All posts by TiffanyAntone

Great Plains Shout-Out Time

Conference, Female Artists, Playwright, , , , , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

So many plays!

Arriving at the Great Plains Theatre Conference on Saturday, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.  The itinerary was so intense and so interesting and my head was absolutely spinning at the week I had ahead of me – 29 playwrights, a bevy of workshops and readings, plus evening play festival shows – Oh My!

But here it is Thursday already, and I’m so bummed that this orgy of new work is coming to a close.

There are a lot of talented people here, a lot of passionate writers, and a lot of really cool, innovative, and engaging work being shared.

And while there aren’t any female playwrights in the conference’s mainstage line-up (tsk, tsk), there were certainly a host of super talented female writers showcased in the event’s Playlabs.

So, how about I give a little LAFPI shout-out to some of the fabulous female playwrights whose work I’ve had the privilege to enjoy this week? (FYI, there is no way to see every play at this conference.  There are multiple readings going on at once – so what I was able to see is but a sampling of what was available.)

First up, let’s talk about Minneapolis playwright Anne Bertram.  What a cool writer!  Anne’s play, The Good Fight, takes place in London, 1913, and is about the women’s suffrage movement.  Drawing from history, Anne colors in this frustratingly fem-closed world with panache.  I was so into this play!  It’s smart, funny, and poignant – Brava, Anne!

Another historically inspired piece is Nancy Cooper Frank’s absurdist play, Daniil Kharms: A Life in One-Act and Several Dozen Eggs.  I so enjoyed this weird and wonderful play!  I *believe* Nancy is still developing the piece, but it’s really super interesting and introduced me to the Russian absurdist writer in highly theatrical fashion.

I also got to see We Only Go Home in Retrograde, by Eva Suter, a UT Austin MFA candidate with a serious lyrical streak.  She’s written a poetic and super visually engaging piece.  I was particularly interested in meeting Eva and seeing her play now that I too live in Texas (I just keep moving further and further away from LA, don’t I…) – So how cool to meet a Texas artist at this conference in Nebraska!

And speaking of Texas, another cool writer I’ve had the pleasure to meet is Murphi Cook – creative mind behind the horror play, Birds of America.  With Hitchcockian flare, Murphi has created a seriously creepy (in a good way) play about grief and relationships… and birds.  I was super intrigued by this piece, and – now that I know she’s also a puppeteer – I’m really hoping I can see one of her shows in San Antonio!

I also had the pleasure of seeing Tira Palmquist’s play, Two Degrees – a fascinating look into one woman’s grief as she battles for the climate at a senate hearing.  I was so into the metaphorical landscape accompanying this woman’s real-world battles!  And it was great to meet a fellow LAFPI’er – one whose name I had seen and heard mentioned more than a time or two before.  What a cool person and writer!

And last but not least, I had the pleasure of sitting in our very own Jennie Webb’s Crazy Bitch.  It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Jennie’s, so I won’t spend too much time gushing, but what a cool piece!  I loved her characters – one of which is an immortal jellyfish!  What?  Awesome!   In typical Jennie Webb style, she’s given us a world in which our imaginations get to settle into something genuinely unique.  Kudos, Jennie!

I’ve still got four more readings, a workshop, and one more production ahead of me – this truly is an extraordinary opportunity.  Huzzah to GPTC for creating such an awesome event for playwrights, and for facilitating so many cool new creative connections!

Blogging on the Plains

Conference, playwriting, Theatre,

by Tiffany Antone

I’m caressing a wall – feeling its temperature and taking notes on “all kinds of walls”.  I’m listening to a stranger’s stomach gurgling (even though I’m supposed to be pressing my hesitant ear down heavily enough to hear his heart beat) – now this stranger has his head to my belly… listening.  I can feel his breath on my hand which is resting just below my stomach. The sudden and unexpected closeness of this listening exchange is alarming and calming all at once.

Now  I’m watching a man press a lit cigarette into a child’s painting, burning away the colors.

Now I’m shaking hands with a cardboard-obscured (and thus body-less) hand… someone else kisses the hand.  I laugh, I think about germs, I think about intimacy amongst strangers, I think about chapstick and lotion and Purell and calluses.

I think about my laptop, sitting a few feet away and I feel the familiar feeling of yearning to just… write.

I’m at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (#GPTC) and this is Lisa D’Amour‘s Yoko Ono workshop.  I’m learning about the occasions on which D’Amour has performed Ono’s “Cut” piece and how her work as a performance artist has influenced her as a playwright.  Her experience is transformative.

