This is one of two reflection posts made by Karen Lee on behalf of The Black Pledge about the organisation and the current state of anti-Blackness in the Toronto theatre scene.
Ota Benga’s story has been circulating on Meta. The Mbuti man, less than five feet tall with sharpened teeth, kidnapped and purchased from Congo, for a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth by Dr. Samuel Phillips Verner. Benga ended up in the theatre of the white imagination, 1904 St. Louis World Fair…the Bronx Zoo Monkey House where he was caged with chimpanzees, an Asian orangutan and a parrot…except Sundays. The Coloured Baptist Ministers Conference of New York City threatened legal action. Combined with Benga’s own resistance and public objection, the show was shut down. After a life in the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, Virginia Theological Seminary and College in Lynchburg, tobacco factory and day labour, and a name change to Otto Bingo, a depressed Benga uncapped his teeth, prepared a ceremonial forest fire and shot himself through the heart on March 20, 1916.
We have come a long way but not far enough. Inequity, exclusion, and racial disparities at the intersections of the white gaze and white imagination remain systemic as we continue to free ourselves. Theatre and performance art are not exempt from anti-Black racism.
Sedina Fiati, queer, femme performer, producer, creator, director and activist for stage and screen, co-chaired the ACTRA Diversity Committee and created the Sandi Ross Awards. With over 10 years of social justice and anti-racism activism in live theatre, film and television, she thought of creating a pledge with teeth. A Black Pledge that was not performative, as were many of the virtue signalling statements sounding in 2020, after the horrific killing of George Floyd.
With Joella Crichton, one of the first Collective members, Sedina came up with a skeleton. Following a presentation at PACT, Chiamaka Glory, Samantha Walkes, Dr. Rita Deverell, Jajube Mandiela, Alicia Richardson, Diane Roberts and Janelle Cooper, also came on board and fleshed out The Black Pledge. Black Pledge Canada - Theatre Dance Opera 2021.pdf, is an intervention to improve the experiences of Black people in live performance.
The First Five Signers are, 2b theatre company, Neworld Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, Shakespeare in the Ruff and The Stratford Festival.
Andrea Donaldson, Artistic Director [Co-Executive], Nightwood Theatre, shares some reasons for signing The Black Pledge:
I think it was important to us...that this initiative, that felt so right and so important for our larger community...I think we felt like by us jumping on you know…in its infancy, that we would help endorse it, and make it irresistible to other companies.
ABOUT THIS REMEDY:
(Racism is not a disease.)
This isn’t to heal white people.
They need to do that themselves.
(Sedina Fiati)
MAY CAUSE A CENTRALISED DATABASE FOR BLACK PERFORMERS
& STAGECRAFT TECHNICIANS:
Of the Sea, the first all-Black opera ensemble in Canada, is a mesmerizing underwater epic; brain child of Kanika Ambrose, librettist, playwright, screenwriter, and Ian Cusson, Métis and French Canadian composer. During the pre-show talkback, Ambrose and Phil Akin, Director, lamented the paucity of Black performers in classical music. So too, stage managers, designers and technicians. The Black Pledge Collective is creating a central database to facilitate colour-conscious hiring and casting.
MAY CAUSE EQUITABLE HIRING & CASTING
The entertainment industry is full of Non-Black stylists lacking adequate training or experience with Black hair or makeup, fixing to damage, ruin or jack up said hair and contour our noses. Whereas, non-Black actors are seen Sauntering in and plopping themselves into chairs with wet hair. Some of them hadn’t even shaved yet, sporting a full beard, uncoloured roots and in need of a haircut (Vinessa Antoine). ACTRA's fight for hair and makeup equity, seeks to address long-standing discrimination. So, too, The Black Pledge, through equitable hiring practices.
