PRIVILEGE

I loved the day that we spoke about privilege.  I'm going to be honest and say that I had no idea what "privilege" was and had only heard it in articles titled with the word "white" before it.  I think I, subconsciously, did not want to be a part of the argument that was constantly seeming to surround it, so I just kept myself ignorant.  Dr. Fletcher explained privilege as the things we don’t even have to think about.  I’m privilege to be American.  I was just born here.  I didn’t have to fight to be here.  There are some people who have to constantly think about what they say.  In their countries, they don’t have freedom of speech.  I was born with the right to free speech.  I don’t even have to think about it.  I just have it. 

After the Ferguson verdict, my Facebook was going insane.  People were outraged.  Some people were replying to the outrage with apologistic posts.  It was crazy.  I deleted a lot of people from my Facebook because of their ignorant comments.  The next day, I had to teach my 1025 class.  I’m not a psychology, sociology, or history professor; but, I am my students’ teacher and, sometimes, it’s appropriate to deviate from the plan for the sake of a discussion. 

I asked them if anyone had ever talk to them about what “privilege” meant.  Much to my surprise, none of their teachers had and, like me, the only one they had heard of was “white privilege.”  We had a discussion and they had such wonderful things to say after I explained what privilege was.  By the time we got to the end of the conversation, we all concluded that, yes.  Everyone has the opportunity to succeed.  BUT, does everyone have equal opportunity to succeed?  No.  It’s something that will continue to be with me.  They were so open and willing to hear about it.  Instead of arguing about privilege, we should attempt to educate people on it.  I think we have a lot of people who think they know what privilege is or means and they are mistaken on the definition.  They take it as an attack.  It’s hard to hear someone say anyone is privileged when we’re in a recession and no one can get a job and everyone is in a tremendous amount of debt.  But, anyone who says it doesn’t exist is proving the point that it does!  They don’t think it exists because they don’t have to think about it. 

The other night, after rehearsal, I walked into my boyfriend’s apartment and had my stun gun in my hand.  He looked at me, laughed, and said, “Do you really need that?”  At first, I got a little irritated; but, then I remembered.  He’s a man.  He has the privilege of not have to worry about someone over-powering him or trying to hurt him.  I just replied, “Yeah.  I do” and left it at that.  

EMPATHY

Maggie raised some interesting questions.  Can we really only reach people if they are willing to listen or should we be trying to reach past those people to those who will not.  I think is change is to really be made, one has to attempt to get to the latter.  I think the best way to really do this is to write about things you know or have experienced.  If artists share their truthful point of view, they will always be compelling.  It makes me think of our one-person shows.  I have written mine about my family and ambiguous loss.  I think one-person shows are a great medium for empathy.  They can be anything.  They are story-telling.  They are also very interactive.  The audience becomes a character that the person/people that they person performing speaks to.  Anything that will include the audience will illicit empathy.  That's why I love the re-enactment exercises.  You could even switch roles and feel what it would be like to be the other person.  Anything that is interactive will FORCE you to think.  It will force you to choose a point of view, as opposed to the theatre that just asks you to come, sit for a bit, and forget.

THEATRE AND RACE. . .

Race, in terms of theatre, is such an interesting discussion because race is just a societal convention, right? It is a physical attribute that we have given a name to based on a first look, but, really, when you look at someone first glance, can you really tell what their ethnicity is? With casting, those producing theatre are just looking for what looks right. If I look at you and see a black person, I can cast you as a black person, whether you are black or not. The same goes with Caucasians with tan skin. Give them an accent and they can play a Hispanic; but, is that okay? Should we got out of our way to make sure that the person's specific ethnic background matches the profile of the character? 
This question makes me think of, once again, A RAISIN IN THE SUN. I learned a lot through that experience about how the color and shade of one's skin can affect casting. The director confided in me before putting up the cast list that he felt a sophomore was the best choice for Walter Lee, but that he was concerned about his image. He was mix-raced and very light-skinned, but was the best actor. He didn't know if it was appropriate to use him in a play about the struggle of the black man in that period. Perhaps, he should cast someone darker and cast this guy as George, the uppity, snooty, rich, black guy (another stereotype is that light-skinned black people feel superior to those darker than them). I told him to go with the best actor and though it was a bit non-conventional, I think be did a solid job. I actually don't think it was his skin color that held him back as much as his age and the fact that he had not grown up with any of his black family. He only knew his white side so he actually didn't have the experience or culture that comes with that. 
In that same production, the guy cast as Asagai, the African student, decided it was a good idea for him to put dark make-up on his skin. He also didn't feel dark enough! It started out okay, but by opening night, it was straight up black face! Very jarring and kind of scary. The audience was btk pleased. They felt it was a perpetuation of a stereotype. Not all Africans are dark-skinned!!!
This topic is worth more thought and discussion because it takes that, ya know? It's not something we are all aware we are being affected by, but it is worth taking the time to stop and think about it.

