INTIMAN 2016 – LET’S DO SOMETHING

By Valerie Curtis-Newton

(delivered at the Intiman Season Announcement Brunch on 11/14/15)

Hello. Thank you for being here this morning. I am very honored to have been asked to co-curate the 2016 Intiman Season. It’s so great to look out and see all of you. 

...So, I wrote a speech. And it was all about having a conversation about racial equity. It was a hard speech for me to write. Not because I don’t believe in racial equity. It was a hard speech to write because I’m tired of talking about talking about racial equity. I’m tired of people’s surprise that we are not there yet. I’m tired of people asking me to make them feel better about themselves. I’m tired of listening to people lament the intransigence of bigotry without making a single step toward action.

I said a year ago – rather infamously -  that I was done talking about racism. And for the last year people have asked me to talk about nothing else. It begs the question: Why I am I up here? What makes this an exception?

First, Andrew Russell didn’t ask me to help Intiman do its racial equity work. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe for minute that thought wasn’t on his mind. He just knew better than to ask me the question in that way. For 5 years, he has been asking me what lights me up. What gets me excited artistically? What lights me up is the chance to change the world one audience at a time; to move us all closer to the fullest possible expression of our humanity. So when he asked this time, I said I want my community to hear some new stories. I want them sit together and hear some new stories. And after hearing some new stories I want them to be changed. And because they are changed, I want them to really see each other and to move through the world with greater kindness, greater compassion for each other. And because kindness and compassion in action look like courage, I want to make my community brave. And if we can do that - the rest of the stuff will get worked out.

Second, it was Intiman asking. We have history. Intiman was the first regional theatre that I made contact with when I arrived in Seattle. I assistant directed a production of Pearl Cleage’s FLYING WEST in 1994. And when in 2010 Kate Whoriskey’s RUINED was schedule to go to South Africa, Kate asked me to go to Johannesburg and develop a community based program to highlight the issue of sexual violence. The invitation to direct ALL MY SONS came in 2011. It was followed by DIRTY STORY in 2012, and TROUBLE IN MIND 2013. Intiman and I have invested in each other over time. This has become one of my artistic homes. Part of my responsibility as a member of this family is to contribute to moving this institution forward toward action. I feel like we know each other well enough to speak some truths to each other. We can have talked honestly about the givens. About how Seattle is the 5^th whitest city in the country and about how that affects what makes it to the stage here. We have talked about things like yellowface/blackface productions. We have talked about how colorblind casting is impossible in a country as racially conscious as we are. We have talked about how, right now, the conversation about non-traditional casting isn’t about seeing more diversity on stage but rather about how more white people can be cast non-traditionally. We have talked about how the lack of opportunity for artists of color to develop over time becomes an excuse, no - a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have talked. Now it time to move.

So we’re going to make a festival/season that focuses on the work of Black Women playwrights.  When I’m feeling feisty I say that we are part of a movement to correct the historical record and write in voices not always included in our understanding of the American canon.

I’m up here, despite my own protestations, because I’m not built for silence. Especially not if speaking is an action, not a goal. I believe that being here today is about more than conversation - it is about committing to take action. To show up, to buy tickets, to make donations, to evangelize the work of Intiman, to courageously defend the rightness of what we are trying to do here. Andrew says this group is ready to take that on. So I’m here to do my part.

So, what do I want to say about next summer? Let me start with a couple of quotes. In 2014, I was honored to be awarded a Stranger Genius Award. Some of you may have heard me speak as part of that process. Anyway, I had to give an address. It was a kind of artistic mission statement and it included quotes from some amazing playwrights. I’d like to quote them again here because they continue inspire me and because they are foundational to my approach to this collaboration.

My Theatre She-roe Alice Childress wrote:

“I continue to create because it is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.”

Arthur Miller wrote:

“… I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.”

In her play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Lorraine Hansberry wrote:

"I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality. That's what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other.”

I hope that those of you in the Intiman family know by now that I am an artist committed to the idea that Art should do something in the world to connect us, to remind us of our shared humanity. I believe that to achieve this ideal, the work must be relevant to the lives of people today. Which is not to say that it must be contemporary. The work must ask fundamental questions about our humanity and the values we uphold in its service. It must invite response from and within its audiences. Be it laughter, tears, anger, joy, action, change - some response. And it should do all of these things artfully and with a demonstrated mastery of craft. Whether I am directing a production, workshop or reading; organizing a community event, or mentoring emerging artists, my goals remain the same: telling good stories, connecting people across difference and creating space for discourse.

