This past spring, Arizona State University’s School of Film, Dance, and Theatre was slated to produce By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage as part of the 2017–18 mainstage season. As a grad student at ASU, I was going to be acting in the show. However, within the first few weeks of rehearsals, due to circumstances outside of the production’s control—harassment accusations towards a core team member—it was cancelled. A meeting was held to determine what would happen next, and the cast and crew elected to cancel the production. I was proud that we held the individual accountable for their actions, but was devastated that the show had to be shut down as a result—especially given that it dealt with race in the entertainment industry, ethnic identity, and the erasure of people of color’s narratives; stories that need to be on our stages.
There were no plans to produce another piece in place of Vera, and I thought this was a missed opportunity. Theatre can be used as a tool to process trauma, helping people heal and move forward, which I thought the students would have benefitted from. But, on top of that, the themes explored in Vera were important to share with the community at large. I became dedicated to putting up a replacement show.
With time set aside for rehearsals and the theatre already booked for a production, I had the idea of devising a piece myself on the same topics as in Vera. Before pitching the proposal to the school’s artistic director, I discussed possibilities with my collaborator and fellow student, Caress Russell. We decided to approach the project through an urban lens by tapping into Caress’s abilities as a spoken word poet. In order to best collaborate, together and with an ensemble, we knew it was important to be transparent about what we wanted in our roles, how we would come to decisions, and how we would resolve conflict. Caress would be the writer and I would lead the project as director, but there would be a shared authorship amongst those in the ensemble since we would be creating the piece from the ground up together.
We knew it was important to be transparent about what we wanted in our roles, how we would come to decisions, and how we would resolve conflict.
Unfortunately, we weren’t the only students to send in a proposal. And while we had done a plethora of research on the subject matter and felt confident in our offering, it was difficult to prove our devised piece’s worth when it hadn’t been created yet. I had to be persistent on why this story mattered and why it mattered now.
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