SAVE OUR HOUSING!

Right now, I live in the graduate housing on Nicholson Drive.  It is a perfect fit for someone like me who was just out of college and was going to need to adjust quickly.  I only had a 3 week turnaround from undergraduate graduation to entrance into graduate school.  I love my apartment.  It is an easy walk or bike ride from all of my classes and it is so affordable (they charge one flat rate for utilities and everything), particularly for a location right on campus and so close to everything.  It has this great vintage feel because it was built in the 1950’s.  Everything slides (the front door, the cabinets, the bathroom door), it has brick accents, and it is just the best place for someone like me, who has never had their own apartment and is rarely in their apartment because of graduate school life.

LSU has already begun the process of knocking down The Nicholson Apartments.  They replaced them with parking lots and many people were forced to move. The only ones that remain are the ones that I live in and in 2015 or 2016, they will be demolished. 

I want to schedule a protest/sit in where I get everyone from my building, including their children, to sit in the courtyard of the apartment complex.  We will invite people to sit with us, sign a petition, enjoy refreshments, and talk to us about why we are here.  We will make the residents and their stories real.  We all come from different walks of life.  Some of the residents are from different countries and brought their family all the way to Louisiana for an education and better life.  A lot of them have no car and need to be close to campus.  Our university needs to make education for graduates more efficient and, essentially, easy.  Uprooting some of these residents could prove detrimental to their education. 

We would not leave the courtyard.  We would sleep there, eat there, and show what can happen if graduate students aren’t given affordable housing close to campus.  They will just have nowhere to go.    

In this instance, I think that media would help us.  I would utilize social media, I would create a hastag, I would call The Advocate and the local news station, anything to make ourselves present.  I would take advantage of the fact that the residents of our complex are a diverse group and take a lot of pictures. 

I would know my protest was complete when I got enough signatures to present my petition to the correct officials and when I felt the graduate students had been adequately heard.  I can honestly say that my endgame may not even be that they keep the buildings up.  It may be too late for that; but, I want people to be more aware of what happens when they take these actions.  

Clybourne Park and site

A production I think would be cool to place in site-specific circumstances would be a naturalistic show like Clybourne Park. So often in naturalistic pieces such as this one, technical designers try so hard to make the set as realistic as possible. If I were a director, I would do the first act in a nice looking two story house, very suburban-like. It would be cool if most of the other rooms were filled with boxes that contained actual items one would pack on a move, labels and all. Francine would be traveling around packing for most of this act. There would be an actual room where Kenneth's things would be either packed or laid out, some in boxes for charity and others that Bev and Russ would want to keep. When the characters that are not initially in the home arrive, they would drive up in period appropriate clothing and cars and knock on the door. They would have an actual entrance. The audience members could sit in the kitchen or living room or follow characters that they like. They must never touch them. We are taking the experience of "feeling like you're there" to the next level.

The second act would be held in a different neighborhood the next day. This building will be much more open with graffiti on the walls. Walls would be knocked out and everything would generally be in disarray, but it must look like someone once lived there. The audience members could sit with the actors and discuss their views as they hear them spoken from the actors. Who do they really agree with?

I completely agree with Kantor's assessment. As I study these forms more, I see that art can't stay in a box! I've never been to a production like the one I've described above, but I think if I did, I would feel more like a witness instead of a spectator. I would really feel like I was there because I ACTUALLY was!