That’s what we’re going to do next season. We are going to share some illuminations about each other. Our hope is that the result of those shared illuminations will be more civility, more common ground, more activism, … more humanity,

We are going to create a moment worthy of national attention. One that says these writers are valued - even in the 5^th whitest city in the country. That says “Look at how rich the fabric of our community is. Look at how we embrace the challenge of bridging our differences. Look at how we are willing to face the fear around confronting the issue of race. We believe that the stories these writers tell are important for everyone to hear. And we are just brave enough and just crazy enough to take the leap.”

A critical point for me – beyond brave and crazy: these stories are important for EVERYONE to hear. It has been my experience that black theatergoers view white arts institutions skeptically.  It is hard not to feel like a guest in someone else’s house – no matter how well intentioned the host. It has also been my experience that many white theatregoers (even some in this room) assume - consciously or unconsciously - that if the work is by a black playwright, it is for a black audience. That it will indict them in some way. And who wants to go see that. It is hard to convince them that the work is for them, too.

So I want to be really clear, this is not some sacrifice offered up to the black community in pennance. It is not reparations. – this festival/mini season will go out into venues around the city and make invitations to a community interested enough in these stories to join us. We want to prove that by spending time together in a shared space watching the same event. Breathing together, rubbing up against each other, laughing together and crying together, we can be expanded as citizens of the world.

We want to advance the work of these writers in order that we might inspire people to make change right where they are. This is about changing the conversation, no more to the point, this is about moving past conversation to action. Lorraine Hansberry said,”If you want to do something, you have to do something.” This is what we are doing.

Intiman 2016 – A season of Black Women Playwrights. Some people will look at it as a fools’ escapade. They’ll say “It doesn’t look like any season we’ve ever seen a mainstream institution in this city put on before. What about the bottom line? No one has ever heard of these writers. How can this be smart?” I won’t lie. It is not smart. Let me say it again. It is not smart. It is more than smart. It is bold. It is leading. It is Intiman. And if we all do our part it will be successful. It says that we believe in going deeper. It says let’s not just do one gay play or one black play. Let’s do multiple plays, put the work into a fuller context. Let’s go deeper. I’m excited about where this model can go in future seasons.

Anyway, more about next summer, we have not completely nailed down all of the plays but I can tell you that Alice Childress’ WEDDING BAND will be one of them. It marks a personal milestone for me as I will have completed the Childress Trilogy: Wine in the Wilderness. Trouble in Mind and Wedding Band. I am elated at the prospect of achieving this artistic milestone.

A little about the play and why I’m so stoked.  Set in 1918 South Carolina WEDDING BAND is the story of Julia, a black seamtress, and Herman, a white baker, who love each other and want to marry. It is a play about whether we can love across the divide of race taking into account the pressures of the outside world – can we be strong enough to tell the truth to each other and still love. It is about whether or not we can move into the future together. I said earlier that work should be relevant to peoples’ lives.  How can this 50 year-old period play do that? It can because Alice Childress was a freaking brilliant writer. She knew this story in her bones - it is rooted in her own family history. She knew the power of story to connect us and she kew that deep inside we want to figure this fuller humanity thing out. It can be relevant even now because Childress understood fear as a fundamental human emotion. Most of us are mostly afraid, most of the time. She expresses that universal fear through Julia and Herman. Julia is afraid to discover that Herman would be more comfortable if she just swallowed down the dust of the world outside. Herman is afraid that Julia will paint him with the same brush as the small minds that see her blackness only and miss her loving heart. I dare you to tell me that we are not living that moment right now. Isn’t that what the “Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter” debate is about at its core.  That is part of Childress’ gift. Her work is powerful profound, provocative and timeless.

The thing that people might miss in looking at Alice Childress is that she is not an anomaly. She stands in a long line of theatrical foremothers, who spoke the truth of their present moment. Women, whose legacies are largely unrecognized. Names like:

Angelina Grimke

Georgia Douglass Johnson

Shirley Graham

Eulaie Spence

Mary P. Burrill

May Miller

Marita Bonner

Zora Neale Hurston

Aiasha Rahman

Lorriane Hansberry

Alice Childress

Adrienne Kennedy

Micki Grant

Vinette Caroll

Ntozake Shange

Pearl Cleage

And the artistic daughters of these women continue the tradition. Women like:

Lynn Nottage

Katori Hall

Dominique Morisseau

Christina Anderson

Chisa Hutchison

Kia Corthron

Kara Corthron

Keli Garrett

Rhada Blank

Lenelle Moise

Dale Olandersmith

Cheryl West

And on and on and on….

To honor Childress and the long line of writers in which she stands. Let’s do something. No more talking. Let’s move.