On Wednesday, June 3, Theatre Communications Group’s 2020 conference kicked off on Zoom with speeches by Jamil Jude, artistic director of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company of Atlanta; actor/director Monique Holt; and actor/playwright Nikkole Salter. The speeches powerfully enunciate the conference’s central focus, which centered the experience of Black theatremakers and others seeking to dismantle white supremacy in solidarity with the national movement against anti-Black violence. The full video can be viewed here.

What We Are Fighting For

It’s crazy to me that I have an opportunity to address you all today. When I participated in my first “real” play, 15 years ago, I had no idea TCG, let alone an entity called “the American theatre,” existed. I was an over-zealous wannabe jock who wasn’t skilled enough to make the travel roster of his D1 football team, so I had some extra time on his hands—why not be in a play? Once I felt the collective breath of an audience taking in the beginning of a play, I was hooked.

And when you fast-forward a few years and I’m a wide-eyed, full-lipped, bushy-tailed 23-year-old and I’ve landed my first professional job as an Allen Lee Hughes Fellow at Arena Stage, I read my first American Theatre article—an older article written by Zelda Fichandler, one of the founders of our beloved movement. Learning the ropes in Zelda’s dreamhouse lit the flame of a desire to aspire to be like Zelda and become the artistic director of a theatre one day.

I then dedicated my career to learning how to do that. I was taught that the position took leadership, problem-solving skills, and a sharp acumen that was only developed after spending years learning the trade—“like blacksmithing,” a former boss of mine once told me.

And here I am. Coming to the end of my 11th year in the industry and on the third day of the ninth month of my career as an artistic director. The job looks a little different than the one I aspired to those years ago.

On the 20th of May, the lovely Emilya Cachapero sent a kind note to me after a Zoom meeting with first-year artistic leaders, telling me how nice it was to see my ever-Zoom-present 2-year-old, Journey, on the call, and that she wanted to gauge my interest in speaking at a TCG conference session about COVID’s impact on our work, where we are as a field, and where we’re going. Emails from Emilya are always welcomed, as an email from her changed my career’s trajectory—she informed me I was receiving a TCG Leadership U grant back in 2015. And yes, Michael Francis and Emilya, I still list the fellowship in my bio, as per the grant agreement. And even though the time period may have ended, I’m still nervous that one day you’ll take back the money!

I quickly affirmed my interest and started thinking about what to say. In these COVID times, when we are forced to be away from our institutions, the words of Jack Reuler came to mind, about inspiring our community to continue to invent non-traditional ways of seeing theatre. After leaving D.C., I moved to Minnesota, where Jack’s “predictably unpredictable” ideology taught me a lot. I recalled his audacious Autonomy production, set in a large event hall featuring driver-less cars. That popped to mind as the type of thing to speak about. While thinking of my time as a Minneapolis artist, the words of mentors of mine, like Marion McClinton, and James A. Williams, and Faye Price started to seep in too. I thought about the collaborations they were able to build at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre, one of our field’s pioneering Black theatres, and also the type of community-focused work they would continue at Pillsbury House Theatre, located in the Powderhorn community in South Minneapolis. I began to think about how I could speak to the value of creating culturally relevant theatre companies, deeply rooted in the wants and needs of the community they serve. At that moment, I knew my direction, and the only thing to do was to write the thoughts down and get ready to slightly wing it a bit, per my style, at the conference.

Then on Memorial Day, May 25th, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police at the intersection of 38th and Chicago in the Powderhorn neighborhood in South Minneapolis. Three blocks away from Pillsbury House Theatre on 35th and Chicago.

Marion McClinton once told me, and it’s something I continue to share with actors, that the expression of anger is grief that has been silenced for too long. I deploy the phrase whenever I’m asking an actor to reconsider the impulse to yell or scream their line in hopes of connecting them back to the suppressed grief their character has witnessed.

In the time between the moment the life was snuffed out of George Floyd’s body and me speaking to you today, I’ve seen blocks that I frequented, post offices my mail was delivered to, and the community members I’ve marched in solidarity with lay heavy with hurt, and I’ve seen their pain boil over. In the time between George Floyd’s public lynching and today, I’ve seen Black people, friends, family, my wife, my mother, my colleagues battle back tears as they consider how George Floyd could’ve been them or their child or their parent or their friend or their partner.