There are playwrights everywhere.

It’s hard to believe that only 8 days ago I was in LA, putting up my Little Black Dress INK Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Project at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.  We live-streamed last Sunday’s play readings, and I will go on to produced each of the plays in Prescott, AZ this Fall.  It’s been a FANTASTIC experience, a wild ride…

But I’m exhausted.

Which is why I’m so ecstatic to be at the GPTC this week.

This week, I get to sit back and just be a playwright.

I’ve taken two workshops and seen five new play readings already, and it’s only Monday!

So while I’ve got to get to bed early tonight in order to try to sleep off the rest of last week’s Producer fatigue (in order to enjoy the accumulation of new Playwright fatigue), I can promise I’ll be blogging again soon about my time spent here on the Plains, enjoying my role in the writer’s tribe.

 

You’re Awesome

Playwright, playwriting, ,

By Tiffany Antone

Artists observe. We live outside the realm of now, in a place that exists way-back-when and also tomorrow.  We search for patterns, for gross inconsistencies, for tropes, for absurdities.  We listen to the ever quickening pulse of mankind and then do our level best to translate it into something resembling… something… and it gets labeled art.  We deliver this art to those whose feet are more rooted to the planet – the people we’ve been observing – in the hope that it helps them see what we see so clearly from our creative outer space.

We are a weird people.  And a special people.  Insufferable, determined, scattered, brave – there is something dangerous to living in the grey.  Strange things happen in the art-making place.   We can be harder on ourselves than we ever are on anyone else.

But it’s Valentine’s Day.  A day to be kind to yourself.  A day to thank your Muse.  A day to look with love at this insane existence, our existence, and just breathe.

Because you’re awesome.

Seriously.

Little Black Dress INK and YOU

playwriting,

I’ll be writing more this week, but wanted to take some time up front to talk about Little Black Dress INK’s Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Project.  There is still time left for playwrights to share work with us in anticipation of selection for this year’s festival, Planting the Seed.

Check out the details below – deadline is this Saturday.

Download (PDF, 175KB)

~Tiffany

www.LittleBlackDressINK.org

Panem et Circenses

Playwright, playwriting, , , , , , , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

I’ve let all of my professional memberships lapse this year.  It’s not because the value I place on them has lessened, it’s because I’m absolutely living-off-my-credit-cards broke.

Every time I get a Dramatists Guild newsletter, or an LMDA listserve digest, I feel guilty.  And sad.  I consider tacking their membership dues onto my “I’ll never pay it off anyway” Mastercard, and then get even more depressed because the last thing I need to do is collect interest on membership dues in addition to all the interest I’m already collecting on gas, food, and toilet paper.

I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately.  I’ve been thinking a lot about whether the Universe is testing me or if I’m only perpetuating my personal crisis by trying to find meaning here in the “What am I doing wrong?” zone of under/un-employment.

And maybe this week’s Black Friday Bludgeon-a-thon tipped me over into even drabber waters, because I really can’t help but be so focused on the deepening divide in this country between the “Haves” and “Have-Nots”.

We are not so far from a Hunger Games world as we think.

Which has me thinking: While there are certainly movies and plays being made that address today’s big issues, why aren’t there more  being produced that tap into today’s economic and social crises?  I admit, living in AZ – and now TX (yeehaw!) – has me at a disadvantage; I do not have my finger on the pulse of American theater.  (I’ve had to let my TCG membership go as well – I miss you American Theater Magazine!)   But I continue to read books and plays like a fiend and I consider my $5 movie matinees a forgivable splurge.  I also spend (too much) time online, trying to stay abreast of theatrical conversations and to feed my artistic self with updates about what is happening.

I try to stay up to date on what people are writing about and what audiences are gobbling up.

And I’d like to see more stories about the struggles going on in the trenches.

I read The Hunger Games series shortly after it came out.  No, I take that back… I devoured that series shortly after it came out.  I listened to friends talk about how the author didn’t “demonstrate the best craft,” and rolled my eyes, because they were eating the books up almost as fast as I was.

You see, the story is gripping.  The characters are compelling.  And the issues at play in the series are indeed very relevant, because – thematically speaking – we already live in a panem et circenses era.

