Anti-Racist Resources for Fine and Performing Arts

Introduction: Over my career as a theatre practitioner and educator, I have heard and also said many times that theatre is a reflection of the human condition. So wow! Now, in this time of civil turmoil and struggle for black individuals to be seen, heard, and valued, I feel it truly is a time to reflect on what it means to be human—what it means to wrestle with the difficult self-examination of being a part of the human race.

Excerpt: Dr. Rolling in his writing Black Lives Matter, An Open Letter to Arts Educators on Constructing an Anti-Racist Agenda reasons in both micro and macro ways as he suggests “ideas for applying the arts as a catalyst for anti-racist actions and outcomes.” Dr. Rolling creates a “framework of suggested interventions.” These interventions can feel small or big, easy or difficult, and less or more attainable depending on your own personal experience. He begins each with the powerful word, altering. He notes, “It won’t be easy. Remember, systems resist change.” Here are my summaries of his framework.

Abstract: This article reports on what three white critical whiteness scholars learned about the ways white supremacy was affirmed and
resisted during a two-day improvisational, critical whiteness workshop. The authors relied on critical literacy to theorise the castle as a sign or text with implicit, racial meaning. Furthermore,
the authors use improvisational theatre to design and make sense of critical pedagogy intended to disrupt the ongoing production of white supremacy. They consider how theatrical improvisation, as a pedagogical tool, might be used in critical whiteness pedagogy to disrupt the affirmation of white supremacy through signs and symbols.

Excerpt: What is our complicity? The Workshop has been complicit when we did not have an anti-racist framework and explicit protocol for addressing white supremacy culture for the first 51 years of our organization, when our executive leadership has been exclusively white and our board has been predominantly white, when we’ve had a high turnover of Black staff, when white fragility is structurally supported and defended, when understanding anti-Blackness and the active practices of anti-racism were not requirements for non-Black teaching artists before leading classrooms of young people forming their worldviews. We are and will continue to reflect on our additional complicities and on how to publicly name those.

What are the actions we’re taking as an organization to change? What are our commitments moving forward?

We commit to revising and refocusing on a clear pathway for Black leadership among teaching artists, the board, and the staff in the next year

We commit to assessing and shifting the culture of our organization to uplift Black people and allow space for them to show up as they are

We commit to soliciting feedback to revise our evaluation systems and tools, to create and communicate clear explanations, to check for understanding, and to address and lessen the influence of white supremacy culture in our performance evaluation...

Excerpt: Dance/NYC’s vision for a just, equitable, and inclusive dance ecology is short- and long-term and encompasses changes to policy, investments, programs, attitudes, and actions impacting ALAANA artists, cultural workers, and audiences. Dance/NYC recognizes that racial justice does not exist individually or siloed from additional equity areas and interrelated forces of oppression (e.g., disability, immigrant matters, economic justice) in its work nor in the lives of its constituents. Instead, racial justice requires an intersectional* approach that builds upon multiple areas that together create a more just, equitable, and inclusive dance ecology.