End of summer of 2019: the UC Follies are accepting pitches. Like the frazzled and disorganized student that I am, of course, I left the pitch to the last minute. Well, not intentionally. I was grappling with a lot of internal anxiety about directing a show.
Was I qualified? Could I actually do a good job? Looking back, I was plenty qualified. Not simply because I had “experience” directing in the past, but also because I had an eye for it, an affinity to lead, and a desire to learn. In the pitching and auditioning process, there’s an unspoken requirement of having past experience or training in some capacity. Past opportunities and training are a privilege only some may have, yet these are often how theatre societies measure talent.
When I was in high school, I had what I called the Bravo kid complex. Bravo Academy is a place where many of my (white and privileged) classmates trained vocally or in musical theatre outside of class. Whether or not I was conscious of it at the time, I had this burning desire and anxiety to constantly prove that I was just as good at the Bravo kids, even though I didn’t have the training they had. This was the point where my little Hong Kongese-Portuguese brain learned that I would always be required to have twice the amount of skill in order to be considered as good or as qualified as my white counterparts.
For artists like me, anxieties around “Am I qualified?” are not simply a case of imposter syndrome. For artists like me, these anxieties center around whether the theatre company or director will recognize my qualifications and how my qualifications will be perceived against my white counterparts.
The other anxiety was, well, what play should I pitch? I knew I wanted to pitch a Chinese-Canadian play, written by a woman. If I was going to pitch something, I was going to pitch something that made space and roles specifically for women like me.
In my first-year acting class at UofT, I was assigned the part of Stella in a scene from
A Streetcar Named Desire . While this scene study was for educational purposes, I can see how the optics of that are fascinating to many. Little Hong Kongese-Portuguese girl taking on one of the most iconic white female roles. Many people like to call that diversity. As the actor playing the part, I call bullshit. I have to forget that I am a Hong Kongese-Portuguese woman when I play this scene. Stella’s life would be vastly different as an Asian woman married to a white man during a time where there were anti-Asian exclusion laws in the US.
Diverse casting in a white play is to say to me, “We want you as an actor, but we don’t want your lived experiences as a Hong Kongese-Portuguese woman.” And let me tell you, being casted in a white musical is even more alienating. And oh God, to work under a white male director as an east-Asian woman? I don’t care how friendly this white man is, not only is that experience alienating, I would have a difficult time feeling safe working within that power dynamic.
Why do white people get to stage white plays with optically diverse casting and be branded as innovative, but there is absolutely no support for Asian artists or Black artists staging plays that actually represent and celebrate our lived experiences?
Diversity quotas are to say “We aren’t actually willing to unpack how campus theatre privileges white artists and traumatizes Black, Indigenous, and Asian artists, but we do want the optics of appearing progressive.”
So anyway, the play dilemma. As you can imagine, I am already narrowing down my choices by committing to a Chinese-Canadian play and femme-identifying playwright. But to make it even more difficult for myself, I told myself that I will not stage a classic “white people are racist” play or an “Am I Chinese? Am I Canadian?” identity play. In the Spark Notes explanation of these plays, they are often retellings of racial trauma, whether it’s depicting racism during the time of the Gold Rush or the struggle to belong in Canadian society as a Chinese-Canadian person.
These plays certainly have their place, but there is something also incredibly icky to me about staging my trauma for the pleasure or shock of white people. White people love to watch and support racial trauma on stage for some reason. Theatre companies love the optics of producing plays like that, but it’s crickets when an Asian artist wants to stage stories of joy or literally anything else. Literally.
Wouldn’t it be nice to offer roles about Chinese people living their lives, and not just in opposition to whiteness?
I submit my pitch at 11:59 pm. Fast forward to January, I begin casting for the show, The Madness of the Square by Marjorie Chan. Six east-Asian/Pacific Islander roles to fill. I expect this to go fairly smoothly, an “if you build it, they will come” kind of situation. But I’m getting no biters, so we extend auditions a week and I start to get very nervous.
I’m sitting at my desk at 3 am weeding through past productions on campus, contacting people from the cast, and personally reaching out to talented actors I’d seen in high school or during my first year. I reach out to Ryerson and York acting programs. I grumble at how easily shows like Mamma Mia get 100+ auditions.
I only had 11 auditions in total.
One of those people was just someone who happened to be passing by the audition room.
What was I doing wrong? Why wasn’t I getting more auditions despite having done four times the amount of promotional work as my white counterparts? The overwhelming amount of exhaustion and anger even made me feel for a moment as if I had made a mistake in not choosing a white play.
I revisit this moment now because it was then that I finally understood that Asian artists, Black artists, and Indigenous artists do twice the work: the artistic work and the unspoken emotional work of working against a system that does not value you. Of course, the system devalues us in different ways, but ultimately the system is built exclusively for white artists.
No amount of outreach or statements or diversity mandates or land acknowledgements will address the way that people in positions of power in campus theatre continue to exhaust, belittle, and traumatize Black, Indigenous, and Asian artists. Before inviting these artists into such spaces, we need to completely change how they operates.
On the final day of Madness, I held a chocolate cake that the cast had gifted me as tears streamed from my face onto the thick layer of icing. I could never describe the feeling of working in a space meant for me, that welcomed me. I could never describe the feeling of working with people who not just looked like me, but who understood me without explaining. I had never experienced this in my life. We found safety and joy in each other.
I need theatre companies to understand that safety and joy matter more than reputation and clout. People matter more than the show. People matter more than optics.
I need theatre companies to understand that it is white privilege to be able to see campus theatre as “just for fun” rather than a space for community healing. White privilege is being able to take up space without understanding what the consequences are for our community and generations to come.
I need theatre companies to start looking at barriers to access, reconsidering the types of stories they’re producing and the types of spaces they are creating, changing the ways they hire and cast, and creating programming that fosters new connections. I need them to have open and fair communication across cast and crew, and value their concerns. I need them to be aware of the space they are taking up.
And, for the love of God, please stop casting the same five white people in everything.
The lack of Black, Indigenous, and Asian artists in campus theatre is not just an issue of diversity. It is so much more nuanced than that.
If I have learned anything from Madness , it is that everyone deserves access to a safe space to tell their own stories filled by people who support and encourage them. Everyone.
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