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essaysfromthefield · 2 years ago

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Members of the General Management and Company Management Department - The Public

To: Patrick, Oskar, Kieran, Jeremy, Shanta, Mandy

George Floyd’s murder by three police officers on May 25, 2020 reignited a movement that will inevitably transform the world. The world has been given no choice but to finally address the systemic racism and white supremacy so deeply rooted in our country and, as we have learned recently, within our institution. These two practices have been the root cause of the destruction of so many lives before us, and many of those currently living. Tragedies, such as George Floyd’s, are not new to the BIPOC community. These are the experiences of BIPOC individuals and have to carry these wounds to our workspace every single day. We had hoped that these wounds would be healed through the process of creating theater, but the destruction we see outside our walls has exposed more acutely the real pain that exists at all levels of our institution. The General Management and Company Management department believes that these reactions and reflections can be transformed into great art, leading to cultural change both on the micro and macro levels. We believe in the transformative power of theater and its ability to change the world. Theater can shine a light on these tragedies and provide a voice for individuals who may not always get a chance to share. This art is painful, but somehow it heals. General Management exists to facilitate the blending of artistic creation and logistical follow through. Our hope is to be able to work towards a significant cultural change to our institution, using art as our platform, the way The Public always has. Our department recognizes we must start with internal change and we believe in the Public Theater as an institution and in our ability to inspire evolution within the industry and lead the way for a better tomorrow.

In this letter, we hope to address the non-comprehensive list of ways we all uphold white supremacy in this institution. Our team intends to eradicate it from our operations and encourage leadership to engage in those difficult conversations. Much of what we address in this letter has been heard before, specifically during the Leadership Listening Tour. We intend to expand upon our earlier suggestions, ideas, and concerns with how they relate to our intention to combat racism both in our institution and our individual department. Our goal is to uplift and amplify the work done by the BIPOC Affinity group and the recommendations they have provided our institution and this letter should in no way supersede any of the ideas, plans, demands, or suggestions listed in A Letter from the Margin. We wish to provide our own approach to progressive change by addressing the day to day, project to project systemic racism we witness, experience, and/or contribute to in our own department interactions.

IS BIGGER ALWAYS BETTER?

Desiree Adaway writes, “One of the tools of white supremacy is ‘busy-ness’. This sense of urgency makes it, so we do not connect on a deeper level. It allows no time for discernment, reflection or real repair.” Unfortunately, The Public as an institution is notorious within the staff for programming and barreling through with a focus toward quantity (another pillar of white supremacy) and little regard towards the people running to keep up with it. In turn, it is no wonder that The Public has neglected and failed to recognize our complacency in holding up this ideology of white supremacy. Future projects take an enormous amount of planning, while past projects deserve and require

vast amounts of reflection on process and practice. However, The Public is moving at an impractical pace towards greater and more extravagant projects; therefore, there is no opportunity for reflection and learning. This environment is not conducive to equitable success for our artists and staff. Due to the amount of programming, the urgency to produce more, and the ever-growing number of artists we serve, the gap is widening between individuals with power and those without.

These current practices do not allow for conscious opportunity for the people we serve and aim to protect. We define conscious opportunity as: a thoughtful and equitable decision-making process that takes the physical, emotional, and mental health needs of the person into account. This process should acknowledge race or biases experienced by any person as an important consideration. Similar to, color blind casting is the approach of actively factoring out race under the assumption of equity, while color- conscious casting acknowledges race in, and ideally deepens, theatrical conversations.

Given this overarching objective, GM commits to:

Annually revisiting GM practices and continually brainstorming ideas to combat unrealistic project timelines

Agreeing to internal deadlines for information gathering, in order to have a budgeting process reflective of our conscious opportunity guidelines

Adding GM specific deadlines to the Master Performance Calendar (i.e. adding intellectual property request deadlines, project information deadlines, etc.) to effectively communicate departmental needs and enhance transparency

A Letter from the Margin calls upon leadership to better prioritize our time to make space for trainings and the development of inclusive practices. We cannot make these adjustments of priorities without a fundamental shift in our culture of busy-ness. Lately, in a time of solitude, the staff has been “gifted” the time to question where our focus truly is. So, we ask, are we Of, By, and For All People, or are we really Of, By, and For Our Image and the systemic racism so deeply ingrained in our institutional culture and the artistic relationships we hold above others?

FINANCIAL SUCCESS, BUT AT WHAT COST?

