substitute for meaningful action. Some of the companies who have released statements have produced primarily white writers at their theaters. They’ve contributed to an erasure of Black and POC voices. They’ve fostered negative work environments for Black artists and hostile viewing experiences for Black audiences. And they punish those who speak up. “I may never make it to Broadway for speaking out against the horrific treatment that I received, and all of the Amy Coopers will be fine,” said Matthews in his video. It echoes what Star Wars actor John Boyega said during a protest in London on June 3: “Look I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this but, f**k that.” By blacklisting artists who dare to speak up, these so-called liberal institutions contribute to the systemic racism that they disavow.
As COVID-19 has shut down the entertainment industry, we are left with two options: we can either build back better than before or we can continue the status quo, where artists of color are forced to swallow their discomfort for the sake of the white people around them. Theaters and producers who have put out these Black Lives Matter statements need to take this time to listen to the voices of Black artists around them and on social media, who all have importantsuggestions for change. Director/actor Schele Williams posted a poetic, detailed statement on Facebook with the following suggestion:
Broadway is white. And white is not bad But White is not Black
If you mean the words in your statements Show us your values Live up to your mission statements Give us space to breathe and speak without fear of reprisal. Look around the room and if you only see yourself replicated – CHANGE IT.
Schele Williams
When people are risking their lives to march on the street, a social media statement is not enough. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to look not just outward, and inward. The calls are coming from inside the house.
What do theater companies and producers commit to doing to make sure what happened to Griffin Matthews and countless Black artists does not happen again? Will these companies cater to Black audiences as faithfully as they do white ones? Will they make their work accessible and affordable to the Black community? Will they make sure to spotlight Black voices regularly, and not just once a year and as side characters? Will they help support the Black-led business and theaters in their communities? If their Black artists get criticized by the New York Times, will they stand by their artists? Will they prioritize fair wages so that Black artists can afford to be artists? Will they defend their socio political stances to angry subscribers who just want them to “shut up and sing”?
i’m glad a bunch of theatre companies are “standing” with us but can y’all hire more of us, produce more of us, give us more residencies and fellowships?? maybe full seasons of black work?? with black designers and directors?? anti-racist company guidelines and education within??
To our Black friends and readers: we stand with you and we are sorry for not having done enough, and commit to continue to advocate for justice and anti-racism.
To our non-Black readers: Right now, if you’re feeling comfortable, it means you’re not doing enough. Your discomfort is overdue. Sit with it. Let the discomfort propel you to act and fight for a better world for everyone.
Every week, culture critics Diep Tran and Jose Solís bring a POC perspective to the performing arts with their Token Theatre Friends podcast. The show can be found on Spotify, iTunes and Stitcher. You can listen to previous episodes from the previous version of the podcast here but if you’ve been a subscriber to Token Theatre Friends, you will need to resubscribe to our new podcast feed (look for the all-red logo).
On the first episode of the newly revamped Token Theatre Friends podcast, the Friends sat down and recorded over Skype on June 1. They discussed Black Lives Matter and the protests that have erupted around the world around the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. They also discuss how different brands have released statements to support BLM, including Broadway shows and theater companies across the country, though some of these statements have been better than others. At the end of the episode, they also chat about what they’ve been up to in quarantine and their opinions about virtual theater. So buckle up because the girls are back in town!
Here are links to things that Friends talked about in this episode.
Note: After this episode was recorded, the three officers—Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao—were charged with aiding and abetting murder. Derek Chauvin’s charge was increased to second-degree murder.
Below is the transcript from the podcast. If you would like to support the Friends and their work, click here to donate to their Patreon.
Diep: Hi, I’m Diep Tran.
Jose: And I’m Jose Solis.
Diep: And we’re your Token Theatre Friends, two people who love theater so much that up until New York City shut down because of the COVID, we were at the theater the night before. What sure did you see before everything shut down Jose?
Jose: My last Broadway show was The Girl from the North Country which ends with everyone dying because the Great Depression and sickness are, you know, happening. So it was a very ominous last show that I saw.
Diep: Oh my god, spoiler alert! I hadn’t seen it before everything shut down. Thanks for ruining the musical for me. Wow, I’m looking forward to seeing it even less now. Assuming it comes back. Who even knows at this point, right.
Jose: I mean, it’s not a spoiler because it sounds a bit like you know, it was in London, the Public and was on Broadway up until a few months ago, so it’s not that much of a spoiler, but it was just like a very dark ending. A very dark show to see and not go back to the theater since.
Diep: Did you like it?
Jose: I didn’t like it off Broadway and I didn’t really like it on Broadway either. It’s just not for me.
Diep: Mm hmm. Yeah. And it’s not because like we’re snotty about jukebox musicals. We enjoy the jukebox musical but some work and some don’t. Right?
Jose: Yes, this one didn’t work for me. Although the cast was extraordinary. So good for them.
