On Inclusivity

(Happy birthday to a friend who probably doesn’t want his name on the Internets, and welcome back to my random blog! I suppose this topic is timely on Labour Day. Guess you’ll have to read and see.)

When I was in high school, my classmates and I were aware of two separate drama “regimes”. The first belonged to our old teacher, who switched schools when I was in eleventh grade; the second, to our new drama teacher, who arrived fresh from university and was brimming with new ideas.

One of these new ideas concerned the school musical. The way it had worked until the regime-change was, basically, whoever auditioned for the musical got in. For the most part, the larger roles went to older, experienced students, and younger ones did their “apprenticeships” with walk-ons and one-liners. These non-lead parts were seldom assigned at the time of casting but instead went to people the director thought were reliable who happened to be present during the rehearsal of the scene.

There are benefits to this kind of production in high school (for example, I would never have got in had the policy been different: in what is my most embarrassing theatre memory of all time, for the singing part of my audition, I was so insecure of my abilities that I did part of my bat mitzvah haftarah. If you aren’t Jewish and/or a theatre person and don’t know how ridiculous that is… good.), not the least of which being that everyone, even geeky Jewish girls who come to public high school from private religious school, gets to be part of an experience like the musical.

The new teacher, however, chose a different approach. He made getting into the musical more exclusive — most people who auditioned weren’t cast. And it wasn’t guaranteed that those who did get in would get a part based on their level of experience. Many large parts went to students who’d never before been in a major high school production.

Moving from one type of production to another is going to backstab some students no matter which direction the change goes. Someone who’s been patiently working up the chain in the first production type is going to feel like they’ve been thrown under the bus when everything gets overhauled. And, heck, they are: it’s like changing the grading criteria mid-assignment. Sort of.

But before I go into what I think about all this, I’d just like to clarify something that, when I look back, doesn’t seem to come out in conversations I’ve had on the subject: I’m not arguing for one position or the other. Both positions espouse philosophies of teaching theatre that I believe are legitimate. I take issue with believing that only one is right; although I know which I preferred as a student, I don’t think there’s an obvious choice to be made here, a single correct and compassionate stance*.

This change of policy wasn’t received with universal enthusiasm. Many people who had good reason to believe they would have made it into the show or had bigger parts under the old system felt discouraged from doing theatre. Many others felt doubly insulted that the new teacher tried to get his students involved doing other stuff for the show — spending class time showing everyone what was going on backstage or getting students to help out with other non-performance aspects of production.

Now, obviously, I’m biased here: I didn’t feel cheated, because I did get in, and I didn’t feel bad that I had a small part because I knew that I didn’t have the singing talent to shoulder anything bigger than a walk-on. (I remember having a brief argument with the director when I was wearing a microphone for a speaking bit right before a chorus number, and he wanted me to wear it through the song. Um, if you insist, sir, but wouldn’t you prefer I handed it to someone who’s on-key?)

That bias acknowledged, I don’t think either approach was inappropriate from a teaching perspective, nor do I think it’s possible to describe one — at least in terms of practical outcome — as more inclusive than the other.

It’s true that a lot of people who favoured the first system didn’t get the audition result they’d hoped for (be it getting on the cast list or nabbing that particular juicy part), and it’s true I’d have been upset if I’d been one of them. It’s true that the cast size under the first system was a lot larger. But it’s also true that the second system drew upon a much wider range of students, including many tremendously talented individuals who I don’t think would ever have tried out for the old type of musical.

I remember my high school as a multicultural and multiethnic space: in the halls, there were students of most races. But I also remember the proportion of white kids in my classes (the “gifted”, French-immersion, headed-to-university stream) being much higher than the proportion of white kids in the student body as a whole, and I remember the cast of shows, both musical and non, under the first system being like mainstream TV: mostly white, with one or two actors of colour in lead roles, but conspicuously the minority onstage. Similarly, drama class and extracurriculars were also disproportionately dominated by white students. Under the second system, however, I remember that the cast included a much wider range of ethnic and racial backgrounds in roles of various sizes, to the point where it better reflected the school’s diverse student population.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that we white students shouldn’t have pursued our passion for acting, and I’m not saying that any of us ever, ever deliberately excluded anyone from the drama department. But, well,  it was high school — we were a clique. Even if we didn’t mean to be exclusionary, there were ways in which we were, and I for one certainly didn’t have the intellectual tools or life experience to confront issues of artistic equity — or even to know they existed.

For instance, if I had to go back again and re-co-cast our Shakespearean company’s production of The Tempest, I think I’d take a few different stands. As an adult, I’m aware that some of the reasons I had then for championing particular casting choices  — ones I thought I made on the basis of our artistic “vision” — were also based on unexamined assumptions about characters “needing” to be of a certain gender or my own ignorant privilege to accept sociocultural racism as “normal” instead of engaging critically with it.

I was certainly equally clueless about those issues when the second teacher’s musical system took the place of the first; all I noticed at the time was that lots of the people in the musical weren’t the usual “drama kids.”

I don’t want  to imply that the teacher in question was motivated by some abstract desire for anti-discriminatory policy. Similarly, I don’t want to suggest that the first teacher was supporting any kind of discrimination in his production strategy. (In fact, I remember him often casting written-for-white-performers lead roles with performers of colour.) Anyway, I don’t have access to the intentions of either teacher; I’m me, and they’re them.

But here’s something I do want to say: that although the structure of the musical production was changed for a variety of different reasons, most of which probably had nothing to do with any ethical visions, it is that ideological change behind it that was partly responsible for the change in demographic. The choice of plays (big cast vs. small cast), the stated criterion for casting, the atmosphere around the production — all of these brought out certain students and not others.

When evaluating programs for their inclusiveness, it’s easy to focus on the intentional stuff — deliberate choices made by the teacher, like “How many people who audition get cast?” — while ignoring the kinds of inclusions and exclusions that are the results of choices many don’t necessarily think of as choices. How many parts does this show have for female students? Do the themes, dramatis personae, setting, etc. reflect the values of only one particular racial or ethnic group? Why are certain talented singers and dancers not auditioning for these productions, and how can we get them to do so?

Part of me, the cynical part, wonders if it’s ever possible for something like this to include everyone who might benefit from it. And if not, how can one justify choosing one group of students over another? Who should be privileged — students who already know they love theatre? Students who would know they love theatre if only it would open its doors to them? Can we ever avoid having a privileged group? To what extent is the teacher (authority) responsible, and to what extent are the students responsible? All tough questions, with no easy answers.

All I know is, when I work toward making my teaching — and my writing — more inclusive, to reflect my values, I need to constantly remember to ask: inclusive for whom?

I can always do better.

* Nor do I wish to imply that the people I’ve been talking to think this either.