In the words of Tonya Pinkins, “we must treat budgets as moral documents”. We must return to our humble beginnings as an institution and let our mission define the project budget. A project should be pushed forward for its value towards our mission, as opposed to the creative team involved, or the A-list celebrities defining the bottom line. The institution bases the majority of its decisions on financials. Our budgets include calculations for hourly labor, physical supplies, and purchases, but what about the cost of morale, credibility, and human resources? We often work to ensure our ability to secure the physical resources needed to put on a show and the financial success of the institution but lack the ability to identify issues within the system itself. Some of our budgets and practices are created to preference certain artists (i.e. Dan Sullivan, Michael Grief, etc.), or members of leadership in their goal to achieve bigger and better productions. We acknowledge that sacrifices may follow if we prioritize our values over

our bottom line (for instance by raising all artist salaries to the Newman rate), but we must revisit our definition of success as an institution and focus on mission based financial decision-making.

GM Commits to:

We have too often found that we make things happen for certain artists, but offer the excuse of budget limitations to many others (i.e. No wigs were budgeted for the Mobile Unit’s Measure For Measure cast (a cast comprising of Black, female actors) and couldn’t be added due to “budget limitations,” yet at the same time, A Bright Room Called Day could have special effects

WHO ARE WE ACTUALLY SERVING?

We are frequently tasked with adjusting our agreed-upon terms to achieve a new request made by individuals with “power.” In many of these cases, we fulfill the request, but at the expense of equity of other artists. We feel pressured to make adjustments to our practices under the following circumstances:

Allowing CPs to dictate the culture of shared spaces, as Seawall/A Life

Doing projects as “favors” to CPs neglecting to consider that even if a project is paid for elsewhere the institution inevitably pulls non-financial resources away from other projects (i.e. Only Gold or Savage Love) and further privileges those that are already exhausting our resources

While GM can make a contract to reflect these special circumstances, “on a non- precedent setting basis,” our job is to be in service to the artist, while protecting the institution from any problems, throughout a project’s incubation and delivery. GM has institutional knowledge behind our recommendations and when certain artists take alternative routes to get what they want; it undercuts the validity of our department and our efforts to create conscious opportunity for everyone. We have seen this work- around happen by artists “going upstairs” and leadership failing to consider whether other parties may have been involved in an initial request, before promising action.

GM commits to be part of the solution by revisiting our artist standards around:

Boilerplate contract terms

Is the institution asking for more than it needs?

We ask for institutional buy-in to support these goals through conversations with our department, as well as their own artist interactions by:

We find that these artists suffer from a lack of understanding of their place is in the institution, whether it be house seat allocations, invitations to “All- Staff” meetings, or general institutional knowledge

Set partnership goals and intentions from the beginning, to allow artists bargaining power and the opportunity to take their work elsewhere, should we not be able to meet expectations

We ask that leadership recognizes these gaps in equity and communication and works to thoughtfully close them. Together, we can work to become more aware of unconscious biases. Only then can we work towards fostering conscious opportunities for ALL artists, specifically our BIPOC artists who are disproportionately and negatively affected by the time our staff is asked to spend granting more access to privileged, white artists. For example, the Ain’t No Mo creative team’s audience cultivation requests were met with much internal resistance and barriers. Whereas the ideas of either bringing the West Virginia community to Coal Country or Coal Country to the West Virginia community were swiftly actioned or aggressively explored as possibilities.

General Management promises to question the current decision-making processes for artist asks and the treatment of artists. Leadership must welcome this questioning and

understand that it may, at times, require going back on artistic promises for the betterment of all and more specifically the BIPOC artists that are all too often forgotten in this process. We ask leadership to acknowledge who is taking the stairs and who is taking the elevator, both metaphorically and quite literally.

WHO HOLDS THE POWER AND WHY?

Individuals in leadership positions are often privy to information that is distributed on a “need to know” basis. This information, often considered confidential, creates unnecessary power structures permeated with communication breakdowns like paternalism and power hoarding - characteristics of white supremacy culture. This power hoarding culture, upheld by The Public leadership, thrives in an environment absent of reflection, minimal desire for improvements, and unclear job responsibilities.

We believe that the leaders of The Public Theater’s EDI programs and HR department have made some improvement to its hiring practices, which seek to provide greater opportunities to people of color, and it is evident that attempts have been made to narrow the racial disparities. Unfortunately, we lack the confidence in our standardized onboarding and offboarding programs, instilling inequality from the very start of employment, so even after making these efforts to bridge gaps, systemic problems continue to exist (i.e. rapid turnover), because we have not addressed the root of the problem. We believe information-sharing from the beginning of employment can bring us together and build a foundation of trust just as a lack of information can tear us apart.

