race
iPhoto caption: Photo of Jordan Laffrenier by Sandro Pehar.
Preparing to direct Slave Play: A travel guide to Richmond, Virginia
Since reading Slave Play, I’ve asked every romantic partner whether or not they experience a racial dynamic between us in the bedroom. No one has given the same answer. What is it that I am asking them to acknowledge in these scenarios? Who is it that I am asking them to hold? What does it mean to hold someone’s history?
“The joy for me is…being with the performers in the room, because they support each other a lot. And they dance together. They make jokes. There's joy and there’s pain at the same time.”
When Blind Casting Isn’t Enough
"From the moment I decided I wanted to act in the fifth grade until my graduation from theatre school twelve years later, I never had the opportunity to play a character that was written for someone who looks like me."
iPhoto caption: Playwright Audrey Dwyer, who wrote Calpurnia. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Sadly, I feel that my writer colleagues who possess race privilege often engage in character origami: folding paper to and fro so it appears three dimensional when, in fact, it’s something that’s just plain flat.