PERFORMANCE ART? theatre?

As we attempt to put labels and definitions on forms of performance, there will always be the possibility that certain ones will have the capability of falling into more than one category. I definitely can see how the naturalistic, theatrical form and a more evolved, technological form of performance could get very close in similarity; but, I don't think that they will ever be the same or dilute completely into one another, though they may come very close. Speaking first hand as someone who is attempting to produce a solo performance show, I can say that I am taking a more theatrical take to my performance. I speak of the past, I have flashbacks, I speak in verse and prose; but, I am me and the words spoken are my thoughts and I'm making the decision to share them so I suppose I'm present, right? My project is not quite theatre, but it's not quite performance art. It's a little or both.  I took the aspects of each that I felt would most compel an audience and, in good mastrabatory fashion, would compel myself. I see many solo performance artists taking the same approach to their work. They don't confine it to a form. They just do what they want.


In regards to media filters and imagined memory, I think that the form of media that most affects our worldly experience is video. Take this article/video, for example. 

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tasered-passenger-my-civil-rights-were-just-thrown-out-window-n219916

An Indiana man tells his side of the story and claims that police used excessive force when they broke his car window and tased him. His son got the whole thing on camera. The man's attorney, states in the article, "Thank goodness Joseph took the video, because the video stands for itself that these officers engaged in excessive force." However, this video only shows one fraction of the entire exchange, but after seeing the video, I can't help but be impacted by it. How can occurrences, such as these impact the theatrical experience? Well, for one thing, they become the basis for our recollection of that particular experience, particularly if we have nothing else to go off of, but someone's word.  They may have words, but the other side may have words AND video and that will always make more impact.  A video could be the representation of not just an entire experience, but an entire era.  

Dark Matter

Answering the first question about a production that made a choice not to represent something in naturalistic detail, a production of A RAISIN IN THE SUN that I participated in my last year of college comes to mind. I won't go into a whole synopsis of this show, but a huge part of the story is the fact that the head of their family, Big Walter, has passed away and they are all awaiting his insurance money. The other day in Meisner class, Stacey mentioned a "private audience." A private audience is the person who we are always performing for (trying to prove something to). She challenged us to ask ourselves that question in future work. Well, Big Walter is definitely a part of almost every character's private audience in RAISIN. The set for that show was very naturalistic with a working stove, kitchen sink, and a fridge that actually stayed cold. Big Walter is such a big part of that show, despite the fact that he never actually appears, so the production staff was torn as to how to represent him on stage. Would they hang a large picture, almost GLASS MENAGERIE-esque, and have him loom over everyone or just have a small picture that the family could refer to from time to time? Ultimately, they chose the latter and I believe it was much more effective because when the insurance check actually comes, Big Walter's wife, Lena, realizes it doesn't change anything. He's still gone and $10,000 doesn't change that. Every person in the family believed their future lied in that check, a check that their father basically worked himself to death trying to achieve. There was no need for a large picture of Big Walter. Big Walter was EVERYWHERE.

I don't quite know how to answer the second question about the representation of the Holocaust. On one hand, I believe the problem with a representation such as THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is that it makes the horrific actions of The Holocaust dark matter. We don't really see what's going on in the camp. We only see how it's affecting a family and a little boy's relationship with his friend; however, I also think that approach is quite effective. You see how blind the father is to his contribution to wickedness, the mother's guilt but lack of action, and an innocence lost because of it. It made me think, "Am I that blind and socialized to horrible things that I do? Could it end up hurting those around me?"

I don't actually think there's an effective way to represent the Holocaust. Referring back to the 2 laws of representation, it always conveys more and conveys less simultaneously. If you choose to show how it affects a particular family, group, people, you neglect the others of those. I suppose  one could utilize hallucinations or exposition to show other views, but I still don't feel it would be a fair representation. Theatre doesn't show real life. We only show the juicy stuff, so we will never get an accurate depiction of events such as this one. Every piece will always leave the generation viewing it asking, "Why wasn't someone doing something about this?"