We consider interdepartmental information sharing and reflection to be extremely important on our road to cultural change and we propose:

Normalization of interdepartmental meetings (i.e. The Development department job function meeting) to aid in the understanding of the function of each department, strengthen interdepartmental relationships, and introduce more voices into a conversation that leadership may not immediately deem necessary

Continuation of weekly All-Staff Meetings

If we call an All-Staff meeting an “All-Staff” meeting, then ALL staff are invited to be present and share in the information exchange

Accessibility of All-Staff information in other languages, so all are invited to be active participants in change

We no longer value our full-time staff over other types of termed employees, in regard to wealth of knowledge. ALL staff should receive the same information and clarity, at the same time.

GM commits to:

Sharing all project-related information, not just the bare minimum required to do one’s job

Value the work of all department members and what everyone can bring to a project

Centering our artists in our decisions and inviting artists, specifically actors into the conversations we are having about institutional cultural change

Re-evaluate our departmental onboarding processes

The GM department will no longer accept “confidential” at face value; we promise to challenge leadership and ask “why?”

HOW DO WE ACCOMPLISH BEING AN ANTI-RACIST INSTITUTION WITHOUT THE PROPER TOOLS?

If the goal of the institution is to be more Anti-Racist, then we need to prioritize this work and give all employees the same tools to help in this fight. Make training a requisite of employment. Help us to break down the pillars of White Supremacy so deeply ingrained in our work culture. We, as a department of white and BIPOC individuals, are asking leadership to help us remove our right to comfort. We are willingly offering ourselves up to discomfort and growth, for the betterment of our entire institution.

We are in complete alignment with the recommendation from the BIPOC Affinity group and see Anti-Racist training (including bystander intervention and de-escalation techniques) as a requirement for all staff, leadership, board members, and even further the artists we employ. Furthermore, we expect (at minimum) annual Anti-Racist training in the same way we annually engage all employees in Anti-Harassment training. In many ways, The Public is a leader in the industry, so let’s do just that. Let’s hold the industry to a higher standard and set an example. Racism doesn’t exist only in our external relationships and conversations; it happens within our walls on any given day. Let’s make it possible for everyone to have the tools they need to recognize and handle racist interactions.

GM Commits to:

We invite the institution to instate a similar weekly meeting open to everyone

NOW WHAT?

We, the General Management Department, have sat together, brainstormed together, and devoted time together to reflect and review our operations that uphold systemic racism and white supremacy, but this can only take us so far. We must drastically

change our plans and relationships regardless of the current backlog of promises made to white artists. What are we willing to sacrifice as an institution? How are we continuing to grow and uphold our readjusted institutional goals? We are concerned that leadership's work towards a cultural change will be an idea soon forgotten, as we re- enter our beloved building, but we, the General Management department, promise we will not let this go unchecked. Do not let this act as a crutch, but rather a notification.

Let’s end the cycle of reactivity and start acting like the industry leader that we say we are.

We have begun the cultural shift in our department, and we commit ourselves to employing anti-racist standards and eliminating biases within our own operations. There will be no tolerance for “business as usual.” In the last few months, we have discovered how fragile our institution is and our community must progressively move together to become the radically inclusive institution that it intended to be. Please let this letter serve as the invitation to meet us at the table, so we can discuss our broken system and work together to find a solution.

From,

Members of the General Management and Company Management Department

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rosarenn · 3 years ago

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What parts of yourself stay hidden and keep you from building deeper relationships and stronger coalitions as you fight for freedom?

What parts of myself stay hidden?

I hide my radical, anarchist heart. It feels unsafe to admit the full depth of my beliefs, my values, my hopes and dreams. In some ways it's true - it isn't safe. The red scare was not that long ago and there are many reasons to believe it could happen again. Beliefs that are such a threat to the status quo will never be safe to hold. So I hide. I have the privilege to do so, to protect my comfort, safety, and peace above the fear and the unknown of what lays on the other side.

But it's also true that hiding is slowly killing me. That the mask is slipping and I don't have the heart to hold it in place much longer. Once you see the full humanity of everyone around you, how can you unsee it? Once you see the way our society dehumanizes, exploits, and oppresses everyone around you, how can you unsee it? Once you see the way you participate and perpetuate this oppression, how can you unsee it?

I looked. I saw. I see. Now what?

I can feel the lies I was taught, the ideology I was force-fed from birth unraveling. This is not the life I want. This was never the life I wanted.

