Why Are You Calling Us?

BY SNEHAL DESAI + MADELINE SAYET

JULY 8, 2020

What could be more thrilling than the moment an artistic director calls? Sadly, for many BIPOC directors, these calls are not the happy content of fairy tales. Because while there are many reasons a white artistic director calls a BIPOC director, few of the initial reasons are the same as for a call to a white director. Over time, these exchanges that should be centered around moments of artistic connection give way to a heightened sense of skepticism, as the truth behind the power dynamics of each call seeps out, and the question morphs from one of enthusiasm to one of trepidation: why are you calling us?

The most common answer to this question is: you are calling because you need a director of color for a BIPOC play you have chosen.

Some of the other reasons we have been called include: to balance out an otherwise all-white production team; because you want a cultural consultant; because you want to look like you have interviewed a BIPOC director for the position before ultimately giving it to a white director; because you want to direct the play yourself but know you shouldn’t, so you are seeking a BIPOC front while you attempt to backseat-drive the production.

We are a solution rather than an artistic voice, despite our work being unique, distinctive, imaginative, and varied, beyond our identities. In these situations, power still rests with the institution. Is it any wonder, then, that we suffer from imposter syndrome when we have been invited in under different pretenses than our white colleagues?

Below are some of the misconceptions and challenges BIPOC directors run into, based on our own personal experiences as well as conversations with fellow BIPOC directors and in shared affinity spaces:

“There are no BIPOC directors who are ready to work at this level.”

What does “they are not ready” to work on this level mean? How are you assessing this? What professional development opportunities could your institution be creating to cultivate new and emerging talent? Are you primarily looking at emerging directors and ignoring the previous generations of artists? Are you being as strict with the admittance of new white directors?

“I haven't seen their work.”

What have you done to make sure you are seeing work by BIPOC directors? Have you seen work at a theatre of color? Have you mentored a director of color? Once a director has been “approved” by another PWI, does the necessity to have “seen their work” go out the window?

“I need to read a review of their work.”

How much do you rely on reviews for hiring or discovering directors? Who are those reviews written by? How does this feed into a white supremacist system?

“There are no BIPOC directors who are ready to direct this, but we will hire one as the assistant director.”

Have you considered the power dynamics of this? You are hiring someone who has more vested interest in the piece into the assistant role, but you’re giving them no ultimate power to stop something offensive or hurtful from happening in the production process. Often, this means actors who are made uncomfortable with choices are confiding in the assistant and not in the director. How did you determine that the white director was “ready” to direct a BIPOC play?

“We had a BIPOC director once, but they didn’t do well here.”

Why didn’t they do well? Were they set up for success? What obstacles might they have faced at your theatre, and how might you dismantle them for the future? Do you use the same standard of “if one didn’t do well, then no others can ever do well in the future” for white directors? Cis-male directors?

“We didn’t hire them because we didn’t get the grant.”

Did you need to get a special grant in order to hire the white directors, or only the BIPOC one? What are the additional community engagement responsibilities you are assuming BIPOC directors will take on that you do not assign to white directors? Do you compensate them for this additional work?

“I don’t see why race should have anything to do with who directs the play.”

The short answer to this is: it does. Just as colorblind casting has become an outdated mode of thinking, so too would saying you choose directors colorblind. How many times do you think of a BIPOC only when you are doing a BIPOC play? Have you hired a white director for a BIPOC play? Have you ever done the reverse, hiring a BIPOC director for a play by a white playwright? Other than Shakespeare? If you are a white director, do you even question the moment you have been offered to direct a BIPOC play?

ASSASSINS at East West Players, directed by Snehal Desai PHOTO Steven Lam

SNEHAL: Directors of color want to be seen as directors who can take on works that are not only tied to our ethnicity or cultural background (these could also be substituted by gender, disability, sexual orientation). However, the experience for many of us is that we won’t be seen in those ways until we have built up a body of work, which usually comes from being offered plays that align with our cultural heritage or ethnic background. For me, I love to do South Asian plays and plays about the Indian-American experience. But I would not like to tell those stories exclusively. And we must also make sure to recognize that Asian and Asian American are two distinct backgrounds that will affect the way we tell stories. Our narratives are not interchangeable. Nor is a generalized Asian look or feel possible.

