DIVERSITY IS NOT INCLUSION | T. Taitt

While our industry is no doubt making progress from a long past of virtual whitewash (it is promising for example to hear about the increase in racial representation at Shaw this season), it is still not true inclusion to put a couple of "diverse" shows on your stage in a season while failing to integrate artists of colour into the rest of your programming in any meaningful way. It is far too easy to do that and become self-satisfied, thereby ceasing to remain diligently self-reflective.

The self-congratulations are most definitely happening and in some instances they are hard to stomach.  While companies should take pride in their progress, that pride should be accompanied by a humble awareness of how much progress is still to be made.  

ALL of our stories are worthy, and I commend any theatre company that commits to telling the range of them. It is important to affirm - without fanfare - that a great cast need not include a single Caucasian person, just as we've been shown in no uncertain terms for time immemorial that a great show need not include a single person of colour.

As artists, we must amplify the powerful and deeply human lives of every race of people. But it is critical that we not fall into the trap of serving the goal of diversity by having "POC shows". These plays and productions themselves can be absolutely beautiful, and the decision to program them is the right one. However, if having the African-American play and the Asian play and the insert-other-culture-here play is the ONLY way you qualify as diverse, you are rowing your boat several miles away from shore.

"Mainstream" theatre companies believe sometimes, with expressed good intentions but a woefully misguided idea of how to put them into action, that they have been inclusive merely by producing non-white shows. 

They are wrong.  

Yes, those narratives are important.  But just as important is making it clear that there are stories that involve us all, not a few 'diverse' shows that tell specifically POC-centered stories, while everything else in the season features nary a non-white person in a role of significance.

Here is what so many still need to understand: DIVERSITY CAN BE SEGREGATED. INCLUSION CANNOT.

America and South Africa were diverse societies in 1965.  I don't think anyone would call them inclusive. Diversity is a state. Inclusion is a decision.

Putting wonderful shows featuring entire casts of colour on stage is a significant step forward; I am by no means downplaying it. That does not change the fact that until the MAJORITY of any company's programming features more than just tokenistic representation of races other than Caucasian both on and off stage, any claim of true inclusiveness is incorrect. 

I'm not telling any company what they HAVE to do. I can't.  It is their art, that is the decision of the ADs and the directors, and I don't have that influence anyway. I am simply saying that to be diverse and to be inclusive are two different things. Know which one you are.

TT 

MOVEMENT by MANDATE: Discovering Diversity for Dollars | by T. Taitt

Over the last few weeks, some large theatre companies have announced their 17/18 seasons to great touting of their cultural diversity.  For the artists featured, it is wonderful and deserved and long overdue.  For audiences it is at the very least, respectful, and at most - wholly necessary.  There are institutions in which programming has been so embarrassingly out of step with... well... reality, that these changes seem worthy of praise.  I can recognize that such changes, when motivated by the desire for equity of opportunity, are a good thing. 

What feels deeply disingenuous, however, is celebrating these changes in the dark -- praising them without casting light on the elephant in the opposite corner of the room.  We cannot speak of these shifts without keeping both eyes open to the fact that they were made only after amendments to the criteria of granting bodies - criteria that includes an increased emphasis on and commitment to supporting cultural equity.

I wholeheartedly applaud these amendments, as much as I regret their necessity.  As theatre is deeply reliant on community, I have long been confounded by the notion of government agencies giving money to arts organizations without affixing to that giving a considerable obligation to reflect the demographic realities of the communities they serve.  Theatre should be an exploratory reflection of one’s society, not an ongoing celebration of oneself.  It is amusing to watch those who espouse “cultural” inclusion while practicing racial exclusion, checking off the diversity box by showcasing a dozen different strands of European. 

If a medium to large Toronto-based company produces countless works which are considered artistic triumphs but do not mirror the most multicultural city in the world, it is, in my view, a creative success but a cultural failure.

There are commendable cases in which inclusion has come with a changing of the guard.  
There are others in which it has only come with a changing of the rules.    

This is the history of racial inclusion on this continent.  Conscious organizations and their leaders set the tone, a bunch of others feign tone-deafness, and finally the latter group is compelled to follow and do what is right not by any sort of principled compunction, but by the promise of their own political or economic disadvantage.

And so we have the present wave of movement by mandate.  A tug of the giving leash brings flickers of change.  While these flickers will manifest as real artists making real art - which is marvellous - they can lull us into complacency.  Flickers can quell our battered and fatigued bid for representation, can spur on a rush to exoneration, and can foster a belief in the presence of actual ideological shifts where they may not truly exist.

The authentic moves always feel different.  Always.  

To those who do not move in authentic space -- stop playing intelligent, awake people who are far more in touch than you are for fools.  It does not become you, and is shockingly transparent.

I acknowledge that in our industry, every season that looks more like the sum of us - rather than some of us - is progress.  Pleased am I for the creators of colour involved in this programming, several of whose talents I greatly admire.  I look forward to experiencing their art, and hope that great comes of the opportunities they have earned through the calibre of their work.

I will always recognize and appreciate those organizations who practice inclusion as a matter of course, based on an equal and abiding commitment to truth, awareness and decency.  There are several and they do no go unnoticed. 

What I cannot do is extole all whose hands were tied into such a commitment. What I cannot applaud is those who essentially needed to be forced in order to seek out non-white artistic excellence.  I will not pretend that those who displayed no moral imperative to prioritize anything beyond the tokenistic participation of my fellow artists of colour - before such a decision was tied to funding - how miraculously found Jesus.

How quickly the myriad of other hues can come into focus.

How quickly some see black and brown when they really want the green.

TT