a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Before I get too far into this post, I am going to let you look at this particular graphic for a bit. Take your time with it.

source: The NY Innovative Theatre Fund Demographic Survey of OOB Practitioners

Notice anything interesting about it? I thought the most interesting aspect of this graphic was the fact that, while 77% of OOB theatre practitioners are white, only 45% of the population of New York City is white. And just as striking are the figures below it: while 27% of NYC’s population is Black/African American, only 5% of OOB theatre people are Black/African American. Although not in this graphic, the numbers for the Hispanic community mirror those of the African American numbers.

Something else from the NY Innovative Theatre Fund survey was interesting to me as well (this data is not, by the way, a part of the published study. I asked for the additional breakdown). It’s the fact that 32% of OOB theatre practitioners come from the tri-state region of NY (24%), NJ (6%) and CT (2%). The data does not give us where in the state those people come from, so we don’t know exactly what their proximity to NYC is, but regardless, what it also means is that 68% of all OOB practitioners originally came from outside the NYC metropolitan region (actually, the percentage is probably higher, because while the data says that 24% of them are from NY state, it does not say how many of those 24% are native to the five boroughs or Westchester/Rockland/Nassau counties). But once they get to New York, they live in the city. 93% live in NY State, while 91% live in one of the five boroughs. In terms of borough breakdown, it’s 52% Manhattan, 30% Brooklyn, 16% Queens, and the rest of the remaining 2% split between the Bronx and Staten Island.

If you connect the dots, a pattern appears which could be considered…well, controversial. It seems as if white people, about 2 out of 3 of whom were born outside the metropolitan area, have migrated to NYC and created a theatrical ghetto, producing theatre primarily for white people while being surrounded primarily by non-whites. In other words, in a city where people of color are in the majority, the theatre being produced appears primarily to be for the minority whites.

Now, considering that all these white theatre people need a place to live when they come here, could they be a part of the process of gentrification? The subject of gentrification is a sore one in New York. Depending on who you talk to, gentrification is either something that is helping the city revive and thrive, or something that is driving the poor and the immigrant out of neighborhoods they occupied for years. Brian Lehrer of WNYC has done a number of shows on this topic. Below is a sample, a show featuring Rosie Perez and Nelson George talking about their old neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the effect gentrification has had on Bushwick and Fort Greene. Of particular note is Nelson George’s description of Fort Greene as a haven for black artists before gentrification began to take hold in 2000.

You can also get various perspectives on gentrification from Curbed NY (PS – see what NYU is doing to the Provincetown Playhouse building as it builds around it). Regardless of which side of the issue you take, there can be little argument that gentrification is going on, and that it changes the makeup of a neighborhood. Theatrically, though, it appears that what gentrification helps to do is make space for more white theatre practitioners to live and work in New York City.

My point in all this is that I think it’s wrong to assume that theatre people in New York City are making theatre for “New Yorkers.” What has happened, intentionally or not, is that white people, more than 2/3 of whom came from outside New York City, have created a theatrical ghetto in which they produce theatre for white people, primarily in an effort to gain attention from bigger white theatrical producers up the industry’s food chain. The data indicates that they have little connection to the non-white majority around them (as attested by the lack of non-whites in the OOB survey data), and while they may feel “connected” to their neighborhoods, they are not interested in telling the stories of their non-white neighbors or of inviting them into their theatrical world.

I am willing to extrapolate this data and say that the same is probably true of Chicago and Los Angeles. Again, while I have nothing against the theatre created in these cities, I think it’s important to understand that this phenomenon of “white ghetto theatre” in cities where the majority population is non-white must be understood as part of the Nylachi mindset as a whole. Sure, there are scrappy urban theatres out there in the cities struggling to make a living and a contribution, but the vast majority of them are populated and run by “immigrant white” artists, not by the natives of the area. And in their eagerness to live and work in these cities, they contribute to gentrification, for better or worse.

Finally, where do all these people come from? Why, from college and university “pre-professional training programs,” naturally. These programs themselves are predominantly white, and turn out hundreds upon hundreds of young white theatre artists each year eager to head out to Nylachi and gain fame and fortune. Judging on what I once again saw at this year’s SETC, there appears to be an endles supply of them.

The biggest question I know of in theatre is “Who is theatre for?” At least in the early part of the 21st century, the data seems to tell us that theatre is primarily for immigrant/urban, ghettoized white people. I think this should change. Sure, I think white people should have a theatre that’s reflective of their community, their history and their values. But I don’t think they should overtake urban areas to do so. It smacks of colonization and a “gold rush” mentality, where the indigenous population gets run out or ignored. We can, and we should, be able to do better than this.  -twl