*include pix of quotes by intersectional ppl* This past summer, I took a course called Drama of Diversity. It seemed to be right up my alley, considering the fact that I address and discuss diversity in the media a lot of the time. When I started the course, I believed, because of this, that I loosely knew what diversity was and meant. Within my first week of class, I realized that I did not know what diversity was in a general sense. According to my first lecture, my professor defined diversity as “the condition of being varied”; however “diversity”, according to the Op-Ed “‘Diversity’ is a euphemism. We should be careful how we use it.” by Noah Berlatsky of the LA Times, is a means of saying “end bigotry”, especially “as the word [diversity] becomes more popular, . . . the liberal goal is not to promote difference for difference’s sake, but to end bigotry. . . . We don’t need diversity in the sense of variety. We need equality and justice.” I happen to agree with this because we may throw the term “diversity” around loosely without much sense of why we are using it and in what context. When we think of diversity, we often use it along with the idea of the lack of it, such as when we hear celebrities promote intersectionality in the media, because of the lack of variation, representation, and well, diversity.
Modes of media, such as plays, that cast white, heterosexual, and cisgender men, are perpetuating the notion that these people exclusively represent all people and all others’ experiences, when in fact, whites are slightly less than half of the global population, and heterosexual white men even less, and white transgender men even less. To support this claim, “Recent Stats on Broadway Casting” reported that although Caucasian Americans comprise about two-thirds of the U.S. population, they make up about 78 percent of actors in Broadway plays, meaning that they are disproportionately represented in these plays. It would be an understatement to say that minority actors maintain low rates of roles and thus representation, with Latin Americans, Asian Americans, and other ethnicities among the groups with the lowest rates of representation, respectively. This is ironic considering that, according to Berlatsky, “a recent study found that films with diverse casts” seem to do better at the box office and financially than films with less diverse casts.
In terms of my goals as a director, producer, screenwriter, author, neuroscientist, fashion designer, and more, I hope to integrate all of the above fields to try to redefine how people see diversity. I want to normalize a diversity of beliefs, ideas, and opinions, but also of other groups of people--those of different shapes, sizes, statures, disabilities, disorders, nationalities, religious affiliations, and yes, even still sexual orientation, gender, race, and ethnicity. People are not just of a different sexual orientation or race, as represented in the narrow-minded field of television and film; people are more diverse and multidimensional than we depicted and I want people to understand that human expression of the “other” is actually the norm.
Anything outside one’s culture or substantially diverse is considered a threat to localized culture or family heritage, as represented at the end of A Mexican Trilogy, "Play III: Charity", when Esperanza insists to the apparition of Silvestre that her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren lack cultural cognizance, claiming “They are so removed from their ancestors, so far . . . They no longer know who they are. They don’t know where they come from or where they are going. They don’t know how to live upon the earth.” This thought does not come out of nowhere. In fact, her own children and grandchildren questioned their customs at some point (especially Faith and Charity who sought more Americanized role models and lifestyles, unlike Elena’s children, who already grew up in America), while Esperanza remained stronghold to her cultural heritage. Her fear for her descendants prompts her to postpone her death because she believes that being alive will enlighten their cultural appreciation. Later, at the very end of the play, she recalls that essentially life moves on inevitably, from generation to generation, after those have passed, and whether we want it to or not. She realizes that “you have come from someone; that you are descended from someone; that you were born by the grace of someone; that you are both the spine and the offspring of our ancestors; of those who came before us and of those who have gone on to live in the great beyond.” Silvestre reminds her that at the heart, her descendants are truly Mexican, even if they may not seem so because life moves on. Similarly, Gina Rodriguez commented on people claiming that she is “not Latina enough." On the subject of whether knowing Spanish fluently makes someone more Latino, she mentions that her parents specifically did not want her and her siblings to learn Spanish because they feared that she and her siblings would deal with the same prejudice, discrimination, and oppression from others that they had when people heard their accents. The overarching message of identity: “if we want to talk about what makes a Latino, why not just what makes a human being?” The very idea of questioning someone else’s identity also creates a double standard for people who do not identify with a culture, yet nonetheless learn the language, and those born practicing a culture that is not traditionally aligned with their race (biology). Daphne, for example, from the television show Switched At Birth, applied for a scholarship for Latinas because she grew up in a Latina household and identified as such. When interviewed for this scholarship, she realized that because of the color of her skin, she had not experienced as much difficulty as Latinas traditionally do. In fact, she had lived a life of privilege that she was not aware of. In terms of theater, the Yiddish theater, El Teatro Campesino, and more were established, in part, because of the lack of representation of their respective communities. This push for social activism paved the way for contemporary performers to become more recognized, especially at the height of other political reform movements promoted through their performances and the theaters. This can be seen in Yankee Dawg You Die by Philip Kan Gotanda when Bradley convinces Vincent to perform at the Asian American Theater for a workshop production of Godzilla, which, at first, Vincent is opposed to even consider before he complies. This play mentions some pretty powerful themes of Asian American identity, stereotype, and lack of representation as well as the lack of roles for Asian Americans. They usually play the side roles (waiters, butlers, or any character with few to no lines) and when they do play major roles, they are among a majority Asian American cast. Vincent was proud of his Oscar nomination, because then he felt that he could have an opportunity for better roles and more recognition as a respected actor, only to be disappointed, but not as disappointed as when Bradley mentioned that Vincent’s kiss scene with a white actress was edited out of a television movie, because God forbid an Asian man to be seen kissing a Caucasian woman, let alone on television. Though millennials claim to be more progressive, police brutality, white privilege, the art of priming how we see the news in regard to certain social groups, and a myriad of other issues both progress and regress our nation. We encourage and embrace acceptance, yet polarize ourselves and have an unspoken word to associate ourselves with our own groups. Perhaps, if we depicted people as they are in the media, misunderstandings, discrimination, and violence would mitigate.
According to my first lecture, "drama" is a means of presenting ourselves to ourselves. We share what is personal to ourselves to demonstrate and relay a message about visibility, transparency, and representation. With different theater movements, especially those that align with social and political rights movements (such as the civil rights movement, protest in Alcatraz, United Farm Workers’ movement, and second wave of feminism, performers and plays are able to connect with audiences in such a way that a sense of nationalism, cultural pride, and definition of one’s identity are communicated. What arises in theater is identifying who “ourselves” is--who is in the in-group and who is in the outgroup. In one of my lectures, Jose Luis Valenzuela mentioned that El Teatro Campesino became established through Cesar Chavez, the pioneer of the Farmer’s rights movement, and Luis Valdez, in which the theater took part in diffusing the problems and narratives of immigrants, farmers, and those just trying to reach the American Dream. Using real farmers as the performers, the performances became authentic, emphasizing what it means to be Chicanx. After all, there is “unity” is in “community” and what started out as a farmer’s movement soon became an established theater with political and social activism in mind. Professor Guerrero from UC Riverside adds that with the idea of “showing ourselves to ourselves”, we must allow actors to portray characters that align with their cultural identities, heritages, and ethnicities, because doing so will make performances seem not only authentic and personal to the actors themselves, but also to the audience. Associate Professor Sean Metzger of UCLA supported this idea by emphasizing that traditionally Asian American roles are more often cast to white actors performing in yellow face, such as in the 2016 live-action adaptation of the anime Ghost in a Shell, wherein Scarlett Johansson portrayed the protagonist, who is meant to be Japanese. Metzger adds that this was a huge theme in Yankee Dawg You Die. Furthermore, the American Dream is at the heart of identity.
Diversity and being human, as human as we can be--to ourselves and others--underscores our role as people of Earth and through the lens that is theater.