What is too much about nothing?

A very famous playwright called me in the summer of 2020 in a complete panic.  He does this about once a year – and he has for the better part of a decade.  I’m a dramaturg – I love listening to writers.  And I will say that I am especially adept at talking people off of ledges.  So, this playwright calls me in the summer of 2020 – and I suppose here I should tell you that he’s white.  It’s worth noting that he’s a white dude, he’s a very successful older white male.  And he calls me to express his concern.  He’s worried – very worried about the tone of the conversation being had out there in the theater world.  He’s worried about the way people are jumping to judgements, the way people are digging up past grievances against artistic leaders and weaponizing them against them.  But what he’s worried the most about is change.  He’s worried that the theater community is trying to change.  Now he’s not against change, he tells me, but he is against this mad dash, this sudden upheaval.  Everything is changing so fast, too fast.  We need to stop all this change.  Slow down.  Consider what we are doing.  It’s all too much.  Though he clearly didn’t say this, it was so clear to me that what this playwright was most scared of was that he, and all the other white people (mostly men) that he’d worked with for the last 40 years of his career, were all going to get cancelled and replaced by unexperienced black women.    

And now it’s nearly two years later.  And that did not happen.   

This writer is richer and more successful than ever.  His plays are running, his movies are flourishing.  All of his mostly male, mostly white friends still run all the institutions that they ran in the summer of 2020.  Almost no one has been admonished, almost no new people have been hired, almost no one has lost their place at the table, almost no systems have been meaningfully altered, and almost nothing has changed. 

The fall theater season of 2021 was a treacherous, but exciting time.  The pandemic raged on, but full of vaccines and good will, we created protocols, went into rehearsals and did us some theater.  And it was thrilling and emotional.  We saw a season with more black playwrights produced, and more people of color in general working as designers, stage managers and directors.  Aesthetically, it was a whole new landscape.  And there was much to celebrate.  But if you look at the institutions of New York City especially, very little meaningful transformation had occurred.   Artistic leadership had not changed, and though many associate artistic directors had been hired at the major not for profit theaters, NONE of them were black people, except literally myself.  Curation happens in identical ways now as it did before, producing policies look much the same and support for artists is still virtually nonexistent.  And all the white men have still yet to lose all their jobs.  So, what was everyone so afraid of? 

This preemptive panic over the possibility of being “replaced” is a fear that feels very familiar at this point in time, in this country. We hear on a daily basis, with mundane and terrifying manifestations.  This fear is a tool that is used to ensure that change is not able to occur.  Those in favor, those with power, those in charge claim that they want change, but not so quickly, not in this way or that way, slow down, consider, plan.  Meanwhile they successfully use the tools of consideration as a useful method to block every single way transformation attempts to manifest.  We of course see this in our government on a daily basis as conservative democrats hold up any progress the party attempts to make. 

Now truly, I would never call myself a radical.  I’m a reasonable pragmatist.  But I will say that I love seeing things actually get done.  And it drives me mad to hear people argue against things getting done because they are getting done too quickly – especially when really in their hearts, they don’t want those things to get done at all.  Change isn’t having conversations with your staff now that they aren’t afraid of you.  Change isn’t having to think about racism for 9 months in a more serious way.  Change isn’t writing statements.  All of this is prologue.  There are some people out there that never want us to start the actual story. 

I wish that place where he would call me again so I can have a conversation redone. I want to ask him, what are you afraid of what has changed with the change in your life what have you lost what did you sacrificed for change are you willing to change are you willing to give anything up do you want the world to be different or do not want the world to be different. It’s fine if you don’t want the world to be different just please look me in the face and tell me that.