Budgeting, fundraising, and other money matters

So Crossroads is now at a . . . crossroads.

We've decided what we're going to do. We picked a place (or at least a price range). We have an idea of when (between mid-June and mid-July).

Now all we have to do is pay for space, actors, and props without coming out of our pockets. Given our needs, $1,000 is pretty much all we need (it's pretty generous, in fact). With $1,000, we can ask Fractured Atlas for fiscal sponsorship, so people can get tax breaks by giving us more money.

That means fundraising.

Waitwaitwait! I'm not asking you for money. I'm just brainstorming.

See, rather than trying a fundraising campaign that may or may not work based on ideas that may or may not be based in reality, I'm directly asking you, dear theatre blogosphere: 

What it would take for you to part with $1-$99?

You read that right. I'm accepting at most double-digit donations from individuals. More than that, without official non-profit status, just makes me antsy.

Really, what needs to happen to get you to help put this show on stage?

• You need tickets? You do realize I was going to set some of those aside for you anyway, right?
• Want your name on something? We can put it on the playbill.
• The good seats? C'mon. You'll more than likely be sitting on a folding chair. But if it means that much to you, we can put you in the front row.
• Early bird or latecomer specials? There's only one night - 4 hours of theatre - so there's only one chance to see it.
• Advertise your stuff at our show - but that almost goes without saying.

So, let's do it. What would it take for you to help make this happen?

Food for thought

On the heels of reading bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation, I came across this speech by Theresa Rebeck.

I have been told so many times over the years that theaters and foundations are interested in “diversity” but that doesn’t mean women.

At the time, I couldn't figure out why I winced when I read that. Then I remembered something I'd read in "The Oppositional Gaze" in Black Looks:

Feminist film theory rooted in an ahistorical psychoanalytic framework that privileges sexual difference actively suppresses recognition of race, reenacting and mirroring the erasure of black womanhood [. . . ] many feminist film critics continue to structure their discourse as though it speaks about "women" when in actuality it speaks only about white women.

To be fair, Rebeck herself outright states that she was not deliberately pushing a feminist agenda, so critiquing her comment along the lines of a theory she plainly says she isn't pursuing would be problematic to say the least. However, I do find her comment illuminating simply because of the things I've been addressing with intersectionality.

Native Star comments that:

I would throw into the discussion that as dismal as these stats are for ‘women’, what happens when we address the silence of women of color?

While we are often expected to root for team womanhood in unison, far too often the diversity of what it means to walk this planet as a woman is lost when all are expected to gather and worship beneath the great white tent.

I have no firmly held opinions on the matter, only my own observations from what life has taught me so far. Without turning this into a thesis project, the idea I'm considering is that the commonplace association of Blackness with masculinity and femininity with Whiteness almost guarantees the erasure of Black women from the mainstream theatrical landscape unless cultural gatekeepers actively resist that tendency through learning more intersectionality.

I'm not sure I can really investigate this more fully. To be honest, I hope someone else can see where it goes.

First a reading, then the world!

Great news! Anne&Me is getting a full reading at the Blackboard Play Reading Series. It's really awesome that I managed to get a reading due to all the changes that Blackboard Plays and The Cell are going through. I couldn't have asked for a better place to midwife my piece, although if they could get some ninjas that would be great.

Gendered narrative and shifting(?) paradigms

Over at Parabasis, Ben Owen gives a few "Notes on Closure and Quality." Isaac posted a comment that contained a statement that I wanted to explore in more depth and coming from a different direction. It suggests the core of what I've been thinking about lately about the personal being politically radical. I'm responding to it directly here not because I have a personal thing against him or what he's saying, but because it's the clearest way for me to align the content of his comment with the larger point I want to make. It sucks that I have to say this, but since this is the Internet, I should state this as plainly as I can.

This is engagement, not debate.

Isaac states that:

I'm not sure i totally understand the idea that a desire for closure is (a) gendered and (b) specifically masculine. I get that the traditional narrative structure makes a rather nice metaphor for the male experience of sexual pleasure (and vice versa) but I'm not sure I really get it beyond that, particularly since I don't see much evidence that female artists or audiences are more willing to go for non-closure narratives (I'm not including Soap Operas here simply because I think there's a difference between Finite Narratives that end without closure and Endless Narratives like Soaps-- which traditionally appeal to a female audience-- or mainstream comix franchises-- which traditionally appeal to a male one) . If anything, I see a lot of art that frustrates the desire for closure as being full of masculine posturing, i.e. "Are you MAN enough to deal with my lack of wrapping things up for you, or are you a wuss?!"

I recall reading on an anti-racist blog about someone describing a friend of theirs having a tough time of acclimating to university life, and that friend had talked about feeling as though as people were speaking in a secret code that allows them access to resources and opportunities. At the time, the narrator said that they didn't feel that was the case. The friend countered with the idea that perhaps the narrator spoke that code without realizing it.

It may be hard for you to fully understanding the distinction because, well, you're a cisgender man*, and your own style of communicating - at least in writing - is firmly within that masculine paradigm. In addition, from what I've seen, you engage most fully with a manner of communicating that also fits that style - even if you disagree with the content of what you're responding to. Not to mention, a lot of these ideas are very nuanced and can only be fully grasped through experience. As a result, it's not surprising that what you talk about as closure in general is actually a very specific type of closure**, one rooted in a paradigm dominated by men.

As I hinted at in "The Visibility of Whiteness," part of how dominance works - at least in cultural terms - is that it takes a subjective perspective and renders it neutral. It takes the visible and makes it invisible. So what you get is a very particular way of looking at things and making it simply "the way things are."

Is it really any wonder that you don't have the tools to recognize or analyze narratives that don't fit that model?

Of course, this naturally leads to a question I find incredibly interesting, if only for the fact that it increases possibilities instead of reduces them. That question being . . .

Where and how do you find these tools?

You might want to start with Helene Cixous (in the original French if you want to grasp the full richness of her ideas - which I cannot do yet). After getting a grounding in Cixous, I would suggest examining narratives that have traditionally been handed down by women. Namely, fairy tales. Try to focus on collections from the Italian, Germanic, and French traditions because those are closest to the original oral sources (aka women). I would avoid the ones created by Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson. If you can get your hands on it, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a must-read.

Outside of fairy tales, literature by Black women is a good place to go because that non-linear narrative is presented so clearly. Toni Morrison, naturally. Gayl Jones' Corregidora also. Octavia Butler's Kindred. Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuff. Toni Cade Bambara.

Manga is a very interesting place to look as well. The entire shoujo-ai genre (not the same as yuri!) is heavily female-centric. Revolutionary Girl Utena (the series) is a great example of  feminine narrative. You might also want to check out Strawberry Panic and Maria-sama ga Miteru. The Inuyasha manga is also a good source to explore.

Why do I focus on literature as opposed to other media? In collaborative arts like film and theatre, it's hard to get a sense of who's driving the process. I also majored in English at an HBCU, which meant that most of my teachers (and most of the works I studied) were by and about Black women. As a result, I can list things off the top of my head that most people have to dig around to find. Ditto my thing for anime.

* You sort of brushed this off as tangential when you probably should make it central. When you say, "I don't see much evidence that female artists or audiences are more willing to go for non-closure narratives," why do you think you don't see it?

** A circle has closure, but that shape carries clearly feminine connotations. So what do people really mean when they say "closure"?

Interesting reading to do

I came across a preview for Derald Wing Sue's Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Perhaps having copies of this on hand for those . . . "educational" moments would help my blood pressure a bit. Although all three categories are things I deal with on a daily basis, I wonder what if it addresses intersectionality (even obliquely) like . . .

Sheri Parks' Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture. I hear you groaning now. "More of that Black woman stuff?" Yes, but think of it as research before you go creating Yet Another Black Best Friend.