Therefore, Hunger Games Fever is stoked not only by the story’s entertainment factors, but by our own class issues, hang-ups, and battles as well.  And it’s a HUGE box office success which means the story is reaching people.  There are many films, plays, and books that never enjoy the kind of commercial success the Hunger Games has achieved – so I’m not arguing that we need to make commercialism our goal!  But what I am suggesting is that audiences, while still wanting to be “entertained”, are also starved for relevance… and that IS a worthwhile goal.

We playwrights need to ask ourselves, thematically, what’s going to move today‘s audience?  To make people laugh harder, gasp louder, and think more fully?  To create the kinds of worlds and characters that compel an audience to act?

I don’t want to pacify an audience.

I don’t want to be part of the circus.

I want to break the circus down and get people up on their feet!

But that’s a big wish.  Even the project I’m referencing – The Hunger Games – which had a profound effect on my busy little mind, is still “just” a book.  “Just” a movie… I don’t see people refusing to buy up bits of tabloid what-not written about Jennifer Lawrence because – as is dramatized in the story – they now see that PR is all just illusion aimed to distract us from the pain behind the “circus” of life.

Still… I’m also probably not the only person making such a connection either.

We writers are all throwing stories into the ring, hoping one will catch the eye of the Ring Leader so that he/she will present it to the audience in grand fashion.  (Unless we become Ring Leaders ourselves…)  Isn’t every story just a part of the circus until someone receives it as more than?

I might be stretching the analogy a little thin…

All I know is, I’m out here on the perimeter looking in – as many writers and artists are – observing this spinning world from my own little nook, trying to say something worthwhile.  It’s a tough place to be sometimes, what with also living on planet Earth and locked in near constant financial aerobics in order to stay afloat.  I don’t always have the perfect words.  Sometimes it takes me months to get a scene “Just right”.  But people ask me what kind of plays I write, and I realize that the one thing my works all have in common is that they always tackle something bigger than myself.

Whether my intent is to make my audience laugh or cry, I always want them to leave the theater thinking.  I don’t want to distract them from the ugliness that is around them – I want to point at it, analyze it, laugh and scream at it…

There are a lot artists out there trying to achieve the same thing: to awaken the audience.

I just didn’t realize how important that “awakening” was until my life became less about “Which new boots am I going to buy with this week’s wages?” and more about “How am I going to eat this week?”

And, unfortunately, until I can stop answering that grocery question with my Mastercard, it looks like I’ll have to continue putting off paying all those membership dues.

But I’ll still be here – applying for jobs like motherf***er, trying to write stories that really move people, and hoping that enough someone-elses want to hear what I have to say that those stories I’m throwing into the ring start sticking.

 

Working Artist – Donating Artist – Surviving Artist

playwriting, , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

It seems I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about whether or not artists should be paid/expect to be paid/pay their own way for the art they make/etc., and it’s making me grumpy.

It’s making me grumpy because in every case the author presupposes so much on behalf of the artists they purport to speak for/hypothesize on behalf of.  In every case, the author claims that (paraphrasing here to be sure – every article has had it’s own particular focus) “Artists shouldn’t expect to make money with their art – they should do it because a fiery passion to make art burns within” and “So, get a second or third job, surrender any hopes that you will ever own anything nice, and do what you love because you love it – not because you ever hope to make a living with it.”

Gag.

And B*llsh*t.

Let me be clear: I tell every student who wants to work professionally in the theater that it’s NOT an easy road.  That many of them will find that their paths take them in different directions than they intend.  That it’s okay if one day they decide they don’t want to be an actor/playwright/director after all.  I tell them that being an artist may not meet their economic standards, and that – yes – you need to really love this crazy profession in order to pursue it, because sometimes that’s all you’ll have separating you from a complete artistic meltdown.

Because it’s not a field where you can walk into ridiculously high-paying gigs fresh out of college or simply by making the right connections.  It’s not a field that pays highly, or “fairly”, or even sometimes at all.

In fact, much of the time, it pays nothing at all.

(sigh)

But I don’t tell them that they should suffer for their art, even though they might.  I don’t tell them that an artist should not ever expect, nor anticipate, nor (even) hope for, a paycheck someday.

Because if I do, then what does that say about how I value their art?

Art takes time.  It takes materials.  It takes energy.  If I write a play, I have to put in incredible time: the time to hone my craft, to write the script, to edit it, not to mention the time it takes to shop it around… That time isn’t “free” if I have to balance it against other jobs that pay and hopes for a personal life.  I’m carving that time out of the hours I’m supposed to be living/nurturing relationships with friends and family/making love/experiencing the world around me/etc.