Though I didn't have the language, though I didn't have the education, and though I was fighting the layers of conditioning, in some ways I've always been this way. I don't know if it's my neurodivergence, if it's what I was put here on earth for, if my conditioning didn't take for some reason outside my control, or if all children are in fact like this. I never could understand why we didn't make sure that everyone had enough. I never could understand why everyone walked by and looked away from those in need. I never could understand why some people got to make the rules and others had to fall in line. I never could understand why I got in the most trouble when I was doing what I could plainly see was the right thing, but that challenged authority and the status quo.

I don't want to romanticize my past, or even my childhood. It's not that I was born with perfect politics and the world tried to break me and failed. It's a nice story but it's not that simple. I bought in, hard, to the ideologies of academia, that I was just naturally smarter because I excelled in a school system designed for me. I bought in, hard, to the ideologies of meritocracy, because I excelled at everything I tried in a work system designed for me, and my parents pulled strings to get me opportunities, and it seemed like everyone else just wasn't working as hard as me. I chased goodness and purity with a fervour, hoping it would protect me. My whiteness and my class privilege were completely invisible to me. I was very nearly a girlboss *chortle*

I remember circulating a petition in Grade 3, calling on the school to make changes to a school yard policy that just didn't make any sense to us. We had just had classes where we were taught about civic engagement, that good citizens have a duty to be involved, that petitions were a tool of democracy. I couldn't understand why, when I did exactly as we had been taught and tried to change something that mattered to me, I got in so much shit.

I remember in Grade 4, when the teacher left us alone in the classroom for just long enough for us to organise. We thought it would be hilarious if we all hid under our desks when she came in, that she would think we had all just disappeared. We all agreed that as long as we all did it, we couldn't all get in trouble. So I hid under my desk, snickering, and stayed there as I had promised. When everyone else bailed at the last moment and left me to take the brunt of the teacher's anger, I couldn't understand why our solidarity had crumbled so easily. I got in so much shit.

I remember dreaming about what I would do if I won some life-changing amount of money, and among other things I said that it was my dream to donate that money to charity and to help people in need. My mother snapped at me, a literal child, screaming that did I think I was better than her? Was I judging her for not giving more of her money to charity? I was cowed, and I cried, and I could not understand what I had done wrong. I got in so much shit.

These are just a few of the memories of how I learned that this side of me was, maybe not wrong, but not welcomed. That bringing my difference would be met with hostility. That I can't trust others to stand with me in solidarity. That to even mention redistribution of resources or to question the way things are is a threat, is worthy of punishment and ridicule, is cruel and inconsiderate of those who held the resources and the power. By the time I got to highschool, and my mother said I could attend the (newer nicer) Catholic high school as long as I promised not to lead any protests against the Catholic school system, I accepted and I kept my word.

So what parts of myself do I keep hidden? Most of the parts that make me different. My neurodivergence. My fat acceptance. My magic and my anarchy and my emotions. The parts that make me feel alive. I also hide my financial privilege, because I am ashamed of the resources that I've accumulated. I am ashamed of the wealth that has flowed uphill into my hands, ashamed of the exploitation it represents, ashamed of the ways in which I have been complicit in this system. Even though it's not enough to make a life on, even though it's not enough to retire on, who am I to have extra when so many don't have enough? I can give it away, redistribute it, direct it back into the community - and I do - but why should I get to choose where to send it?

I can't be a race traitor, class traitor anarchist by only holding it in my heart. There is something to be said about being cautious, about choosing battles, of who to be forthcoming with and who to hide from, but the world I dream of won't come into existence simply through wishing. If we don't talk about our secret hopes, we could all be sitting here wishing others felt the same, and never know who is already on our side. We can't build broad-based coalitions, we can't build affinity groups and mutual aid and community care if we never say out loud that this is what we want to do.

#sister summer #desiree adaway #sister summer 2021

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stacijordanshelton · 5 years ago