Diep: If this is your first time around this space, Jose and I are two culture journalists who write about theater, movies, TV—I’m trying to get into writing about food during quarantine because that is literally the only thing productive I am doing is getting my Martha Stewart on. And we actually had a previous version of this podcast that was produced by American Theatre magazine, you can find it on the other Token Theatre Friends feed, but this is the new Token Theatre Friends feed, because we are an independently produced entity now. Yay. Growing up, getting out of the nest, making things happen for ourselves.
Jose: I do want to say thank you to American Theatre and TCG because I cannot believe there were 52 episodes altogether. It’s insane.
Diep: That’s so much talking that we’ve done.
Jose: Like 52 guests that we’ve had and I didn’t know I knew so many people.
Diep: Yeah, I didn’t know people liked us enough to say yes to doing our dinky little show.
Jose: We’re halfway through, you know, like being like one of those sitcoms that have 100 episodes. Can you imagine we’re gonna get the number 100 on it?
Diep: Yeah, I think by the time COVID ends we will be there. So on the show we’ll be talking, yes about theater, but we’re also talking about, you know, pop culture, things we would notice that is worth discussing—cultural commentary on politics, social, social justice, things that bother us, because isn’t that what social media and podcasting is mostly about? Just talking about things that you either love or things that bother you? And we were on hiatus for a little bit so I’m so happy I’m really happy to be reuniting with my theater husband Jose even if it is over Skype, you know, we all know how infected the subways are and it takes Jose an hour and a half to get to me.
Jose: Right, right. Right. So since you’ve been gone since then. And now we were back together half a year after, how much did you miss me?
Diep: Considering I still see you at the theater?
Jose: So mean!
Diep: I really did miss just doing the show and just having a platform to have these really long, deep conversations. I mean, yes, it’s in front of people. But I think doing the show, like it was, just really helped me learn how to really articulate what I was feeling about certain things in a smarter way than just saying, oh, that really sucked. And I love our logos and so I just it just made me so sad to see you just doing all of it by yourself. It’s friends, you know, there’s an S and Token Theatre Friends means multiple people. But you did such a good job holding it down by yourself for a little while.
Jose: Glad I made you proud Mama.
Diep: For our reunion episode, we’re gonna be talking about a bunch of things. First, we’re gonna to talk about the Black Lives Matter protests that’s been happening all around the country around the death of George Floyd. And Breonna Taylor and so many of the other Black people who have been unjustly murdered by police officers who face no consequences for their actions. Our hearts go out deeply to their families, and all the protesters who have been injured and in prison to during these last few days.
And we’re talking about that, because, even though it’s a political event, political social event, a lot of companies—entertainment companies, Hollywood and Broadway, the theatre industry—they’ve been putting out statements about it. And we have some thoughts about what makes a good Black Lives Matter, anti-racist statement. So we’ll talk about that. And then we’ll talk about what we’ve been doing and quarantine, things that we loved that you should check out. Jose, do you want to give us a recap of, of what’s happening in case people are listening to this a few months from now and don’t remember because time is stretchy?
Jose: And also because we seem to have a very short term memory when it comes to dealing with everything related to racism in this country. So yes, what’s been happening right now has been happening from the very first moment that an American went to Africa and kidnapped Black bodies against their will, and brought them to the United States. Well, it wasn’t even the United States back then, it was the colonies. But they brought all these people against their will to become slaves. They enslaved so, so many people, millions and millions and millions of people. I heard something, a podcast, but apparently the number of people who died during the years of slavery, do you know what it amounted to? It was 450 million Black people who were murdered during the centuries that slavery went on in America. That number is horrifying. And even after slaves were emancipated, slavery just took on a different form. It became, you know, segregation laws, it became racism.
Diep: It became Jim Crow laws.
Jose: Yes, it became the structure that shaped the—that’s the ground of pretty much every major institution in the United States. And there’s been lynchings and horrible murders throughout the centuries throughout the years. The 20th Century was particularly horrible for Black people in America. And this all culminates in the murder of George Floyd on May 25, in Minneapolis, when one white police officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes as the man kept shouting and asking for help. Saying that phrase that we know so well by now and it never gets this heartbreaking to hear, “I can’t breathe.” And while this was happening, three other officers just stood there watching doing absolutely nothing. But the corrupt cops got away with it. The one who knelt on him and murdered him was charged with third degree murder, which is bullshit. And the other officers, you know, they’re probably hanging out being happy, leaving like very happy racist lives.
And this, combined with other murders recently by the police, who could go to people’s homes and murder them while they’re sleeping and they murder people while they’re just living their lives. This culminated in protests that didn’t only happen in Minneapolis but they are happening all over the country. And even more surprising, they’re happening all over the world where, you know, people are getting together. And finally everyone’s saying Black Lives Matter, which is something that we have done a very, you know, in the US non-Black people have done a very, very, very, very poor job of doing. We need to say that more often, we need to mean it, and we need to do something about it. So, what gets me really, this is like a horrible word, I think, to be using right now. But what gets me so excited about what’s happening right now is that we are seeing a lot of white people and Latinx people and Asian people finally joining the protests, and finally realizing that racism is a problem. It’s a major issue. And it doesn’t only affect Black people and people of color and minorities. It affects everyone, all of us. So that’s what’s happening right now in the country. Did I do a good job of summarizing it?
