Diversity in the Arts

Playgoer and Mission Paradox both have highlighted this piece by Michael Kaiser raising some interesting questions about diversity in arts orgs. I'm not part of the cult of Kaiser quite yet, I found his much-lauded piece on arts management, for example, to be a bit overrated. (I don't think the lack of good managers is the single biggest problem facing the arts, nor do I think that getting more and better managers and paying them better is necessarily the best way to take care of all the other problems facing the arts. The Roundabout and The New Group, for example, both "know how to find resources, attract audiences and other constituents and provide support to our artists" but they also do consistently awful work and surely although the main goal of any institution is to perpetuate itself and grow, doing good work has to be up there in the goal list too, right?)

My thoughts on it are going in too many different directions for me to quite cohere them yet, so I'm going to hold off for now and simply ask you, dear reader, what you think about it. Here's some sample graphs:

Having spent a great deal of my career working with arts organizations of color, I am as committed as anyone to the diversity of our arts ecology. I do not believe that we can have a truly great artistic community if all segments of our society are not represented well.

But I do not think I believe anymore in forcing Eurocentric arts organizations to do diverse works or to put one minority on a board.

When large, white organizations produce minority works they typically select the "low hanging fruit," the most popular works by diverse artists featuring the most famous minority performers and directors. This almost invariably hurts the minority arts organizations in the neighborhood, most of which are small and underfunded, and cannot afford to match the marketing clout or the casting glamor of their larger white counterparts. How else to explain the reduced strength of American black theater companies over the past twenty years?

Comments

[Scott Walters]

This is what August Wilson said in "The Ground on Which I Stand," right? While he was talking about color-blind casting, the point is the same: we need more theatres that are committed to doing minority work, not an African-American play in February, for instance. I teach a course on the Harlem Renaissance, and this forms the basis of the W. E. B. DuBois integrationist approach versus the Marcus Garvey separatist approach. It is an issue that has a long history. However, I'm not certain it is a problem to be solved (choose either A or B) as much as a polarity to be managed (A and B will always exist, and always be in tension -- try to work with the dynamic created by the tension).

[99]

I was just about to do a whole post on it and I don't know if it's Friday or if I'm thinking about doing actual playwriting too much right now, but it all seems...meh. I think he's right that more co-productions are necessary and deeper relationships between organizations. I also think he's right that tokenism doesn't really do any good. But I think that the whole thing is just an excuse not to do anything because "Eurocentric" theatres "can't." They can do better than they are doing, especially at including black artists on more levels. And that doesn't hurt the minority-centric theatres.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this kind of piece isn't too far from the old anti-P.C. rallying cry of "Where are the theatres dedicated to white people?"

[Jump]

Just two cents: should "Eurocentric arts organizations" dutifully include an August Wilson play once a year because they feel that they have to do so? No, because that serves neither the work nor the theatre nor the community.

And is it automatically "bad" to produce Shakespeare and Arthur Miller and David Mamet every single year? Of course not. They are incredible writers.

But I fail to see how large arts organizations -- particularly those that aim to provide broad and exciting programming -- can look at a season composed entirely of white male artists and not think that they have a problem. All else aside, if your season does not reflect the diversity of your community (or country), you probably did a blah job of picking it. You probably overlooked, or did not seek out, the best and most exciting artists. If I see a line-up of writers who are all really different, that says to me that the organization went to town in putting together its season -- and that I'd be crazy to miss it.