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You can’t hate yourself into a body or business you love. Have you ever stopped to think about how your body, just as it is, has helped you survive in the world? Have you thought about what you have been taught to believe about weight and health has impacted the ways you inhabit yourself? Would you like to understand how to have a better relationship with food and your body? In a time when bodies are both targeted and used for currency in health and wellness culture, Body Trust is a radically different way to occupy and care for your body. It is a pathway to reclaim your body and is completely counter to conventional “wisdom” about food, body image, weight, and health in our culture. That’s why the Body Trust® Summit is here. I’m a speaker and you’re invited. It’s online and it’s FREE. The Body Trust Summit, hosted by Be Nourished, is an invitation into powerful conversations about body trust, diet culture, social justice, healing, pleasure, and so much more. And you read that right - it’s totally free and entirely online. It kicks off March 11, 2020, and runs for 7 days featuring 20+ talks with folks like me, Sonya Renee Taylor, Desiree Adaway, Ericka Hines, Melissa Toler, Niva Piran, Sand Chang, Isabel Abbott, Bunny McKensie Mack, Deb Burgard, and so many others. There will also be panel discussions on parenting and food, fat exclusive spaces, professionals who are working with their own eating disorders, plus a vibrant and private Facebook group where you can connect with others who want to have a more compassionate relationship with their body. I will be talking about self love, body neutrality and making the shift to both - and I would LOVE to have you join us. Grab your free ticket now at https://benourished.org/summit/friend/sshelton/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B8rXG5tpVS6/?igshid=ta0n0uyp254m

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fycuriosity · 3 years ago

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Creativity and Liberation with Desiree Adaway

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rafaelthompson · 5 years ago

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New Portland Workshop Tackles Body Positivity in the Café

‘Liberating Retail Spaces from Weight Stigma,’ a free Portland, Ore.-based workshop, invites employees and business owners to learn more about welcoming marginalized patrons into their cafés.

BY MARK VAN STREEFKERK BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Cover photo courtesy of Amanda Lucier

In their 14 years of working in retail (with more than four of those years spent in the coffee industry), Dan Lynn can say a lot about how our culture values certain body types over others. “We are all socialized in a culture that supports the prioritization of thin, white, cis-gender, able-bodied people, and for everybody else, it’s like, ‘You can try to bootstrap your way to this, but until you do, we’re not going to make accommodations for you,’ and that’s wrong,” they say.

“Liberating Retail Spaces from Weight Stigma” is a workshop that will be hosted by Dan’s Do Better Consulting this Wednesday, December 11, from 2 to 5 p.m. at Portland, Ore.’s Q Center. Co-facilitated by Camille Bevans, the workshop is structured around analysis, action, and accountability—a framework Dan learned from Desiree Adaway’s inclusion and equity work, and one that is great for folks who might be new to ideas about fat positivity and body liberation.

Dan Lynn wants to help retail spaces and cafés be more inclusive of all people. Photo courtesy of Dan Lynn.

“We’re really gonna be starting with the basics—laying a foundation of understanding oppression and marginalization, and they’re really big concepts, but with Camille, we’ve been able to make this information really digestible and really relevant,” Dan says. “People can understand that we’re not here to point fingers and call out blame. … We’re there to provide support. So people can try out different things and be vulnerable and tell us, ‘Well what do you want to say to this person who just said something that’s really fat-phobic?’”

When it comes to making cafés more inclusive for all bodies, physical accessibility is a must. Having pedestal tables, chairs without arms on the sides, gender-neutral restrooms, and sturdy outside patio furniture—not “the same patio furniture that every place has that’s kind of foldable and rickety and not very comfortable,” as Dan says—are all great places to start.

“Liberating Retail Spaces from Weight Stigma” is a free workshop happening in Portland this Wednesday. Artwork by Corinne Dodenhoff, text by Dan Lynn.

More insidious, however, is how fat-phobic language creeps into cafés. Recalling their own experiences working behind the bar, Dan says, “People would walk up, grab their belly and shake it like it was something disgusting that wasn’t even part of them, and just grimace at the idea of a full-fat latte. [It] was so disheartening and it was so damaging. … This is an easy fix. This is something that people in retail can learn not to reinforce. So somebody walks in and they say, ‘Oh God, all the calories.’ You don’t have to say, ‘Oh wow, yeah, I totally know what you mean, I had a huge lunch today and I’m really feeling it.’ You can just say, ‘Hey, I’m happy to get you whatever makes you happy.’”

Dan became involved with body liberation activism around three years ago when they worked on the Everybody Podcast. They started seeking out even more opportunities to educate and bring awareness to the topic. They hosted the workshop “All Means All” at the Seven Corners Community Collaborative in May and launched Do Better Consulting in October.

“Liberating Retail Spaces from Weight Stigma” is a free event, with a sliding-scale donation at registration. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. All contributions will be donated to Indigenous Come Up, a local organization that supports Native foster care youth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark Van Streefkerk is Barista Magazine’s social media content developer and a frequent contributor. He is also a freelance writer, social media manager, and novelist based out of Seattle. If Mark isn’t writing, he’s probably biking to his favorite vegan restaurant. Find out more on his website.

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New Portland Workshop Tackles Body Positivity in the Café published first on https://espressoexpertsite.tumblr.com/

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