Diep: You did do a good job. You went through 400 years of American history of racism against Black people in 10 minutes! Applause to you. But I feel like an additional component with these protests isn’t the fact that these people have been unlawfully murdered. It’s the fact that the people who murder them police officers face no consequences. Like, Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd, like out of the countless, Black people who have been murdered by the police, he’s like one of only maybe two or three in the last 10 years that have actually been charged with the crime. This problem isn’t just a couple of bad police officers. The problem is the system that that shields police officers from consequences, supports them even when they, and this happened to New York, even when they drive a car through a group of protesters. The things that would get normal people charged with a crime and put behind bars are the things that just get these police officers a slap on the wrist and you know, they go they get paid administrative, they get pulled off of the streets, but they still have a job and they still have a pension.
Jose: Right normal people. Let’s be even more specific, white people. Remember when that kid—that’s really complicated, that young man that whatever that murderer, went to that church and killed those people, remember the cops got him—wasn’t McDonald’s or Burger King on his way to prison? While they’re getting Burger King for this murderer, they basically killed George Floyd next to a police car. So that contrast, that itself is absolutely horrendous. And the police right now are basically attacking everyone, like they are a force that’s out of control. They have been attacking not only the protesters but people who have, you know, journalists—journalists with press passes have been attacked.
Diep: There’s this really amazing article on The Cut that tells you what it feels like to get hit by a rubber bullet because people think, oh, it’s a rubber bullet, so it can’t hurt that much. But people’s eyes have been taken out, because these officers are aiming point blank at people’s faces which they are not supposed to do. In what world are the people who are obligated to protect and serve citizens, in what world is that right? Okay, so that’s the background for the next part of our conversation, which are reactions from different brand entities like Netflix, the NFL ironically, Facebook have all put out statements in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. And among them have been the Broadway shows and also theater companies—you know, the people that Jose and I interact with the most because that’s our industry that we focus on. And so I wanted to talk about, like, what these reactions, what these statements have been like, and how have they been received by the community and why these statements matter.
For example, the team behind the Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me, they put out a Tweet saying, “On behalf of the entire Constitution family, we have donated $6,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to Fight the continuing racism and inequality and violence against black people in the United States. Please join us if you can, and they included a link out.” And so Jose, like what kind of statements have you been seeing and and what makes a effective statement versus an ineffective statement?
Jose: The kinds of statements that I see are, you know, split in the middle. We get a lot of people who, finally and this is one of the things that makes me very happy—because we have talked before, like in our previous episodes, on the other feed, we constantly talk and if you follow us on Twitter, you know—that we constantly talked about how theater is always so late to react to everything that matters socially, and politically. And the industry especially, particularly Broadway, keeps silent. You know, we talk often about how theater was the only industry for #MeToo not to have happened like. Every man in theater is a good man. Like no one harasses and abuses women, apparently in theater because no one, you know, no one, no one, no one was affected by the #MeToo movement in theater basically.
And what makes me happy about what’s finally happening right now is that we are getting all this theater companies finally saying Black Lives Matter. And before they would, you know, put out like very, super lame, very like general statements about, “Oh, people of color, blah, blah, we’re gonna be better.” But right now we’re seeing companies and the artists are saying Black Lives Matter. They’re sending out newsletters and all that. But in addition to that, they’re also making themselves accountable. And for instance, the Public Theater sent out an email where they said that you know, and they are saying that they realize, “how late we all are to the game and how little we’ve done in how poorly we’ve done.” So in addition to finally supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, they’re also offering accountability. And a lot of them are putting out strategies that they are going to implement. And they are inviting audience members. And also, you know, by default journalists and critics and people who love theater to hold them accountable. That’s really amazing.
And on the other side, we have Wicked and we have all these messages of support that are pandering to the white racist base by not saying anything about Black lives, and by not saying anything meaningful, but just putting out ridiculous platitudes that right now don’t mean anything and rightfully are making people even more angry. And they are shaming them. That’s what we’re seeing. And I think I think we can both agree on that. We all are so late to this.
Diep: Yeah. And and to give some context, Wicked the musical they first put out an image, it was an image they use in a 2016 anti-bullying campaign: two arms holding hands, one one green hand, one white hand, saying, “When we defy hatred, we defy gravity.” Which, you know, I understand time is of the essence when it comes to these kind of statements, but it’s in poor taste to reuse an image that that says nothing about the particular situation that we’re dealing with. It’s people actually dying because of racism. I don’t know if you saw this but yesterday they put out a new tweet, Jose, and they said, “We must end systemic racism in this country. We must end police brutality, we must end racism, we must end injustice. These organizations, please join us in supporting them if you can: Black Lives Matter, Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Minnesota and NAACP.” That’s the great thing about social media. I think if none of us, if no one called them out, and rightly on that previous image, which they did take down very quickly, I don’t think they would have had the wherewithal to, like, put out a new statement saying very specifically, this is what we support. And this is who you should support.
