I was mugged in the fall of 2005, on a walk near my neighborhood in Rochester NY, around midnight. I was alone; two kids (16 yo) came up to me. One of them had a metal pipe and whacked me in the back of the neck. About an inch higher and he’d have cracked my skull open.
Lucky for me there was an off-duty security guard/former cop watching. He came to my rescue. The irony to me was that they’d even pick me: I had $7 on me at the time; I was in the midst of a post-college theatre job which provided a place to live and paid me $25 / week. Not exactly dressed for success. For months afterwards my whole body clenched any time I was alone and saw a black kid in a hoodie. I had serious conversations with myself and friends: had this incident made me a racist? Had my insides been rewired so that anytime I saw a black kid at night I’d be scared? I was not ok with this idea, for moral and practical reasons. But for a long time that was the reaction my body had. Then one night, walking alone, my heart clenched again. Only this time it was a white dude in a hoodie. Turns out I was just scared of dudes in hoodies. At night. Obviously still not ideal. But I was relieved that I was only scared of dudes in hoodies, instead of black dudes in hoodies. Now hoodies don’t even scare me. Onesies, sure, but… Listen, I know some brown dudes flew into the World Trade Center. It’s understandable that some of us have an uncontrollable physical reaction of fear; that’s how our bodies are wired. That doesn’t make every brown dude guilty. And it doesn’t mean any time shit like Copley Square goes down that it was a brown dude. Waco, OK City, Atlanta, Newtown, Columbine, Aurora: MIDDLE CLASS WHITE DUDES. That’s me. And probably a lot of you reading this. There are so many wonderful people in the world of all colors, and there are just a few dickheads. We’re at a time in history when those dickheads have a lot of power and can incite a lot of fear. Don’t give them more power by creating your own fear and turning against the good folks. Have we learned nothing from skittles? Taste the rainbow.
0 Comments
The things I remember about theater I’ve worked on are behind the scenes – you don’t remember the way an audience laughed at a line on the third Friday, but you remember the story someone told in the bathroom between scenes, or the night something went wrong.
It’s been an honor and a privilege just to be in the same room with the folks who put together Raisin In The Sun at the Huntington. There was a lot about the people and the process to love (“there is always something left to love”) but there’s one moment I had to myself, which I will hold dearly to. At the end of this production, Lena Younger says goodbye to her home and is helped into her coat and hat by the ghost of her husband, who’s watched over the family throughout the play. It was a stunning and beautiful moment, mightily theatrical; with no words this moment spoke powerfully about love, family, endurance, devotion, and a million other things that no speech could capture. I never got to see it onstage. But I got to see something no one else did. While Grandma said goodbye to the house, the rest of the cast and crew stood offstage awaiting curtain call (during previews it was the FULL cast; a few migrated to stage left by the time we opened). A monitor on that side showed the audience’s view of the stage. Everyone done with their job, there were jokes, fussing with props and Kleenex, getting ready for curtain call, the typical business backstage. But every night, without fail, the tizzy resolved to silence and stillness as Grandpa Walter held out the coat for Lena. Everyone stopped, their eyes fixed on the monitor, their faces lit by love and something unspeakable. Even Li’l Cent, the Wiggle Worm who sometimes pretended to be a 9-year-old boy, stood still and stared at the monitor, transfixed, as if his soul knew it was a moment to be still for. Here words fail me; they’re never much good compared to life. I have always been deeply moved by families of choice, and to see these actors and artists who loved each other so hard and so quickly, to see them absorbed and moved and unflinching from that moment … Their faces lit by the screen, by love for each other and for history and for story. One night I tried to take a picture and I felt ugly inside. Invasive. And also my gut knew that a photograph could not claim the moment. So instead it’s something I’ll keep in the deepest pockets of my heart. Not a dream deferred, but a dream no less, of the possibility of unflinching love. At least for a moment, before the work begins again. |