So, in reply to my grandson’s query, right here’s the “well yes” half:
I had turn into a producing artist and was in a position to give myself alternatives to develop as a playwright by seeing my work dwelling and respiration on smaller phases. I revealed a set of my full-length performs. My shorter works and monologues seem in theatrical anthologies. I pen theatre-related articles for on-line magazines and weblog posts. I’ve been interviewed on theatre-related podcasts. I’ve curated and produced occasions selling girls’s work across the social problems with our time just like the brutality and homicide of girls of coloration by the hands of the police and the #MeToo motion.
These steps be sure that my grandchildren and future generations of theatre lovers will know I used to be right here and had one thing to contribute to the American theatre. And lastly, though within the minority—not in contrast to the Black suffragettes and Black feminists who fought for inclusion regardless of the unrelenting bias they endured—I discovered neighborhood with white girls theatre artists combating for parity.
And, right here’s the “… and no” half:
All of those efforts have afforded me the road cred and respect of my friends however not the nationally acknowledged awards and accolades that garner the eye of regional theatres and Broadway producers. I’ve failed in balancing my work as an activist with my work as an aspiring playwright in that sense. (In reality, proper now, I’m certain there’s a submission alternative, or a grant, or residency that I ought to be making use of to as I write this text!) I’m “of a certain age”—too previous, maybe, to be the subsequent “hot thing,” “flavor of the month,” or “theatre darling.” I’m a recovering “hope-a-holic” who can’t go backwards and recuperate these “lost years of not doing self-advocacy.”
The icing on the cake got here with the Lillys’ most up-to-date findings within the “The Count 3.0” which says, partly: “It’s clear that, although the American theatre has continued to add to the diversity of its playwrights, neither gender nor racial parity has yet been achieved in terms of production. Anecdotally, it appears that women over the age of fifty, especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) women+ who led the push for the diversity we now enjoy, do not appear to have directly benefitted.”
There it was in black and white. I had been combating all this time for white girls to have extra alternatives within the business than girls like me. This information was very disheartening. It induced me to name into query the final fifteen years of my life as an activist combating for parity for ladies+ theatre artists. What now? Do I preserve combating for these BIPOC girls+ beneath fifty and future generations?
The fact is, now in my sixties, I’m drained and able to flip this explicit struggle over to those that are youthful and stronger. After years of advocacy, I used to be wanting ahead to spending extra time writing, networking, submitting extra constantly, possibly getting an agent, and securing that all-important regional manufacturing which will have a future on the Great White Way. I used to be wanting ahead to taking my seat on the desk.
Knowing I’m a part of a historic lineage, a continuum of Black girls activists on the frontlines of 1 trigger or one other who might not see the fruits of their work of their lifetime, I’m questioning the right way to reconcile and be at peace with the findings of “The Count 3.0” whereas nonetheless combating the great struggle. I’m questioning what the response to those findings are by different BIPOC girls+ playwrights in my footwear, or in the event that they even know. I’m questioning, “What happens to a dream deferred,” a query posed by poet, essayist, novelist and playwright, Langston Hughes in his iconic poem, “Harlem”:
What occurs to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin within the solar?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy candy?
Maybe it simply sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I don’t but have a solution to Hughes’ query as a result of I’m nonetheless dwelling it. But I can think about the mountaintop. And as I crest, I see my dream deferred exploding—not in my lifetime however 100 years from now when girls+ playwrights in nice numbers explode onto the American theatre scene. In my dream deferred, I see BIPOC girls+ having the identical alternatives as their white sisters and collectively as womenkind, they’ve the identical alternatives as white males. In my dream deferred, I see producers discovering the performs of BIPOC girls+ over fifty and posthumously dedicating complete seasons to their unsung work. In my dream deferred, I see a seat on the desk for all of us. In the phrases of voting and ladies’s rights activist, neighborhood organizer, and chief within the civil rights motion, Fannie Lou Hamer, “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats when all of us were tired.”