But what I’m wondering is how do we keep these people accountable after because, you know, kind of like Facebook, Facebook says they’re donating money, but Facebook is also not censoring Trump and still allowing political ads on their platform. And so like all of these, all of these corporations, all these entities, they haven’t stood by the community. They haven’t stood by the community in the past. And so what makes, what makes any of us think that they’re actually sincere about this?
Jose: They never are, you know. I deleted my Facebook a couple of years ago. And my recommendation with Facebook specifically would be delete your account right now. You don’t need Facebook. Facebook is helping fascism spread. Facebook is responsible for you know, for lies being spread that then lead to more social injustice and oppression. So delete your Facebook. Your life is going to be so much easier, your friends are gonna be around elsewhere, and your parents are not gonna be spying on you. They’re not gonna be leaving, like, you know, awkward messages under your posts. Delete it, you don’t need it, your life is gonna be much, much, much, much, much more simple.
Diep: Though when you delete Facebook, you should also delete Instagram because they’re owned by Facebook and so FYI, you can’t use both platforms.
Jose: Well then I guess I’m gonna have to get rid of my Instagram very soon.
Diep: Oh, don’t do it. I will miss you.
Jose: I might not like Facebook itself. It’s just like, you know, a lot of people should get rid of it.
Diep: What about these other companies though? What about like, you know, how do you keep Wicked accountable because they’re, they’ve, like I was doing some research when I, you know, made fun of them for that image they put out, I was doing some research and I found out that they, Wicked opened on Broadway in 2005. And in those 15 years, there have been, there have been no Black woman who has played Elphaba full time on Broadway. And there’s only been one black actress who played her full time in the entire world. And that was in the British cast. And so if, if these entities haven’t, you know, supported the community before, how do we make sure that they do so?
Jose: Well, we can boycott them, we should boycott them. And if not, as journalists as critics, it is our responsibility to remind people about this as often as we can. This is the moment where I know a lot of people are using that term: cancel culture. And they’re, you know, just sticking to it and seeing like, oh, canceled culture is so bad. It’s so terrible. But it’s important that these people should be tarred and feathered. These people should be wearing scarlet letters, people should know that we know what they’re doing, and they should know that we are not going to be quiet anymore. And this week, I am so proud, I’m so thrilled to see that silence is no longer an option. So we remind people as often as we can that you know, Wicked has done a very poor job at hiring Black actors. And for fucks sake, it’s a green character. I mean, for fuck sake. You know, it’s the same that happened when all those like new Star Wars movies came out you know, like the super racist insults and like all the white men were offended that it was women and you know, a Black lead and a Latino lead and a white female lead. And people were pissed because they wanted it entirely white. And no, we won’t shut up anymore. That’s that’s the thing. We won’t shut up anymore. We’re going to tell people about this often. We should have some sort of like, countdown or some sort of like, this is how many Elphabas keep getting cast. None of them are Black, you know, we need to change them, and we need to let them know that what they’re doing is wrong.
Diep: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought up Star Wars because I feel like when you and I have had these conversations around, like, oh, whose faces are onstage, who gets hired, we always get the response of, “oh, it’s just culture. Why are you being so uptight about it? You know, it’s just entertainment, it doesn’t matter.” But if it didn’t matter, then none of these white fanboys would have been upset over the fact that they cast a woman and a black man as a lead in a Star Wars trilogy. But they are because when you just put the faces and stories of one group of people on stage, it means multiple things in my opinion. It means that you’re telling people these are the only stories that are valuable. These are the only people who are allowed to be seen as human. And I also think it strips the audience of the ability to empathize with other kinds of people.
Like, you know, I’m, I’m Asian American, I rarely ever see myself represented and whenever I do and whenever other people have seen the same thing, kind of like Crazy Rich Asians. So many white people came up to me after seeing Crazy Rich Asians and they talked about how, “Oh, I learned so much about Singapore. I learned so much about you know, Asian American culture.” And it’s, I don’t want I don’t want my race of people to be an educational experience for you. I want you to see us as human people who, as people whose shoes, you can step into. I want to be equal to you. I don’t want to be like your Sherpa, like helping you go up the hill to help you become like a more woke individual.
Jose: Right? In recent years I’ve seen this happen to me as a Latino. Like when Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, when it came out, it won a bunch of Oscars and stuff, and also with the TV show One Day at a Time, which centers on a Latino family living in the United States. They’re an American family, they just happen to have a Latino background, right, the Latino heritage, and people suddenly are like, “Oh, wow, you exist.” We’re no longer drug dealers, and drug mules and maids, and the bad people trying to cross the border and steal all the jobs, kill all the people. Now we’re human beings. And that’s just what we want. I don’t think it’s asking that much. You know, we just want to be seen. We just want to be respected. Yeah.
