I find as I’ve got older my opinions have started to mimic my hair. Grey rather than black/white, and curling all over the shop rather than sleek and streamlined.
So I’ll precurse this (?!) by a request that you bear with a slightly rambolic approach to this writing. (Indirect, and certainly not presenting a black and white argument. No beginning middle end here.)
Over the last few weeks, three prompts have led me to feel confused, unsettled. Not angry – anger is a clearer emotion than I’ve been able to identify. In fact I consistently find anger, or exuberance, or extremes, harder to reach as time goes by. The fine line between opinion and judgement, is the little repeating loop in the backburner of my mind.
And alongside all this, as my first blog entry, I’m navigating what feels like a close shave between a diary entry (naval gazing) and having something to say. Wondering what on earth a blog really is.
The space and time needed to steer through hazardous, nuanced and complex waters seems to become evermore evasive.
So I’ve decided that this toe-in-the-water really is about gathering some interlinked ideas and signposting you to a few people who I think have really interesting things to say. And also, trying to do what Selina Thompson does so beautifully in her blogs, which is make you feel that I’m actually talking to you, and talking as me, and not just writing at general interwebness.
http://selinathompson.wordpress.com
Anyway, back to my three prompts.
1) Lyn Gardner’s article on looking at gender equality in the theatre industry http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/sep/22/theatre-female-figures-gender-gap, alongside Emma Watson’s UN Women speech #heforshe
2) The controversial #ExhibitB by Brett Bailey opening (and closing) @BarbicanCentre
3) Hearing that Graeae’s #accessstowork has been cut by 70%, and reading how both Jenny Sealey (Director of Graeae) and Rebecca Dawson (Director of Candoco) responded to the campaign earlier this year:
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2014/jul/29/disability-arts-cuts-access-to-work-theatre
http://www.candoco.co.uk/2014/08/disability-arts-left-hanging-by-a-thread-a-response-from-candoco/
So yes, throwing a huge amount of information at you. This perhaps mimics my feeling of ‘overwhelm’.
Three prompts - quite a list of labels – gender, race and disability. Clearly my general theme here is Equality. And how we talk to each other.
I can only really empathise personally with one of the “labels” that my own summary of “headline prompts” throws at me – I am a woman. I am not black, I am not disabled. But the nuance again undermines me here. In my strongest most optimistic moments I think its a joy to use labels in order to be able to defy them, but in my less hearty moments (the majority it must be said) I get so weary of the entrenchment that labeling achieves.
[An aside, sort of: I once asked a South African I was chatting to at a high powered university’s 'social BBQ evening’ where in South Africa he was from. He immediately became a snarled-up mass of jangling affront, with my whiteness and his blackness suddenly becoming a gulf which I was toppling into without knowing why it had happened. And what I realize now, is that the seemingly innocent question from me contained in a nutshell a lifetime’s assumptions, attitudes and labeling which he had had to contend with – align himself to, and defy - in order to navigate through the polarized world of South African education.]
So – where was I. Labeling. Defining. One or other versus spectrum. Lines crossed, or uncrossable. Black white and grey.
I think this is something that Exhibit B threw in my face when I saw it in Edinburgh. It basically spoke to me of being white, and full of crippling shame and disgust with my heritage and the way that I was identified by the work, purely by dint of my skin colour. So, a neat turning of the tables – nice twist Brett Bailey. I am judged, and I am made voiceless, because I am white. I have no right to respond. Neat trick. But what more? How does this debate move forward now? Black and white come out of that exhibition labeled, sickened, frustrated. One party re-objectified, the other party silenced.
Compare with Emma Watson’s approach through the #heforshe campaign. “Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender Equlity is your issue too.”
And Rebecca Dawson’s powerful and articulate words: “Disability and illness are not the same. These notions take us back 20 years, before it was importantly and admirably recognised that disability is not a ‘deficit’ related to the individual, and that exclusion is created by institutions, infrastructure, attitudes. The idea of reasonable adjustment was born – what can we as organisations, institutions, society change in order to ensure equal opportunity for people to fully participate in all aspects of life?”
And Madani Younis, Artistic Director of The Bush: “In less than 20 years, 50% of all young people in London will be of dual heritage.
I hope over the next 20 years that these buildings [theatres and arts buildings] don’t become spaces for a chosen few… that the leadership of those buildings also reflects the diversity of the men and women in terms of race, gender, class and where they come from within the regions”.
So how about this woman thing? In relation to my list of prompts above, as Erica Whyman says in Lyn Gardner’s Guardian article, “It absolutely has been my experience that, disregard it though I may, the fact that I am a woman keeps bouncing back as a question mark, a fascinating fact about me and something that ought to be talked about.”
Having the privilege of working on the ground-breaking production “Puffball” at The Roundhouse was a journey I’ve only just embarked upon in relation to gender identity. Men and women – its not that simple, and again there’s a spectrum.
The only way I know how to define my woman-ness, is relational. It is shaped (and supported and threatened) in relation; in how I interface; in my collaborations. In how much voice I have; in the approach other people take in listening to me. In what is reflected back at me. (And of course in how I limit/empower myself and what I choose to read between the lines.)
I’ve counted myself lucky to work with inspiring women recently – Hayley White and Lorna McGinty at Hoxton Hall, Frances Mayhew at Wilton’s Music Hall, Amy Letman at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leila Jones at The Roundhouse. But they’re all them, not me.
In October last year, theatres participating in Tonic Theatre’s research into gender equality in the theatre industry were all encouraged to look at their own practices and examine how, in creative roles such as directing, writing, commissioning and acting, they were failing to adequately represent women.
Each theatre chose a question to ask of themselves – for example identifying and addressing the gender-specific implications of touring. I’m considering what questions I might ask of my work, my approach. Of practical use rather than the naval-gazing variety. Answers on a postcard for what you’d ask of yourself…
Diversity. It’s a word we use a lot, and perhaps don’t think about as much as necessary. I fall back here on quoting a dead white man - Walt Whitman – in his Leaves of Grass poem
