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Three on the Aisle: Tamilla Woodard on Doing the Work

The critics talk to Tamilla Woodard, co-artistic director of Working Theater, about her experience of racism in the theatre and her recommendations of how to fight it.

Twice a month, Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal; Elisabeth Vincentelli, contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker; and Peter Marks of the Washington Post get together to talk about what’s going on in the American theatre.

Tamilla Woodard. (Photo by Brigitte Jouxtel)

Today we talk to Tamilla Woodard, the co-artistic director of Working Theater and the Five Boroughs/One City Project, a multi-year initiative of the Working Theater. She talks with us about her experience growing up in the theatre community, including the time she spent in acting conservatory undergrad programs and the insidious ways that racial bias influenced her time there; the Working Theater, its mission and its important site-specific and people-specific work; what we value as a theatrical community and how those values need to shift if we are going to champion a message that theatre belongs to all people; and the ways in which theatres are grappling with the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the recent police killings of Black people.

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Have comments or requests for what the critics should talk about? Email them at threeontheaisle@gmail.com, or go to @ThreeOnTheAisle on Twitter.

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