Diep: The thing about white supremacist culture is it prioritizes the voices of like only one group of people. And hopefully this moment has made people see that there are different kinds of violence. There’s the violence that comes with actual police brutality, and then there’s also the kind of violence that just comes from, you know, being erased and not being allowed to be seen as human. These white supremacists, they think they’re better than us because a culture has told them that they’re better than us. It made me think of also just like all the conversations you and I have had, Jose, about what it’s like being people of color in a theater, surrounded by all these white people and feeling like we’re not the ones being catered to. We’re not the ones that that get the, you know, “subscribe to our theater” emails, “we have all of these great things for you to do, that you saw, you should give us money.”
Up until COVID, theaters have prey prioritized old white people as audiences. Right? That’s why so many people are surprised when you and I are really passionate about this industry. It’s because oh, “you’re not an old white person. So why? Theater is for oldwhite people. So why? What? Why?”
Jose: That’s why we’re working to change it.
Diep: Yeah, so I’m hoping after this, you know, since the olds can’t go to the theater anymore, because the COVID mostly kills old people. We’re gonna get so many bad reviews for this episode, I can feel in my bones. And so if you love us, please give us a five star rating on iTunes.
Jose: Yeah, but I’ll take every bad review with you know, it’s gonna be a badge of honor that I wear.
Diep: So I feel like after COVID, if they can’t, theaters can’t try to get old white people into the space anymore because it’s actually unsafe for them to be there, so they will need to get people our age, younger people and maybe make things cheaper.
Jose: There’s a lot of possibilities after this like, since we’re talking about accountability, there’s also a document, it’s a spreadsheet and it’s a public document that’s going around right now, that we encourage everyone to share as far and as wide as you can. And it’s a spreadsheet with the information, the names, location, artistic director, people on the board, and how to reach out to them.
PR companies that have chosen because this is a choice, this is what’s so important to remember right now, this is a choice, they’ve chosen to remain silent. They haven’t said anything right now about what’s going on. And a lot of people, you know, we’ve been in this industry for so long that we know how they behave, and we know how they act. And I’m sure that a lot of people are gonna come out at some point and say, “oh, we’re sorry, we apologize that we haven’t said anything because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve had to put on furlough or fire so many of our marketers right.” And they’re gonna say that, obviously, but those companies are still running. There’s at least one person in each company who’s still running it. Those people don’t need a marketer. Those people don’t need, you know, any special skills. We’re not asking them to shoot this like 4k on location using drones. Or to come up with this, like incredible graphic design, all those people have to do is to say Black Lives Matter. They can apologize for not doing it earlier, then they need to say how they’re going to become accountable. And they also should include links. So people know what the resources are and how they can help. They don’t need a huge budget to do that. They don’t need any marketers. They don’t need anything. They need to do what the rest of us are doing without any money. And without any corporate support, they need to speak up right now. So I hope everyone takes a look at that document and please spread it. And if you see a theater company in your city that’s silent, e-mail them, call them, go under social media and tell them that you know what they’re doing.
Diep: Yeah, it’s like we see you. But I really love what you said about how these companies just need to acknowledge that they’ve failed before. Because I feel like it’s almost worst, in my opinion, it’s worse to say something and not acknowledge the pain that you’ve caused before and where you fallen short. It’s better to then not say anything at all because then you just be considered a hypocrite which you are.
Jose: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Diep: But enough with that very depressing, but, you know, very exhilarating topic. Oh, one more thing. We’re recording this on June 1. So Happy Pride, Jose.
Jose: Well, you can wish me Happy Pride on June 30. Because I want to see how the queer community and I want to see how the LGBT community acts during this month. Because if we’re talking about Pride, and we are not making it about Black Lives Matter and about queer black people, we should not feel Pride, we should feel shame. Because we, you know, there’s obviously this intersection. But we, you know, we do not get to say that we are more oppressed or that we are oppressed differently. This is the time where our oppression and the history that we’ve encountered as queer people needs to be tied into this, for instance, the very same week that George Floyd was murdered. This man Tony McDade was 38, who was a trans man, he was killed by the Miami Dade police, he was shot, he was murdered. And we aren’t talking about him enough. And it’s time for us to do that. So hold on to your Happy Pride wishes and wish them to me at the end of January. I mean, January the end of June. And I’ll be like, thank you Diep but if we don’t act—especially white gays, I see you and I’m on to you. If you don’t see the problem with your silence right now, and if you’re choosing to go with the platitudes of love is love is love and all that nonsense. Remember that Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, especially Marsha P. Johnson who was black, those were the people who started Stonewall. You would not be enjoying your shirtless mimosas in Hell’s Kitchen, and your orgies on Fire Island if it wasn’t for Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. So if you don’t center your Pride around Black people, specifically this June, um, I have no pride whatsoever.
Diep: It’s like all of those people who want to police how other people protest or are forgetting that this country was built on protesting and, you know, doing some damage to property. I’m sure back in the day, there are people who are like, “Oh, they really should have not thrown all that tea overboard. I mean, think about all that money, all the damages that they have caused the British government, won’t someone think of the tea. But all of those people, no one remembers who they are. They do remember this act of protesting that led us to form this country. And people don’t remember that it was, Selma was not a peaceful march, there were police beating up the protesters. There were police beating up protesters at the Stonewall Inn. A peaceful protest isn’t possible as long as we live in a military state where the police can just, you know, can just hurt people without any consequences?