Time is not free.

And then there are the materials an artist uses to make their art.  As a playwright, I have to own a laptop or a desktop or at least a notebook and lots of pens in order to get my words down on paper/or/screen.  I have to have a place to make my art – whether it’s my apartment or Starbucks or the park.  I have to feed myself, clothe myself, pay my electric bills… all of these “material goods” go into my ability to write.

And in order to hone my craft, find the time, and to supply the materials, I need money.

So, if I am working a job that is not in the arts to earn this money I need to make my art (as many of us do), then I am essentially working (at least) two jobs at all times: the one that pays and the one that doesn’t… yet.

Why is it so wrong then to hope that one day the play I write might pay me back with a bit of extrinsic gain in order to help my body and soul enjoy the intrinsic?  That “gain” may take the form of royalties, speaking fees, or a faculty position – and it may not be a lot, but receiving something other than a pat on back goes a long way in validating years of hard work put into evolving one’s artistic self.

I don’t think it’s asking a lot for artists to seek compensation.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for artists to value their art more than just “art for art’s sake”

I do think that those who pass on the “You’ll never make money with your art and you shouldn’t want to” lie to other artists are merely perpetuating a malfunctioning system’s philosophy of self-preservation.

It’s not evil to hope that your art will one day help pay the bills instead of merely adding to them.

It’s not delusional to think that our current “Eat or be eaten” system can be improved.

There’s nothing wrong with theater companies seeking out new business models in the hopes of creating a life for their artists that includes less suffering and more art-making through financial support, be they commissions, salaries, or even just good-old-fashioned stipends.

Stop telling people what they should intend with their art.  Stop telling artists that giving it away for free/or/next to nothing is just the name of the game.

Because that kind of condescension does nothing to change the game.

~Tiffany

Thankful

playwriting,

Hey hey, it’s Turkey Day!  Er, Day Before Black Friday-day? Get Drunk With Your In-Laws Day?

Oh – haha – it’s Thanksgiving day.  And there is SO much to be thankful for!

So aside from the usual gratitude points like family and friends and food and shelter and chocolate, there are things going on in the playwriting world that merit some LAFPI thanks.

Gender Parity it making progress.  Kitty Felde did a nice write up about the DC/VA/MD theater commitment to producing female playwrights, and American Theater Magazine recently shared the list of most produced plays for 2013-14 of which HALF are by women!

This is good news.

Additionally, there are a host of female playwright centered festivals offering opportunities to lady scribes, so there’s really no excuse NOT to be writing, submitting, and submitting some more.

So let’s spend some time in gratitude land this afternoon for all that is good and evolving!

~Tiffany

 

So, How do YOU Pay the Bills?

playwriting, , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Playwright
Restaurant Manager
Literary Manager
Photographer
Craft Service monkey
Youth Commercial Acting Instructor
Survey Administrator
Census Taker
Editor
Social Media Manager
Events Coordinator
Math Tutor
Adjunct Faculty member
Producer
Director
Adjunct Faculty member
Independent Acting/Writing Instructor
Adjunct Faculty Member
Freelance Writer

It’s been nearly 6 years since I graduated with my MFA in Playwriting and I’ve yet to land a permanent job of any kind.  On one hand, this sort of lifestyle has afforded me the kind of creative flexibility that I crave.  On the other, well, a girl can only eat so many cans of Spaghettios.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my path at present because I currently find myself on the job hunt again – this time in Texas! – and I’m contemplating applying for a 9-5 desk job even though I know it will greatly detract from my writing time.  I’m kind of tired of the never-shrinking stack of bills on my desk.  I’m kind of tired of putting off things like planning our wedding and talking about babies because I can’t afford it.

But I’m curious what ya’ll do to stay afloat.  Ideas?  Tips?  Anyone else out there feel like a jack of all trades but a master of none?  I look at the list of jobs I’ve held since graduation and it makes my head spin.  No wonder I’m tired!  I’ve never held fewer than two jobs at once, and for the last three years I’ve been juggling at least three.

What’s a lady playwright supposed to do?

~Tiffany Antone

 

In Which I Ask A Lot Of Questions

Audience, Feminism, playwriting, race, Theaters, , , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Something about my previous post stuck with me this week… I couldn’t quite put a pin in it until today.  At the end of the piece, I mentioned “I can’t presume to tell a woman of color about her own life anymore than a WoC should be telling a transgender white woman about hers.”