Following grad school, I participated in a number of different fellowship programs. One of my first was being in residence at a LORT theatre. On one of my first days, I was told that the current mainstage production, a South Asian comedy, was not quite jiving. The play, which had a South Asian company, was directed by a white director who did not have any discernible connection to the South Asian community or the playwright. The notes I took that afternoon I gave to the artistic director. There were many moments where jokes were not landing because the director did not get the cultural context of the situation. The South Asian cast was trying extremely hard to help, but they were on stage and not able to have the same outside perspective as a director. Also, that weight should not be put on them. I was told that my notes, in their entirety, were passed on by the white artistic director to the white director without mention that they had come from me. With the proper context for certain situations, the notes I provided led to the laughs that had not been there before.

That production has been the only South Asian play that this theatre has produced in its 85-year history of approximately 1,000 productions, and that one was directed by a white director. Since that production nearly a decade ago, no other South Asian playwright has been produced nor a South Asian director ever hired there. My main concern, though, is not looking back but forward. What will the next time a South Asian story is told by this theatre look like? Will it be a South Asian story written by a white playwright? Will it be directed by a director who has some connection to the Indian community? Will the larger commitment to the community whose story you are telling for the first time in a decade or more be considered—particularly if you intend to invite that community into your space?

Tai Yen Kim, Jane Lind + Erin Tripp in WHALE SONG at Perseverance Theatre, directed by Madeline Sayet PHOTO Julie York Coppens

MADELINE: The first white artistic directors who approached me in my career asked me to do “Indigenous versions” of Western classics. At first, I felt honored because I thought I understood what this meant. A lot of my early work for my own companies was reimagining Shakespeare with large groups of other Native folks and incorporating my Mohegan perspective and philosophies into the work. But I quickly learned these institutions wanted something full of feathers and fringe. They wanted the stereotypical markers that the Hollywood Western and history of redface in America has taught non-Natives to expect—something I would never do and isn’t Native at all. My specific tribal nation is core to my identity, and my values are such that I will never do anything that would harm my people. So what was right to them was fundamentally wrong to me, and I did not adhere. These racist assumptions ingrained in our industry automatically put me at odds with white figures in authority who had no education on these differences and made these experiences incredibly painful. But it taught me exactly how we are seen in this industry, when Native folks aren’t present to question it.

Now that we finally have Native works being produced across the nation, you would think Native directors would be in demand. But rarely are Native directors considered, even to direct Native plays. Two common phrases are “I don’t know any Native directors,” or “None of them are ready.” How is that logical, when you consider not all Native directors are emerging? We are not talking about one generation of artists; we are talking about systemic multigenerational exclusion.

If the main way BIPOC directors gain entry to the field is by directing the work they are culturally affiliated with, and our largest institutions aren’t hiring Native directors to direct Native work, it directly blocks Native directors out of the system. We get called when they need info on Native actors or designers. We get called when white directors have cultural questions or want playwright recommendations. But I wonder if institutions are afraid of sovereignty, of the shift in power dynamics that comes with Native leadership. If they are afraid of having too many Native artists working on a project at once. Otherwise, why is it so important to have the work filtered through non-Native lenses? Have you ever thought about how strange it is that, unlike nearly every other nation, America has no performing arts center dedicated to the Indigenous theatre of this land?

Aaron Bantum, Aaliyah Habeeb + Sebastian Nagpal in HENRY IV at Connecticut Repertory Theatre, directed by Madeline Sayet PHOTO Steven Lam

We wrote this article for SDC Journal to ask our fellow white directors to take these things into consideration before you agree to direct that next BIPOC play or as you work with a BIPOC assistant director, and because a large number of directors in this country are artistic directors themselves. In this dual capacity, directors who are ADs wield tremendous influence on the field and the next generation of directors. We ask that you look at your network of directors: is it a diverse pool of BIPOC directors? If it’s not, engage with us before you program that Black, Asian, or Latinx play. So that the first time we are speaking is not because you have programmed a Native play and are looking for a Native director. When we arrive, trust and support us. Make sure we aren’t made to speak for our entire culture or heritage and to be the only person of color in the room. Allow us to bring in our own designers, assistants, etc. If the collaboration felt like a fruitful one, ask us to come back, and this time ask us what we might be interested in—which may or may not be work tied to our culture or ethnicity.

Ultimately, as a field, we must first confront that this is a systemic issue and not about “readiness.” There are tons of Native or Asian American directors we know of already who can do the work and we’d be happy to recommend. White artistic directors, if you are not ready for us, that’s for examining in a separate conversation. Theatre has operated from a white supremacist lens in America for so long it has obscured generations of artists of color who are standing right in front of you. We share our experiences to show the ways the system confines us and hope you will take action alongside us toward a more just and equitable field.

Snehal Desai (pictured at top) is Producing Artistic Director of East West Players.

Madeline Sayet is Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program.

Madeline Sayet