Jose: So fucking right.
Diep: We don’t just talk about serious things on this podcast. We also talk about fun things too. So why don’t we take a breather? And talk about like, what have you been doing in quarantine Jose?
Jose: It’s also so hard I don’t think you know, when we decided to get back together, to get the band back together. While we were orienting, I don’t think we ever imagined that this was what our first episode was going to be like, we thought it was going to be about you know, what theater to stream, and what movies to watch and all of that. Yeah, if we were only talking about that right now, we would be assholes. So I am so glad that that’s not what we’re doing. I’m extremely angry right now. I’m very sad. Also, very proud and very happy to see a social uprising. So yeah, you know, if we weren’t doing this right now, I would be very angry at us. I would be very ashamed of us. I’m glad that we’re doing it.
But you know, in quarantine. Lately I’ve been angry. Earlier, I was trying to watch as much you know live stream theater as I could. Did we watch, no we didn’t watch Love Never Dies together right?
Diep: We did not watch Love Never Dies together but we did watch it separately.
Jose: Yeah so I saw I watched that and I haven’t been able to focus on anything but all of this right now and like, you know my activism I into anti racism activism right now it’s like what’s driving me. I have not done anything but that since like Wednesday last week. I haven’t watched any TV, I haven’t watched any movies. I haven’t done anything but find ways to help. I feel powerless. I feel like I’m not doing enough right now. And this is not, I wouldn’t want people to tell me, ‘Oh, you’re holding up well.’ This is not what this is about. I think I would be very unhappy with myself if I thought that I was doing enough. So the fact that I’m wondering if I’m, I take it as a very good sign. So anyway, at the beginning of quarantine, I was watching Sex and the City, which I ended up writing a piece about it and the digital performance by Brian Lobel who’s based in London, and it’s centered on Sex and the City. And I’m going to link to that also. And then, you know, I’ve been playing a lot of Animal Crossing. I have neglected my island for so long. That last time I saw it, it was like the most unkempt, gross looking Island ever. Like it has weeds, everything and stuff. But I’m sure my Animal Crossing Island understands that there are more important things right now that I need to be focused on. And that’s basically it.
I’ve been trying to work out, like taking dance classes online, doing a lot of zooming, reading. And yeah, and that’s it. I can’t believe how we’ve been quarantining for so long. And it also feels like two and a half months. Yeah, it also feels like you know, like time hasn’t passed which is very disturbing. How about you, what you’ve been up to?
Diep: You know, time is so elastic, I kind of feel like it’s been two and a half months and it’s the same, like I feel like it’s been so long yet it’s been so short at the same time. I feel like you know, at the end of Interstellar when Matthew McConaughey in the fifth dimension and he’s seeing everything. He’s living his entire life all at once and it’s happening instantaneously, but it also like, his life is just literally so far away from him. Like I feel like I’m living multiple lives right now.
Jose: Okay, so if you’re Matthew, can I be Anne Hathaway?
Diep: Yes, you can do that terrible monologue on love and how it’s the most powerful force in the universe.
Jose: Because he’s going to look for her right? Jessica Chastain turned into Ellen Burstyn, who was waiting for her dad, and Matthew goes off to save Anne Hathaway.
Diep: Mm hmm. So to that she’s not stuck alone on Mars. Yeah.
Jose: What do you think she was doing over there? Was she’s like, “I dream the dream…..”
Diep: Probably planting stuff.
Jose: Oh yeah, that’s a good point.
Diep: Yeah, planting stuff and singing to herself. It just seems like it just seems like a really shitty idea either way to just send a bunch of astronauts and individual astronauts to a planet by themselves. That is how Matt Damon went crazy in that movie. It was because he was on an alien, hostile alien planet by himself. Like if they really wanted to ensure that everyone succeeded, they should have sent them in pairs so they can troubleshoot together. Because that’s how you solve problems.
Jose: Or send like five of them, and like some reality TV cameras. Turn the whole thing into a show. I’m just kidding, fuck reality TV.
Diep: I mean, they could have had enough money to send them home. Not thinking in the capitalistic structure! This is why we can’t solve climate change.
Jose: This is why we can’t have nice things, capitalism.
Diep: But yeah, I’ve been like, I’ve been doing multiple things. I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV shows. The funny thing is, the ironic thing is my, because, you know, because the theater shut down so abruptly. It’s like we went from seeing theater three or four shows a week to seeing no shows a week and I have had a hard time just bringing myself to watch all these virtual performances that people were doing, just because I was just so depressed for the month of April. I got furloughed for my job and actually too, it’s like the virtual stuff just reminded me like, “Oh, I’m stuck in my house and I cannot leave.” If I’m like watching Insecure, “Oh, that’s just another Sunday when I don’t go to the theater.” But no, if I’m watching, like, well, what’s in what’s an example of a thing that happened? If I’m watching Michael Urie do Buyer and Cellar, which was a very good performance, but at the same time, I was very much reminded that I’m not in a theater right now. I’m watching theater because I cannot go to the theater, like it’s beautiful. And it makes me sad at the same time.