It stirred the question, “Where do transgender playwrights fall in this fight for gender parity?”

Does our drive for equal representation on stage scuttle transgender authors into Male/Female categories, or do we recognize them with a third gender category, thus indicating that an ideal season would include plays by men, women, and transgender playwrights?  And, if so, how would those genders break down from there?  Does a truly balanced season include an exact number male/female/transgender playwrights of color/queer/disabled/et al distinctions?

I guess what I’m getting at here is that in our bid to be better represented on stage, we become but one segment of an assembly of segmented voices demanding to be heard.

So…

What does this mean for theatres on the grand scale?   Should they try to appease each and every piece of these divided masses?  Could they?  What would a season look like if they did?

And what does this mean for playwrights on an individual level?  Is it possible to fully engage theatres en masse, or do we ultimately split time between our soap boxes and our desks, desperately self-promoting our own brand of whatever it is we’re selling whenever we’re not talking about everyone else in our “group”?

Is this just the way of things?  Are we all really just choosing the battles that lie closest to us, and to hell with the rest?

And if so, how can theatres – besieged with criticisms from so many groups – be expected to satisfy everyone?

Unfortunately, the answer for theatres is they cannot.

In order to “revolutionize” their production schedule in a manner that would satisfy our collectively diverse demands, theatres would need to be indifferent (at best) about alienating their patron base.  (The bigger the theatre, the more true this statement.)  A regional theatre that has primarily produced classic works by white men, for instance, would face a marketing and attendance nightmare were it to do a complete 180 – because it takes time (not decades, granted, but time) to grow new audiences*.

Smart purposefully-diverse substitutions in a theatre’s season, on the other hand, can serve to satisfy a theatre’s established audience as well as bring in new audiences previously deterred by what may have been perceived as static programming.   And when I say “smart” I mean searching for work that will challenge your theatre’s audience without alienating it.  If your theatre is in a city with a strong Latino community, and that community isn’t frequenting your theatre,  finding/producing work by Latino artists could be the first step your company takes towards diversifying your season.  If your company exists in a community with a large gay/lesbian population, but that population doesn’t visit your theatre, you should be seeking out playrights who can speak to that audience over and beyond playwrights that wouldn’t.  And if you’re one of those theatres producing Neil Simon after Mamet after Donald Margulies, you might be able to spice things up without mystifying your (probably) primarily white audiences just by bringing in some Sarah Ruhl or Theresa Rebeck.

Yes, adding one new voice to your season – new to your theatre and to your audience – could quite the change make.

In each instance, you are working towards a more balanced and robust season one new play at a time without moving too far beyond the circles of what you know your community will support.  You are contributing to a shifting theatrical landscape that continues to diversify and grow at a pace that allows audiences and hesitant administrators to keep pace.

Yet, would such incremental season changes be enough to make us happy?  If a regional theatre includes two plays by white women in their season where before they had no women at all, do we credit them as moving closer to gender parity, but berate them for ignoring playwrights of color?  Or do we decide on an individual level whether or not the fact that they are producing two works by women is satisfying and encouraging “enough” to us as women playwrights that we sort of “settle” down for a bit and direct our energies elsewhere?  Do we then look at other artists demanding the theatre give voice to their cause and say “Good luck!” or do we allow their fight to color our “victory” less victorious?

Which brings me back to my initial query – when we say we are asking for “gender parity”, what does that really mean?  And does it supercede or walk in step with the fight for diversity on stage in total?

Do we, in aligning ourselves with the fight closest to us, become a hindrance to those walking beside us?  Or can we all fight for our chosen “team” and still fight for all of us together?

It seems to me that the answers to these questions help us decide how we talk about gender parity/racial diversity/etc. with theatres and with one another, and it decides what we want to happen as a result of those discussions.  If we can agree that diversity at large is the goal, then we can work to encourage theatres to adopt changes in programming that best reflect the communities surrounding them by giving voice to the artists who serve those communities.  This might be a more realistic and attainable goal than asking theatres to give stage time to all of our voices at once.

So, the question becomes, is it a goal we can all work towards together?