Chelsea Haberlin, Artistic Director, Neworld Theatre, continually asks, How are we meeting the needs of Black artists in the room? With a mix of common sense, noticing the discord of white mics on dark skin, and collaboration with the Black Pledge, one of Neworld’s Ongoing Commitments in Hiring and Casting includes:
Appropriate Hair, Makeup, Costume, and Lighting Provisions – When casts include Black artists, every department working on that production will be educated in Black hair, makeup, costume and lighting. The hosiery, mic cords, wigs will be selected to match and flatter Black bodies. Knowledge of Black hair needs will go beyond styling to consider proper care and maintenance. https://neworldtheatre.com/the-black-pledge-2/
Neworld Theatre also commits to asking who’s in the room? Making sure it’s not all white folks. They are making a conscious effort to pursue Black artists and designers, per The Black Pledge, Specific Annual Commitments Year 1 – 21/22 Season.
So far, the search for Black designers was unsuccessful.
There are almost no designers working in theatre in Vancouver. There’s one costume designer that we talked to. Our options are to find Black artists who are still in school, or bring them over from film. They don’t seem to see a role for themselves in theatre design. Or we could bring in designers from out of town. We want to serve the local community so our approach now is to nurture designers here for the next year and a half. (Haberlin)
Equitable hiring and casting questions are being worked out at Stratford Festival with Black Pledge liaison Alicia Richardson, Daviorr Snipes, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Stratford Festival, and EB. Smith, Stratford actor and pre-rehearsal orientation coordinator who served as a member of ARC (Stratford’s Anti-Racism Committee).
How do we get more butts in seats? How do we diversify the technicians, stage managers, coaches, writers, producers, fight coordinators, intimacy coordinators. How does your outreach extend beyond your regular? (Alicia Richardson, Black Pledge Collective member, actor, playwright, screenwriter and vocal coach.)
MAY CAUSE REDRESS FOR POLICY & PAST HARMS:
The Black Pledge may change current carceral accountability protocols which lead with shame, people leaving an organization or getting fired, with transformative systems which nurture community accountability and disclosure of harm to peers. The problem wasn’t the one human, the problem was the company culture that condoned that behaviour. Your organization had a blind spot. (Richardson)
Neworld Theatre, one of the First Five Signers, is committed to repair.
Statement of Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that…we have not done enough to engage with our Black colleagues. We have hired Black actors but have not regularly worked with Black artists as artistic leads. We commit to building more working relationships with Black artists and centering their work in many of the ways suggested in the Black Pledge. Neworld Theatre Statement_The Black Pledge.
MAY CAUSE CREATING SAFE(R) SPACES FOR THRIVING BLACK ART:
Jeremy O. Harris, playwright, novelist, creator of the 2019 Broadway “Slave Play,” wished to free Black audiences from the white gaze with a Black Out Night; the first. That same white gaze that dressed Ota Benga in native attire including the winter…pygmy huts adjacent to Apache chief, Geronimo, and their teepees.
Once, at the American Museum of Natural History, Benga pretended to misunderstand instructions to seat the wife of a wealthy donor. Benga threw a chair, just missing her well-coiffed head.
Of the Sea, aimed to honour Black stories, artists, and audiences on Black Celebration Night. This performance is meant for majority Black audiences but is open to all. During the pre-show talkback with Kanika Ambrose, Philip Akin and Artistic Director at Obsidian Theatre, Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, three highly visible women who appeared to be white/light-skinned, talked loudly over the televised talkback; pulling focus from Black and Indigenous legacy.
From the wild salad that is Canadiana, a tale. (Rose-Ingrid Benjamin, Community Connections Lead, English Theatre, National Arts Centre). On February 17, 2023, NAC hosted a Black Out Night for a showing of “Is God Is.“ The first Black Out Night in NAC’s 54-year history was almost derailed by the white gaze, the white imagination…whiteness talked loudly over a 'rooting for everybody Black celebration….National Arts Centre Rescinds...'Black Only' Performance.
Seems NAC wasn’t ready for the backlash.
Sometimes well-meaning white decision-makers do not anticipate the challenges and are not ready. We need them to have our backs, says Fiati.
Caucasity caused a change from Black only to:
not exclusive but dedicated to the Black community, the Black experience, written by Black people, featuring Black folx, curated by Black people. A theatre company paid us money to do just this.