Jose: I agree completely. Like, you know, nothing makes me sadder than seeing people without makeup and their sweatpants, like doing readings. And it’s very depressing. Like, I don’t even see my friends like that. Like, you know, I put on a different shirt. And cologne to do this.
Diep: I put on lipstick to do this,
Jose: I’m sorry, you know, I don’t want to see people like that and not just because, you know, not because it’s bad but because it makes me very sad. But I’m very, like excited because also, you know, like, well this is happening and some people are just like sticking to the whole, like during readings and stuff, and just doing, you know, home versions of plays that we know and just like reading them sometimes just from the script, or whatever. I have also seen really wonderful things that unfortunately, the media, you know, our colleagues don’t seem to be covering enough. You know, there’s the alternative and people turn it into theater. Wow, even that sounds very condescending. So I’m like, what, yeah, there’s theater. For example, like, This is Not a Theatre Company, which we’ve covered before. It’s called Life on Earth. I’m not mistaken. Did you experience that?
Diep: I didn’t even hear about that.
Jose: It was you know, they were doing something called Bathtub Play also, which is like what we covered of them before, which was basically a guided play that you were able to do in your bathtub and that’s you know like totally their work. They did this really wonderful thing Life on Earth and it was this adaptation of a Charles Mee play that they did over Discord and Discord is this like, and I didn’t even know about Discord, it’s like this, place this like, online thing, website where it’s like message boards and chats for people who play video games. And This is Not a Theatre Company that this play over Discord. And over three days, they, you know, there were actors and characters chatting, people posting things and audio messages, and custom video pieces that they had created specifically for that. And that was beautiful. That was exciting. It was refreshing. It was theater. It wasn’t a reading. And experiencing that, for instance, I wasn’t depressed. I was exhilarated because this is where theater artists, you know, I and I know, you know, I can’t tell people how to grieve because we’re all grieving right now.
This is the moment where after we grieve, and after we mourn what we don’t have right now, we also look for different ways to do things like, the New York Neo-Futurists who have been doing plays, like short plays in podcast form. And I’ve seen plays on Instagram, plays that are being done on Twitter. And all that stuff is so exciting. And I do wish that our colleagues right now, would focus a little bit more on that, you know, on the theater that’s happening that doesn’t look like the theater, you know, it’s still happening.
Diep: Mm hmm. And I think like, once you remove the expectation that it needs to look and feel like being in a room with the work. Because I’m so tired of the articles it’s like, oh zoom theater isn’t sad as satisfying as regular theater like I don’t think anyone’s trying to pretend that zoom theatre is the same, I think people are making do but also trying to figure out their way around this new medium. It’s been really interesting to me to see people go from just, doing you know a regular play like this, like you and I are doing with Skype, with scripts and no makeup or set dressing, to using zoom, with different zoom backgrounds to denote location, or using Snapchat filters as costuming.
I saw this theater, I think it was at University of Maryland’s theater department, they did a version of She Kills Monsters, a play by Qui Nguyen, about a young woman who plays Dungeons and Dragons in order to connect with her dead sister. And you know, it’s a very fantastical play, there’s a lot onstage, a lot of fight choreography and a lot of costuming and there’s like a giant dragon that happens at the end. But this is what was so fascinating was like, even if you couldn’t see them actually fight, like they were still able to like—they were still able to fight on stage by just having someone punch a camera and the other person jump back like that. Or they did dragons by, you know, having the different screens fill up with dragon heads and like shooting you know, cartoon fire. It’s not the same but at the same time it was still entertaining, and it feels like how lofi a Dungeons and Dragons session would be. And so, I’m just like really excited for people to like kind of figure it out and to see what it looks like a year from now when we all finally get out of quarantine.
Jose: But since you mentioned all the pieces about zoom theatre not being theater, what do all those journalists who write those pieces have in common?
Diep: Their hair is not as fabulous as ours?
Jose: Maybe but I wonder if they all happen to be white and also cis men, is that, do you think that’s something?
Diep: Just set in their ways? They have their preconceptions for how things should be, like most people of a certain generation are.
Jose: Yeah old white people. So?
Diep: Yeah, yeah. It’s like okay, boomers, we’re at a new type of theater. Get with the program!
Jose: Yes. And I guess this is a great moment for us to, this makes me so excited. I feel like I’m gonna do this huge announcement, which, it’s not. But you know, in the past, we would have loved to travel all over the country because we kept being invited to go all over the country to see shows, and to talk to the people outside of New York, but we didn’t have money. We didn’t have a budget, basically to do a lot of what we want it to do. But right now, because, you know, for some reason, suddenly, we became this like, national you know, right now, we kind of become this national thing. We want to invite artistic directors, and independent artists and independent theater makers all over the country. We’re doing theater right now. We don’t mean necessarily live stream theater we want. If you think you are doing theater, let us know and we always include our contact info and please reach out to us and let us know about the work you’re doing. There’s the point when we go to, what I hope is going to be like a regular schedule, we are going to also be reviewing stuff. So we are going to go back to talking about shows that we love and theater that we love. So send us invitations to everything all over the country. Should we even say, all over the world?