One particular colleague is my staff member Nikki Toombs, who reminded me of the words of the great griot August Wilson. In King Hedley II the character Tonia shares her truth:

You take Little Buddy Will’s mother up on Bryn Mawr Road. What she got? A heartache that don’t never go away. She up there now sitting down in her living room. She got to sit down ’cause she can’t stand up. She sitting down trying to figure it out. Trying to figure out what happened. One minute her house is full of life. The next minute it’s full of death. She was waiting for him to come home and they bring her a corpse. Say, “Come down and make the identification. Is this your son?” Got a tag on his toe say “John Doe.” They got to put a number on it. John Doe number four. She got the dinner on the table. Say, “Junior like fried chicken.” She got some of that. Say, “Junior like string beans.” She got some of that. She don’t know Junior ain’t eating no more. He got a pile of clothes she washing up. She don’t know Junior don’t need no more clothes. She look in the closet. Junior ain’t got no suit. She got to go buy him a suit. He can’t try it on. She got to guess the size.

Somebody come up and tell her, “Miss So-and-So, your boy got shot.” She know before they say it. Her knees start to get weak. She shaking her head. She don’t want to hear it. Somebody call the police. They come and pick him up off the sidewalk. Dead nigger on Bryn Mawr Road.

On the same day that a human being named George Floyd was executed, in what could only be viewed as the epitome of white supremacy, in the all-too-powerful-metaphor of a knee pressing onto someone’s neck, choking the life out of them while they plead for breath, I saw a white woman use her privilege to incite panic and alert the police by screaming that a bird-watching Black man was threatening the life of her and her dog.

In the time since those events, I’ve seen my current home, Atlanta, Ga., burn, and in cities across the nation where I’ve created art, inspired empathy doing this thing called theatre, and in cities I’ve called home I’ve seen people take to the streets. In my own home, my partner is so enraged. She’s mad because the companies and organizations she’s supported, corporations she’s worked for, and businesses she’s spent her money with are failing to respond to this moment. We’d love to enjoy watching our 2-year-old embrace her daily discoveries, yet we have to navigate all of this!

In the time since, I’ve watched as members of our creative community and the arts organizations they are affiliated with put out statements of “solidarity” and speak up and out about the “evils of racism.” And I’ve also seen my Black colleagues begin to push back against the racist and white supremacist culture of the American theatre. I’ve seen videos go viral and posts of personal testimonies touch the hearts of the masses as people have decided that their grief has been silenced for far too long.

In my time studying the ways of artistic leaders and those who have held positions of power, influence, and leadership in the American theatre, I’ve come to one upsetting conclusion: It’s all been a lie. The idea that anyone could become a successful artistic director is a lie, because we’ve built our edifices on the pillars of white supremacy. We’ve built boards to perpetuate its principles. We’ve catered to an audience who refuses to embrace our purported values of diversity and equity. We beat down the spirits of the Black and Indigenous artists and administrators of color who put on a thick coat of armor to walk inside our buildings every day. We’ve profited off of their hard work, yet refuse to set them up with a runway to a fully realized career.

I believed the lie. I accepted the idea that the American theatre put in my head that maybe I could change the system. I dedicated my TCG Fellowship to finding ways to create a pathway for more BIPOC leaders to inherit our flagship and important regional theatres. I accepted the lie that change was super hard, and that as leaders we are beholden to backwards boards and aging audiences but eventually change will happen.

Well, if not now, then when?

When discussing the impact of COVID with another newly minted AD, Michael Bobbitt, he said to me that “a return to business as usual will feel like a failure.” Knowing Michael, he probably meant something more profound but I read it to be that COVID is a moment to rethink the ways we run our organizations. That the leadership in this field is made up of problem-solving, sharp-minded individuals that our funders, and our communities have entrusted with their support. These are the visionary leaders I was told I had to apprentice under before becoming an AD. Surely they are capable of making the changes we need.

In that moment, Michael’s truth rubbed up against the big lie. I believe that in any moment of theoretical dissonance, there must be three sides to an argument, so I applied them here. The first is that if that change could not be achieved, then the leadership in the field must not have gotten here by the same merit-based system I was made to believe existed. That the leadership arrived at their positions under qualified to lead us in the direction we all want to be led. If that’s the case, then our leadership has benefited from a system of white privilege that allows under qualified people to assume leadership positions while making it more difficult for people of color, with equal and greater qualifications, to land those same jobs.

