WELCOME MATS

By Stephanie Hickling Beckman, Managing Artistic Director, Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective

My son learned early on that he is welcome in adult-inhabited spaces only as long as he is well-behaved and doesn’t draw attention.

“You have to be so quiet that people don’t know you’re here,” we’d tell him before we entered a nice restaurant, theatre or airplane. I realize now the similarities of this messaging to those I received from parents who straddled the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. As an adult, I’ve seen firsthand that racial integration exists explicitly on white people’s terms and that the cost of admission is silence.

Well before the current focus on antiracism ignited by the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others, I founded Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective as a vehicle to speak out against racism and other forms of oppression. In the promotion of diversity and equity, it is our mission to magnify voices that white supremacy silences. However, as a Black person trying to succeed in a white-dominated industry, I found myself mostly silent when it came to having direct conversations with my colleagues about their own racist practices and policies within Asheville’s theatre industrial complex.

In June, more than 300 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) theatre-makers from across the country exposed the racism that BIPOC encounter on a day-to-day basis within the industry. These representatives of a much larger community demanded change through a hefty document called “Principles for Building Antiracist American Theatre and BIPOC Demands for White American Theatre.” In response, virtually every theatre company in the country publicized their commitment to an anti-racist structure. As for me, I realized that even though I had been vocal about the lack of diversity on our stages, I had failed to spotlight the racial exclusion that existed within our local theatre community. I had not done much to disprove the notion that there “aren’t many Black actors” in Asheville, when the real problem is that there are no durable welcome mats in Asheville.

Silence, though more comfortable, delays progress and fosters derision. While I’m not advocating a witch hunt, I am rejecting the false securities of silence and embracing my responsibility as an arts leader, to hold us accountable for uncovering and addressing deeprooted racial and socially insensitive issues within Asheville’s theatre community. All of us are obligated to ensure that our welcome mats are out and visible. Join me. It’s free.

Stephanie Hickling Beckman, Managing Director, Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective