This is an essay I recently wrote for my Expository Writing class. Hope you enjoy and I hope it calls you to action in some capacity whether it's activism, drawing a picture, singing a song, dancing a sparkly dance, writing a play, or performing on the street.
Hell to the No -
Fighting for the Art Scene
The
Laramie Project
is a play based on a compilation of interviews performed by playwright Moises
Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project. It centers around the city of
Laramie, Wyoming and the vicious murder of the openly gay, local college
student Matthew Shepard. The play was groundbreaking when it premiered in the
early 2000s, is a major part of the American dramatic lexicon, and in the
Spring of my senior year of high school would be coming to our humble theatre
department.
Needless to say, I was excited. To
my blissfully youthful, theatrically growing mind, performing in The Laramie Project was like winning the
Tony for Best Actor. I poured over the entire script, devouring it like it was
fresh meat, like it would go bad if I didn't absorb it all in that instant.
Once we finally received approval from the administration, a feat all in its
own, we set to work adapting the script to fit into one act so we could take it
to the Vermont state drama festival.
After three months of rehearsal, and
a sweeping win at the festival, we were ready to perform our creation to our
own community, and it became my belief that EVERYONE needed to see this play.
It was a necessity. To achieve my lofty goal, I came up with a brilliant plan
to bring a camcorder into our final brush-up rehearsals, film segments of the
play, and edit them into a kick-ass advertisement I would then play on a loop
on this gigantic big-screen T.V. in the cafeteria during lunch.
The first day of Plan Kick-Ass T.V.
Advertisement was fairly smooth right up until the very end. From the
designated "theatre kids" table which also included a few "band
kids" we could spy a table full of testosterone-filled, redneck,
back-of-the-woods, jockstrap-smelling football guys sitting right next to the
T.V. Up until that moment, everything had been okay, but right at the end of
the period the comments started flying.
"What the fuck is this?"
"Why do we have to watch this
crap?"
"Is this about some kind of
fag?"
And it all would have been okay, we
would have been completely cool about the whole matter if they hadn't decided
to get up and turn the T.V. off.
Oh hell to the no.
As I surveyed the cafeteria I
noticed just how many members of the school administration and faculty were
wandering around: quite a lot. And none of them; absolutely none of them were
doing anything to stop the crude and vicious comments flying from the rednecks'
food-filled mouths, or preventing them from physically silencing us.
Right then, one of my best friends,
and one of the lead women in our department, stood up. She stands about four
foot, ten inches and has the voice of a cartoon Disney princess on helium, but
she is scrappy and she was pissed. She marched past the beefy guys and flipped
the T.V. back on, turning around to face the entire football team with an index
finger pointed right at their noses.
"Don't you DARE turn that T.V.
off again!" she commanded. "I know all your moms, and I am NOT afraid
to call them. You know, you could learn a lot from The Laramie Project."
This confrontation is only one
example of how my old high school executed several injustices against our arts
programs. In my three years as a member of the prestigious Select Choral
Ensemble group headed by our brilliantly talented and caring director, I
witnessed several instances where the administration limited our budget so we
couldn't purchase sheet music, professional outfits, or publicity for our
concerts. They were completely unsupportive when we traveled to compete in
various singing contests, and refused to announce our spectacular victories
when the sports teams received top billing in assemblies. In some moments it
felt like they weren't even treating our director like she was a real teacher.
At the end of my senior year, the administration had pressured our director so
hard and squeezed her and our Ensemble out so much that she finally gave up and
quit. It's prejudice like that that makes me see how underappreciated and
unsupported the arts are in our society, and that attitude starts in school.
In the same year we performed The Laramie Project, a little show
called Glee came into my life.
Created by Ryan Murphy, Glee tells
the story of a small-town high school glee club that perseveres despite the
lack of support from the school system and their own personal struggles. Glee is basically a complete
representation of my high school and every other establishment that puts the
arts down. Every stereotype is depicted: the principal who doesn't want to fork
anymore money over to the arts groups because it will detract from the sports
programs slightly, the ultra-conservative teachers who refuse to see the
benefits of the arts in people's lives and in our culture as a society, the
peers who have adopted this negative view of the arts and artists themselves;
automatically labeling them as "losers," and the little arts program
run by a devoted teacher who persists in spite of everything.
In an episode from season one, guest
star Neil Patrick Harris plays a member of the school district looking to cut
arts programs until he finds statistics which show the benefits of an artistic
education and how the arts improve the lives and even the learning abilities of
students. But it's not just Hollywood that's preaching the values of an
artistic education. In an article from the December 1991 issue of Dramatics magazine, theatre professor,
director, and author Louis Catron talks about how CEOs are attracted to theatre
majors in their hiring process because they possess incredibly desirable
qualities that trump even more qualified applicants. Some of these include
communication skills, time-management and punctuality, confidence,
independence, ability to work collaboratively, adaptability, and overall
motivation. And yet it would seem these benefits aren't highly valued in our
society despite the rigorous work and discipline that goes into an artistic
education.
At the University of Vermont I have
to put in a total of 48 credit hours just for my theatre major. That's more
hours than a pre-med student puts in at the undergrad level, and my classes are
the furthest thing from easy. Along with my acting classes which are full of
performances and serious training, I also have had to take several technical
classes which have taught me how to use tools for construction, how present my
work professionally, and how to operate complicated computer technology. I have
also taken classes in dramatic analysis and theatre history which have taught
me literature critique, how to do in-depth research, and more useful history
than I'd ever learned in previous history classes. Last year I had to do a
twenty page research paper on Spanish Renaissance playwright Lope de Vega along
with theatrical conventions of the Spanish Renaissance. I became so interested
and involved in that topic that I did the best research and wrote the best
paper I think I'd ever turned out in my life.
Despite all the proven benefits,
testimonials, and shocking statistics, there is still so much discouragement in
this country regarding the arts, especially the performing arts, from the harsh
hierarchies in the halls of high school to the upper reaches of government.
This is the government that established the National Endowment for the Arts but
then in the early nineties denied funding to many influential and
ground-breaking performances artists such as Karen Finley. Her shows brought
about social consciousness of gender inequality and rape culture in the
performance art atmosphere of the nineties. The
Laramie Project shows audiences that problems such as discrimination, hate,
and ignorance are issues that are still embedded in our society as our fantastic
football friends showed us. Without artists such as Karen Finley and the
Tectonic Theatre Project we would lose invaluable social tools that inspire
thought and change for good, and we would lose our ability to point these
issues out to audiences.
We hear it all: we'll never get a
real job, our lives are always going to be difficult, we'll be waiting tables
for the rest of our lives, and so on and so on. The arts are completely
undervalued because we are taught that they don't matter. Arts classes are
"extra" and generally a waste of time, and anyone who enjoys and
appreciates the performing arts are considered stuffy or "gay," and
that's usually meant in the most derogatory way as possible. This is the time
to stand up just like my friend did in the cafeteria, like the Glee kids do when they support each
other in times of crisis, and like I do whenever I step out onto that stage and
perform. We need to pat our weaves, take our earrings out, and pull our tap
shoes off so we're ready to fight. Theatre kids are incredibly resilient even
in the face of all the crap we have to hear about how pointless our dreams are
because we know we're not going anywhere. There is this amazing drive artists
have towards their work, a passion that thrives deep under our skin, and most
of the time that art is the food that keeps us alive. As a basic survival
instinct we have a fiery need to fight for our art.
More than that, though, the arts
make our lives better. They enrich our culture, entertain us, make us think,
and stir up issues in society to create social change such as The Laramie Project which is so
controversial it has sparked protests and rallies. If we don't fight for the
arts, we would have no culture, and we would have no vehicle to continue the
progress of humanity. Plus, theatre's what I love. It's what I'm good at. It's
what makes me feel special, and I would be so sad without my showtunes to put
me to bed at night.
Peace out!
WORKS CITED
The
Laramie Project.
By Moises Kaufman and The Tectonic Theatre Project. Perf. Denver Center Theatre Company. The Ricketson
Theatre, Denver. Feb. 2000.
"Dream
On." Written by Brad Falchuk. Directed by Joss Whedon. Glee. Fox
Broadcasting Company. 18 May
2010.
What
Theatre Majors Learn.
10 Oct. 2011. Milkin Quarterly: Milkin University. 22 Feb. 2012