If it’s not true, and our leaders are upset and feel triggered that I hinted that they are unqualified for their positions, they need to know that that is exactly how many of my colleagues feel when their intelligence is challenged in board meetings, when our audience members treat patrons of color like they don’t belong, and when we try to tell artists of color that their authentic experiences and expressions don’t fit into the narrow box we’ve outlined for them.

If side number one is untrue, then maybe the reality must be that there has been a gross case of malpractice—similar to the county coroner who did the initial autopsy on George Floyd and arrived at a different conclusion than the independent reviewer. If our leadership cannot create the system that they, in their own statements of solidarity, say they want, then we have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok!

If the above two statements are untrue, and yet systemic change is still impossible, then the third side is possibly the most disheartening. Our leadership must believe that white supremacy is the law of the land and they, too, believe that Black people aren’t entitled to the same equity in opportunity that they themselves enjoy. Foundations and our funding community must believe this too as they continue to give out grants at disproportionate rates—the racial demographics suggest that the organizations most deserving of these essential dollars are white-led and white-serving.

As we extend the field’s disinterest out to include other BIPOC communities, the possibility of this reality is just too heavy. I pray it’s untrue. I pray that the colleagues who smile with me in sessions, who like pictures of my family on social media, and who commit themselves to the same daily pursuit don’t value me and my “skinfolk” at three-fifths to their whole.

I can’t answer those questions for the field. But I know that our actions will reveal the truth. I know that because the people who have charted the path for me shouted back at our indifference, and urged our field’s leadership to be better decades ago.

And yet the actions of leadership didn’t make enough change. Leaders of the Black Arts Movement: Barbara Ann Teer, Woodie King, Paul Carter Harrison—they’ve done this before, and this is the progress we’ve put forth?! So don’t text me asking me to see how I’m feeling, don’t ask me to come work alongside your organization, don’t email me asking to “run some ideas by me” for free if we aren’t actually gonna do it. Matter of fact, you fix it—you’re visionary leaders.

Honestly, saying these things shouldn’t be on me. It shouldn’t be up to a first-year Black AD to stand up and say enough is enough. I should be focused on ensuring True Colors is living up the values we state and be a home for Black artists and community. I shouldn’t have to feel nervous about the effect of sharing these truths and the negative repercussions that may befall me or my organization or my Black colleagues.

We are facing a crisis in moral leadership.

A white leader should be the one standing up to our colleagues and saying that our practices are wrong. Our white colleagues should call out the bad behavior our artists are speaking out about. I’m thankful for the way in which TCG has made changes to the convening and to today’s panel—their leadership is so crucial and the way they’ve advocated for a disruption of the norm is admirable. Our platforms have to be pathways to progress. I believe that down to my soul. That’s my truth, and I must first hold myself accountable. If I have a platform, and I don’t use it to its full extent, than I am just as complicit as the failed leadership that’s led to this moment. I’ve let white supremacy win. In failing to use my platform, I’ve not just believed the lie, I’ve become the lie. I’ve become the artistic director that I railed against when I set my eyes towards that role at 23.

My fellow panelist Nikkole Salter has said, “If you don’t believe in empathy, then why are you making theatre?” I’ll add to that: If we can’t create a system where we can inspire empathy and achieve true equity, then why are we leading theatres?Our government’s leadership failed to respond to this COVID crisis. That should piss every one of us off. Because of them, we can’t do the things we love—like discover a new moment in a rehearsal room, embrace an audience member who’s experienced something profound inside our theatre, or share in a playwright’s joy at the final curtain of their world premiere. When we eventually return to our institutions, will our leadership ensure that those above experiences, ones that I hoped filled us all with nostalgia and an outburst of joy, will our leadership ensure said experiences are able to be shared by everyone on this call?

That first breath, when the curtain goes up and the audience takes in the beginning of a new story…that’s what we are fighting for.

Thank you to mentors and those who came before me, for your fight. Thank you to Emilya and to TCG for allowing me to speak to you all today.

Jamil Jude, artistic director
Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company, Atlanta