In light of current recent events, I have been trying not to doom scroll through all the combatting opinions and statements. I understand what happened, and I know I am currently experiencing my own grief and sadness about the outcome, but I don’t want that to be the focus of this post. As a young woman attempting to forge my way through life to a path of financial, artistic and personal success and freedom, there was one post that rang true for me and that urged me to start writing this blog.
In summary, this post stated:
That this election had the highest number of voter registration.
This is the first time a female candidate of Black and South Asian descent had the full support of a major political party.
Our duty is to continue the good you do for our community. Think about and work towards what specific things you can do for our country.
Respect the decision of the majority of Americans, but help your elected officials, and reach out to them.
Choose love, both sides, and choose and include all people in the work for freedom and justice.
Do not ignore the hard problems, and do not ignore the people who are hurting.
Call to action to move forward and actually work together.
The two things that I want to really, really focus on are continuing the good you do in your community, and to not ignore the hard problems. So what can I do for the good of my community? Honestly, I had a hard time answering this one. I have felt insignificant, and there's a whole lot of time in my life where I struggle to speak up or really actually talk about my opinions, political or otherwise. The amount of blogs that were started and never get posted for fear of being too controversial or “no one would read this or actually care about what I have to say” that just sits in my drafts is a testament to that statement. But as someone who wants to run my own business and who wants their voice to be heard, I felt that this blog in particular needs to be written.
This is my first step in continuing the good I do in my community. I want this post to open up a conversation to the people who will read this and talk to me, respectfully, about what they want to see more or less of when it comes to the performing arts in Buffalo. In fact, I urge people to have the difficult conversations, and I challenge theatre companies to put on shows with controversial topics, which may require extra time to rehearse and research. I also want to point out that there is a difference in being uncomfortable for things that are difficult to talk about, and uncomfortable because it was portrayed poorly or just straight up problematic. I am uncomfortable even stating that, but I must, like us all, embrace the uncomfortability. Dialogue is good, and dialogue is needed, but dialogue MUST remain respectful.
As an artist and as an individual, it is my duty to discuss and help shape the theatrical and performing arts community in our city. This brings me to that second point I wanted to focus on, having the difficult conversations. Now I love musicals and feel good shows as much as the next person, and frankly, I generally prefer it. However, art has two functions: to entertain and to inform. Given the state of many of the recent posts that I see from my friends and family that are circulating on Facebook, I personally feel that now is the time that we must tip the scale so that art is focusing on informing rather than entertaining.
Now, there are some companies and pieces of work who are doing just that. For the first time in my life, I am working on a show that is extremely relevant to today’s political climate. The current show that I am working on is about what happens when the rights of one group of people are stripped away by another. It's a show that explores the traumas that were experienced during the Holocaust - through the lens of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice. This is a really difficult and uncomfortable piece of theater. It’s scary to do work that could get backlash, and it's scary to have uncomfortable conversations, even when it is with multiple people who consulted with us on a piece like this and told us this was theater that was needed.
I urge you to reach out. I urge you to talk about the uncomfortable topics with respect. I request humbly, you go see Shylock at American Repertory Theater when it opens in two weeks. I also would love to hear more about other theater companies in town that are doing work like this - and I want to support them as well. I request you use your voice and your platform, and seriously also to think about what good you can bring to our community - and maybe what we can do together. I look forward to engaging respectfully with people both of like mind and otherwise.
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