Diep: Why not?
Jose: Yes, all over the world.
Diep: Well, I’m so glad we started talking about that because I think we should tell people what our vision is for this next installment of Token Theatre Friends. Oh, and by the way, the reason we don’t have access to our old episodes is because iTunes does this shitty thing where they won’t transfer ownership of your podcast to a new entity. So that’s why because American Theatre produced it, it owns our old podcast because it’s on their iTunes page. And so we can’t get it back, basically. Exactly. So if you want the old episodes, though, you could just go on over to the old feed. But for this new feed, where we’re going to do a weekly podcast, where we talk about, you know, shows we’ve seen and we’re also going to tell you ahead of time what we’re going to be talking about. So you could watch it around the same time as we do, and if you have any questions or thoughts about it, then please send them into us and we’ll read them on the podcast.
And http://www.tokentheatrefriends.com or http://www.tokentheatrefriends.org, that’s theater with an RE, we will also be creating original articles on the website. So it’s not just talking about shows on this podcast, but also, you know, writing stuff about them. Because in case you haven’t noticed, Jose is unemployed, I’m furloughed, we are at home. But we want to make things, especially in a climate where 30,000 journalists have been laid off in the last two months. And so there’s fewer opportunities to write and we’re just so tired of just waiting for other people to say yes to us. So we are going to say yes to ourselves.
Jose: I like that. It’s very Carrie Bradshaw.
Diep: So do you want to tell them about our Patreon?
Jose: Yes, we also have a Patreon and we know that this is a very tough time for us to be asking anyone to make any donations of any kind. We’re all broke, all over the world. So we understand that and we also know that there are other priorities. And I feel especially shitty asking for, you know, people to join our Patreon while there’s social uprisings, and there’s protests right now and people are contributing and donating to bail funds and to the Black Lives Matter Movement and other very, very important social movements. But we would really appreciate it if you could, you know, check out our Patreon. We have different levels where you can become a subscriber and we have different benefits and bonuses. We’d love you all equally. We certainly do. But we are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very poor. So yeah, we need some help. And we know that we have very loyal fans and we’re not asking them specifically to give us money. If you don’t have any money right now, we don’t have any money. So we’re asking you to share and let other people know. And if you can donate, you know, I feel so weird, asking people for money.
Diep: Pretend you’re PBS?
Jose: Yeah. Well, but you know, yeah. If you can help, help us. We don’t necessarily just mean with your money, although that’s good. But sharing and rating and reviewing us on iTunes and sharing what we do on our site, it will help us a lot. Exposure helps us a lot right now. And money, also. So you know, if you can do both, we love you. If you can do one, we’d love you just to same.
Diep: You’ll still get the content. I’m not going to keep the content from you. But this is just a two person ship. We don’t have a team. I do my own makeup. And I produce this podcast, Jose edits the videos. It’s such a tight little ship we’re running. And you know, Jose and I didn’t talk about this, but we both came to the same conclusion independently yesterday, which is like we want this platform to grow. And we want to be able to, you know, commission other writers and put them on our website and give them opportunities. And because we don’t think anyone should be doing work for free, creating for free.
Jose: That’s called slavery.
Diep: Yes, exactly. But we’re not equating writers not getting paid for their work to slavery.
Jose: Let me rephrase it. That’s called exploitation.
Diep: Exactly. We are not in the business of exploiting people. We’re in the business of providing opportunities and platforms. And so publicists you will be hearing from us. You can email us at tips@tokentheatrefriends.com. I know we have an official email address! Who do we think we are!
Jose: Fancy and we also have our own independent email addresses! But anyway, that’s precisely why we’re asking for your help right now, for your financial help because we are paying for everything from our very, very, very empty wallet.
Diep: Yeah. And Jose’s dad, which thank you Jose’s dad, he is our first patron. Do you want to tell them what we’re talking about next week?
Jose: Next week, we are going to be talking about Pass Over which is currently right now on Amazon Prime. And we also gonna have a guest and I’m so excited.
Diep: So if you want to talk about Pass Over with us, get on Amazon Prime. It’s included with the account. It’s a wonderful play by Antoinette Nwandu that was done in Chicago and was very controversial. And it’s about police brutality. And the movie version is directed by, I mean, the filmed theater version is directed by the one and only Spike Lee@ Like what? When is he gonna be a Broadway producer? So if you’ve seen it and have thoughts on it, please send them to us and we’ll be happy to run them. And that is it for our Token Theatre Friends 2.0 Episode One. Congratulations, Jose, we are doing this.
Jose: Yeah.
Diep: Okay, well, thank you for listening. Bye bye.
Token Theatre Friends 