 

* The topic of growing new audiences is worthy of a deeper discussion in and of itself  – of which there have been many.  For a fresh take and very insightful article on the topic, check out David Schultz’s Soil, Sunshine, Fresh Air, and Water on HowlRound

 

 

#Solidarity and Gender Parity Onstage

Feminism, playwriting, , ,

By Tiffany Antone

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week.  It’s been good for me, because much of the recent conversation I’ve been observing has been coming from the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen perspective, and although I’ve got my own little Twitter account (and a rockin’ Twitter name!), I barely ever actually surf the Tweet Stream.

In other words, had it not launched beyond the Twitter-sphere, I probably would have remained completely unaware that such an intensely important conversation was taking place.

So, there’s today’s Twitter promo.

If you are a fellow part-time-Luddite and need a run-down on just exactly what it is I’m talking about, then take a moment to check out this link regarding the hashtag’s origin.  Then read a more personal accounting of it on XOJane HERE, and lastly – if you’re as fascinated as I’ve become- you can read a response to all the hubub by the hashtag’s originator, Mikki Kendal,  HERE.  Go ahead and do the clicking… it’s worth it to get the full picture and this post will be here when you get back.

Good, you all caught up?  Is your head spinning a little with the enormity of it all?  Me too.

I took Women’s Studies as an undergrad at UCLA.  I sat in class, did all the reading, felt that undergraduate tingle racing up my spine (making me sit up taller and pay more attention than I did in my History of the Beatles class…)  Because here was a class that was genuinely interesting to me because it was about me.  I didn’t grow up underserved because I was female, and I didn’t experience discrimination simply because I was female.  But I could feel a feminine fight stirring inside me as I read and discovered what ground the women before me had tread.  I was moved by the stories of my peers.  I was touched by the togetherness of those who marched and fought and made a difference.  I felt a sisterhood in those pages on in our discussion groups, because here were women who were interested in being their best selves and making sure the world honored and respected the female of the species.

It was awesome.

And then the semester was over.

So I put my textbook on my bookshelf and plowed on.

But by simply living in the real world, I found myself coming back to that book again and again as a sort of touchstone for my female reality…  I wasn’t out in the world getting abused because I had breasts, but I did find myself wondering how much of the daily crap I saw myself and my girlfriends wading through was more than just detritus from the unfinished work our mothers (and their mothers, and the mothers before them) had handed down to us.

The work is never done.

We never stop fighting for equality, no matter who we are, as long as a “majority” continues to swell against an “other than”.

This is as true for today’s feminist breakdown as it is for racial divides as it is for gay rights as it is for class warfare as it is for…  No matter where you fall in the Human Being Periodic Chart, you will struggle against the lines between yourself and “them”.

I’m a woman.  I’m white.  I’m straight.  I live slightly above the poverty line (or, at least I was before I became unemployed).

In witnessing the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen discussion, I come back again and again to a feeling of ostracism because my straight white mantra of “Women will achieve gender parity by building and maintaining an equal voice.” was not, apparently, equal at all.

Have I been a closet imperialist feminist all this time?  Am I part of the problem because, in maintaining feminist intentions based on my own socioeconomic background vs. the “movement” at large, I haven’t really been part of the conversation?

Or is it because I’m white?

I write plays.

I write plays with female protagonists.

My female protagonists are usually “white” in the sense that I am writing from a Caucasian perspective.  That doesn’t mean my heroines can’t be played by actresses of color – they certainly could and should be – but my characters aren’t speaking from WoC perspective because, well, I’m not a WoC and I can’t possibly expect to tell their stories better than they can/do.

But does my primarily pale perspective make me, as a playwright, part of the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen problem?

If the Guthrie committed to producing a whole season of work by women playwrights, but only two of them were women playwrights of color, would those of us angling for gender parity be appeased, or would we then stand up together and insist that true gender parity includes racial parity as well?

My hope is that we’d all fight for the latter.

My fear is that in order to achieve it, we need to be even more specific in what we’re asking for.

The discussion at large really must be: What does gender parity look like?  And in order to answer that, the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen discussion needs to bleed over into the arts.

Because in order to really become a force to be reckoned with, we have to reconcile our divisiveness and create a dialogue that is productive.  I can’t presume to tell a woman of color about her own life anymore than a WoC should be telling a transgender white woman about hers.  Each of our perspectives is grounded in our own personal experience of the world – which is why we need to listen to one another.

And why we need to tell more stories.

We need to gather round the listening place, open our eyes and ears and hearts and minds, and bear witness to each story with shared passion and respect.

Then we need to promote one another’s stories with the same kind of passion and dedication we give to our own.

This is what being a feminist and a playwright is all about.