…no one came to us first. It was just a language thing that we fixed quickly. It’s never about excluding anybody. If you want to come, just come. There were 9 shows. One of them was a Black Out Night. 745 seats were sold, 150 seats for people under the age of 20. One of the sponsorships was for 100 kids to come out. For the first time in that theatre, it was not just white. (Benjamin)
The Babs Asper Theatre seats 900. Black folx showed up, showed out, sold out NAC’s Black Out Night! See the glistening Black people here; a Canadiana wild salad time capsule. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=CanadasNAC.CNAduCanada&set=a.10163120487339517
I really realized that night that what we had done was to bring community together. (Benjamin)
Stories of the lion are rivalling those of the hunter in safe(r) spaces. Alicia Richardson is invested deeply in creating legacy.
Five generations back of my family being taken to the US, no clue of where we were taken from. The only legacy I have is in relation to my colonizer. I think that art is legacy. Legacy is so vital. Crucial. I’m still trying to find mine. Create mine. Providing equity is helping us to create legacy.
MAY CAUSE BUILDING & REPAIRING COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS:
Trial 1 Signers Have Reported:
Changes to outreach to increase the number of Black audience members.
Negotiating the prohibitive cost of admission with i.e., coupon codes.
Negotiating Black Out Nights to celebrate Black artists.
Participation in pre-season training and workshops.
Reflecting on the relationship between Neworld Theatre and The Black Pledge Collective, Alen Dominguez, Managing Director, states,
We’re one of the first five [signers]. The first and only one on the West Coast. Chelsea Haberlin continues, I do have questions about the next three years. How specific we were and how some of them [commitments] felt possible and other doors opened up. Does it make sense to be so specific knowing you may not achieve them in the specificity?
Apart from finding a designer and a board member, everything else has felt surprisingly easy.
Naz Afsahi, Managing Director, Nightwood Theatre believes,
The Black Pledge highlights intentional relationship building and that is something that we want to continue.
Patricia Allison, Shakespeare in the Ruff Collective Member, Communications and ArtistProducerResource.com Producer, recalls the genesis and intentions of Ruff meets The Black Pledge.
Joella [Crichton, Actor, Black Pledge Collective] was an actor in our production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” She is an artist that we just adore and want to support a Black community initiative that is sector changing. Even though we are small fish...we’re here to try to have an impact. So we can’t hire six directors a year - we kind of do what we can in terms of making small shifts toward change.
As we look at season planning, having the Black Pledge is such a nice metric or a system for accountability that sort of helps us tune to our values.
It’s 100% scaleable.
MAY CAUSE:
Not all white people
Whataboutisms - What about white people, Asians, Indigenous People?
Accusations of reverse racism.
Signers to be challenged by their all white communities.
A willingness to be inconvenienced.
May trigger, why should I invest my time in getting white people to treat us properly?
Change in heart and mind.
Change in how a theatre company does things.
Change in your belief system.
THAT is the work!
Are you willing to be inconvenienced?
(Fiati)
INTERACTIONS WITH THIS REMEDY:
Do not use the Black Pledge with white tears.
Racism isn’t the shark, it’s the water.
(Richardson quoting Fiati at a Black Pledge meeting.)
REPORTING SIDE EFFECTS:
We will audit. We act as consultants…
for a fee. We might could woke your
Instagram posts for payment…upfront.
(Fiati, Richardson)
There’s nothing wrong with people not signing the Pledge. Come up with your own and post it publicly. You just gotta be ready. It can’t be weak. People are not going to agree. People are going to be angry. And you gotta be ready. It’s people, not their core group, it’s people on the extreme end of things, you’re not going to change them much and it’s not going to be the place the energy should go.
(Fiati)
HOW TO STORE IT:
keep directly in the path of gaslighting
in your discomfort
in your intentions
in your philanthropic causes
in your craw
share this remedy with others
until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned….(Bob Marley)
MORE INFORMATION:
I’m not interested in reflecting white people to themselves. That’s not my ministry.
I’m interested in my stories, because they’ve been taken away, and haven’t been given the light.
(Fiati.)
The Black Pledge Collective
It’s greater than what I thought it would be.
(Fiati).
outreach@theblackpledge.ca
@blackpledgecanada
