{"id":52252,"date":"2017-02-22T09:59:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=52252"},"modified":"2017-02-22T09:59:24","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:59:24","slug":"the-stories-behind-the-scenes-racism-and-sexism-in-chicago-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-stories-behind-the-scenes-racism-and-sexism-in-chicago-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"The stories behind the scenes: racism and sexism in Chicago theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ritu Prasad<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I flip through my old journals, where I first began experimenting with storytelling, none of my characters look like me. Even as I can hear myself in their voices, I can see my insecurities in their descriptions: blue eyes, the opposite of mine; blonde hair, the opposite of mine; pale skin that is nothing like mine.<\/p>\n

Growing up in suburban North Carolina meant that frequently, I was the only nonwhite person in the room. I was an anomaly, idealizing myself on paper by writing myself as white. It was only in high school that I recognized my own erasure and began fighting against the norms I had internalized.<\/p>\n

The 10 women of Collaboraction\u2019s newest production, \u2018Gender Breakdown,\u2019 tell tales of gender disparity in Chicago theater, but their stories resonate with anyone who has ever felt out of place in their own skin. If they had included every individual story, the show would be 91 million seconds long (that\u2019s nearly three years). As the lights dim, the actors implore: \u201cA theater is a place for seeing. See this.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For actor Priya Mohanty, being seen as more than a woman and an immigrant has been a challenge in and out of theater. Her onstage monologue answers the question why she doesn\u2019t play people like her: \u201cAs if I had a choice!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen sexism take different forms everywhere you go,\u201d Mohanty said. \u201cIn India, it tends to be very explicit\u2026but over here, it\u2019s more insidious. When I first came here, I had to ask, are you being sexist? Or are you just a jerk? Are you being racist? Am I overreacting? And that, in some ways, is more damaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the dangerous subtlety of sexism and racism in America, Mohanty has struggled against being cast as old women (she\u2019s only in her thirties) or overlooked because of her non-American accent. <\/p>\n

\u201cI went to this panel on diversity once,\u201d Mohanty said. \u201cAnd I got up and was like\u2026if you want to reflect Chicago as it is, or America as it is, or the world as it is, there are people like me who exist in this world \u2013 so why can\u2019t I ever be cast as the best friend or the roommate? And the response I got was \u2018Well, your accent takes us out of that world.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Gender Breakdown\u2019s creator Dani Bryant described the show\u2019s inception as a series of conversations and questions, arising from the \u201cthe fire\u201d of the artists themselves. After nine years in Chicago theater and over 20 devised pieces under her belt, Bryant said she believes storytelling can help reshape existing narratives and highlight the universality of people\u2019s experiences. <\/p>\n

\u201cYoung girls are forced to watch little boys be heroes and just expect to identify with it,\u201d Bryant said. \u201cGiving them a space to tell their own story onstage can really affect change in them\u2026We can reclaim our narratives and shift them into a way that is empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual for women in Chicago theater to wonder where and how they fit into a male-dominated scene. While Chicago\u2019s statistics are better than most cities, female-identified professionals make up only around 43 percent of local actors, according to recent studies<\/a> by both DePaul and American Theater. The numbers for playwrights and directors are even worse, at 25 percent and 36 percent, with only 4 to 5 percent being women of color.<\/p>\n

Aimy Tien began her monologue with a walk across the darkened stage. She told the audience how she edited herself out of her own works, how she let herself \u201cbe convinced stories about women like [her] wouldn\u2019t sell,\u201d and of the countless times she\u2019d been asked, \u2018What are you?\u2019 <\/p>\n

I found myself on the edge of my seat. Tien\u2019s truths are a reflection of mine. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing asked what are you is something people experience all the time,\u201d Tien said. \u201cThere are still consequences of having to grow up like that\u2026I look back on my own work and I\u2019m like, why is this character white? How much work did I not produce because I was so busy writing about white people when I was younger?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet for Tien, it wasn\u2019t just about finding roles about queer Asian women\u2014it was about telling her story as a woman in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time when I was younger I wasn’t even cast as a woman,\u201d Tien said, laughing. \u201cI\u2019d be cast as an animal or a man\u2026I was always like, if this character\u2019s gender is not significant, would it have really mattered if they turned my character into a woman? In most cases, not at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The entanglement of racism and sexism in America make them problematic to pin down and change. Art and its ability to make emotions feel tangible is sometimes the best place to start.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat art is responsible for, what art can do is change perceptions [and] create empathy,\u201d Tien said. \u201cWitnessing the existence of women and the existence of people of color, the existence of non-binary people is in itself an act of resistance\u2026For people in those communities, when we see ourselves in that way, it makes us feel that we are not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one moment, the show references a quote by Junot Diaz about representation: \u201cIf you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The women of Collaboraction are offering Chicago theatergoers a chance to see their own reflections. So go see. You might be surprised at what you find looking back.<\/p>\n

Gender Breakdown is playing through March 19 at The Vault at Collaboraction Studios in the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave. For tickets and more information, visit collaboraction.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Play finished, the actors of Gender Breakdown dance their way off stage.(Ritu Prasad\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ritu Prasad When I flip through my old journals, where I first began experimenting with storytelling, none of my characters look like me. Even as I can hear myself in their voices, I can see my insecurities in their descriptions: blue eyes, the opposite of mine; blonde hair, the opposite of mine; pale skin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":339,"featured_media":52254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3516],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2017"],"yoast_head":"\nThe stories behind the scenes: racism and sexism in Chicago theater - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-stories-behind-the-scenes-racism-and-sexism-in-chicago-theater\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The stories behind the scenes: racism and sexism in Chicago theater - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Ritu Prasad When I flip through my old journals, where I first began experimenting with storytelling, none of my characters look like me. 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