Anu Yadav: Who's in your circle?

Anu Yadav, artist and participant in the Poverty Scholars Program performed this piece in D.C. at Woolly Mammoth’s as part of a project called WHO’S IN YOUR CIRCLE? Theatre, Democracy & Engagement in the 21^st Century.  Artists gathered from  around the country  – to work together to imagine how theatre can engage citizens from all walks of life and increasing the impact of convention-defying theatre in the nation’s capital.

 Howard asked us to consider, ‘Who’s in your circle?’ in relation to the role of theater in our democracy.  To answer that question, I pose another:  ‘What is the nature of our democracy in these times?’

Well, 8 million jobs are gone.  Half of those losses are described by employers as permanently gone.  Half of all children in the U.S. will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood.  Meanwhile, Wall Street companies received swine flu vaccines before public hospitals.
 
We are at a time where how we live as a society is in great contradiction to our values of democracy as an American people.

How does the current economic climate and sharp wealth divide shape the kind of civic engagement we are even able to have in this country, let alone in D.C?  As more and more of us find ourselves in the same boat, we need to see that we are in fact in the same circle.  In these times, expanding that circle can be extremely difficult.  But because of these times, it is all the more important.

So, in all of this, how does theater matter?

Federico Garcia Lorca once wrote:

“The Poem
the Song
the Picture
is only water
drawn from the well
of the people
and it should be given back
to them in a cup of beauty
so that they may drink
and in drinking
understand
themselves.”

Woolly does a lot well:

• having a resident company of local actors
• bringing new plays on important issues, like Eclipsed, which also featured 5 well developed roles for black actresses.  In the D.C. theater world, that is sadly rare.
• Offering free and reduced rate rehearsal and production space to local artists and community groups.
• Hosting great panel discussions and audience conversation starters.

D.C., a city with a population larger than Wyoming, has no right to vote in Congress and has the widest gap between the rich and poor than nearly every other city nationwide.  D.C. is still a majority working class town, as well as mostly Black and increasingly Latino.

A woman I know, she is working class, black and from D.C.  She’s a part of Classlines, a storytelling project of which I’m artistic director.  We were going to have a rehearsal here, and she didn’t know where or what Woolly Mammoth was.  This is not just about Woolly, but indicative of how the larger D.C. theater community is known nationally and invisible locally.

What Woolly can do:

• Fill the theater seats as well as conferences like these with D.C. residents.
• Take on fighting racism and classism through showcasing high quality performance as well as in the creation, production and publicity of it.  How?
• Expand the definition of new play development to include D.C.-based, hybrid, multidisciplinary artists who are doing high quality, innovative performance and who represent D.C.’s diverse communities in either who they are or what they address in their artistic process or content.
• Take on a resident company of these artists in a structured mentorship.
• Devote some part of every season to showcasing their work.
• Offer them professional development, any opportunities that local artists can engage with out-of-town artists and learn about the business and craft of theater.
• Have an area-based community advisory board that is racially and class-wise diverse to help bridge this art versus community gap.
• Systematically explore these questions as part of ongoing staff development.
• Bring groups like Appalshop or Roadside Theater to D.C. in a residency program.
• Offer youth internships.

But above all, in our ability as theater makers to tackle these questions of theater and democracy we must consistently reflect upon who is in our circle.  Not only as a company and a community, but as individuals too.

Our work is to transform people through theater.  To touch their lives.  It’s not just a job.  We’ve devoted our lives to this because we understand the power it has to change the world.

My work with Classlines currently is gathering stories of, by, and with everyday people as related to wealth and poverty in their lives.  In doing so, we can blur the boundaries between art and community by having the process of art-making be community engaged.  My theater pieces have often told the stories of my relationships with people.  And over the years, I’ve come to understand that the people I encounter have to be more important to me than the stories I tell, because if not, then the work I do is meaningless.  It’s the realness and longevity of those relationships that fuel, build and deepen the stories I am able to tell.

And the telling of those stories leads to broader awareness, which leads to the potential for social transformation.

By expanding our circle of those we care about, breaking down the long standing segregations of class, age, gender, race, ability, language, ethnicity, occupation — everything you can possibly think of and more – by expanding the circle of those we decide to allow into our lives, beyond the work itself,  that will transform the kind of theater we can make, and the reach it is able to have within the kind of democracy I know that I dream about.

So, the question is, who is in our circle? And who needs to be?