Straight White Men are Talking About my Play Again: Why Representation Conversations Need to Reach Critics
By: Mary Rosalind Valentine
Tags: Criticsm, Journalism, Theatre, Diversity And Inclusion, Representation

Image Description: A black and white photograph of a typewriter’s keys and strikers

I am a queer white woman. This is my acknowledgement of my privilege, bias, and background.

Introduction

“So many people have dictated what my intentions were with Slave Play. One of the things they’ve always articulated is that I wrote Slave Play for white people and that it’s not written for a black audience. That’s so bizarre to me. Because the first audience I ever wrote this for was an audience of my classmates at Yale. And the people who were most upset by it, back then, were the white viewers.”

Playwright Jeremy O. Harris, author of Slave Play, said this in an interview with The Guardian. The quotation speaks to the importance of intentions and their loss better than I ever could. Critics must continue to listen to playwrights, and if they didn’t write the play for you, acknowledge it and defer to the target audience.

The COVID-19 pandemic pressed the restart button on the world of theatre. As we boot back up, we must prioritize diversity from start to finish, including the writing, casting and design processes all the way through critical reviews. If one of those pieces is left out, diversity will be temporary, and because the production team seldom has influence over the reviews, critics are so often let off the hook. No longer. Hold critics accountable for diversity in the theatre world — it’s their responsibility too.

To Critique a Critic

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that cishet (heterosexual and cisgender) people love to tell queer people how to be queer, men love to tell women how to be women, and white people love to tell Black people how to be Black. The same is true for ability, socio-economic status, body type diversity, and more. This is exemplified in theatrical criticism, where even the “wokest” of reviewers cannot filter their biases out completely.

When experiencing a theatrical piece, one should ask “Who is this play for?” and use the answer to that question to inform the rest of their experience with the play. This is even more important for critics to remember as they write their reviews. As a queer woman, I look for good representation when I decide to see a play, and reviews from experienced critics are a fantastic way to gauge if I will feel safe and seen at a performance.

Here’s the catch: The majority of critics are white, cishet, and/or male. A man won’t see microaggressions against women as clearly, as a cishet person won’t quite see queerphobia and a white person won’t see racism as a person of color would. Can their reviews be trusted to tell a marginalized person what to expect? A lot of the time, no.

The head reviewer at The New Yorker is the Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als, a gay Black man. His reviews are strongly-written and they don’t hide his personal opinion. His review of Everybody by Black playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins begins discussing how Jacobs-Jenkins’s race has influenced the plays he’s written. Instead of saying “the play explores themes of racism,” as many white critics would, Als has the platform and will to write something like “An Octoroon isn’t just an alternative to the irony-free ‘black American theatre’ of Hansberry and August Wilson; it’s part of it — and part of many other things, too, because Jacobs-Jenkins’s surrealism grows out of naturalism, the strange circumstances that make us open our mouths, hoping to be heard, even as we forget to listen.” Theatre needs more reviews like that.

The Reviews Are In

The world of theatre must make sure that the identity of the critic matters, especially with a mind toward racial diversity. The Black Lives Matter movement needs to mold the rebuild of theatre as it bounces back from the pandemic, but we all know that. To make sure it sticks, BLM has to mold theatre criticism as well. We listen to reviews — there is not enough time in the day to read or watch every play, and so we trust critics to give us the run-down we need. The world of theatre must place that trust in the BIPOC community, with an additional eye on gender and sexuality diversity. The question cannot be “if,” so it has to be “how.”

Companies can put reviews from marginalized critics front-and-center over the critics that may not be part of the target audience, as the New Yorker has done with Hilton Als. Audience members should endeavor to read more reviews by critics from the playwright’s target audience. Dear readers, use your clicks and wallets to ask for more diversity in journalism and criticism. Scratch that — don’t ask. Demand.

Playwright Stacey Rose published her play America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro in 2018. The original production was by the Barrington Stage Company. 6 reviews are cited at the bottom of the webpage. Of the six, none are written by Black people, and only one is written by a woman. Though I believe that these reviewers are experienced and diversity-minded, I would not hold them as anywhere close to the authority for evaluating racial representation. How could a person of color judge if this is a show they would want to see based on reviews? I am not sure that they could.

But that might all be different if theatre companies brought plays to the specific attention of non-white reviewers, female reviewers, queer reviewers, etc. Perhaps they could provide comp tickets or reserve seats in previews and opening nights for marginalized reviewers. But this is not a perfect solution.

Out of 5 Stars…

Names matter in theatre criticism. Certain critics are prestigious, or come from prestigious journals and newspapers. That culture could be very difficult to break down. Ultimately, though, it is necessary. We need more reviewers from marginalized communities, and the only people who can make that happen are the public.

The public is swayed by journalism companies, but journalism companies would not exist without us. To stay afloat, they have to give us what we want, and the best way to do that is to ensure diverse reviewers’ popularity. That responsibility is in our hands.

Conclusion

Diversity matters. Period. The question is how we make sure diversity becomes part of the theatrical community from the beginning of a production to the end of it, and that includes audiences and critiques. When most critics benefit from privilege like white privilege or gender privilege, theatrical diversity exists at their discretion, meaning that diversity in theatre is constantly threatened. This is a problem that needs to be first acknowledged, and second, solved.

TL;DR

When critics write reviews, their biases are impossible to ignore. As the theatre community tries to incorporate more diversity, they cannot leave critiquing and reviews behind. We need more theatre reviewers and critics from marginalized communities.

Citations

Als, Hilton. “Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, from the Heart.” The New Yorker, 27 February 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/branden-jacobs-jenkins-from-the-heart.

“America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of The American Negro.” Barrington Stage Company, 8 July 2019, barringtonstageco.org/Season-Shows/america-v21/.

Brockes, Emma. “Hilton Als: ‘I had this terrible need to confess, and I still do it. It’s a bid to be loved.’” The Guardian, 2 February 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/hilton-als-interview-pulitzer-prize-criticism-white-girls.

Harris, Jeremy O, and André Wheeler. “Jeremy O Harris: ‘People Say I Wrote Slave Play for White People’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Nov. 2019, www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/nov/06/jeremy-o-harris-slave-play-interview.