“For some people, my show is a mirror.
In the summer of 2020, Broadway like the rest of America faced a racial and cultural reckoning.
With the footlights now illuminated once more, has there been any true transformation?
Patrick J. Adams and Jesse Williams in ‘Take Me Out’.Joan Marcus
The first Black woman to both direct and choreograph on Broadway in 67 years, Camille A.
Brown was recognized for her work onFor Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enufin both categories.
“We have to continue to challenge the system,” Brown tells EW.
Jaquel Spivey in ‘A Strange Loop’.Marc J. Franklin
“My question is, ‘And now what?’
How do we continue that conversation?
How do we get more people that have diverse and dimensional stories to speak?
Joan Marcus; Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images; Marc J. Franklin
How do we bring in more audiences, and more Black audiences?
We have Black theater nights.
How do we turn that into Black theater weeks, Black theater month, a whole season?”
There could be three amazing plays in three Broadway theaters and that could be incredible,” he reflects.
“You have to talk aboutwhat’son Broadway, not justwho’son Broadway.
It has to be about what we’re doing and how audiences receive that.
As a Black writer, I’m hungering for more conversations about the quality of our artistic output.
For me, it’s not enough to just say, ‘He’s here.’
I don’t care that I’m here.
“It’s really not a question for Black creatives,” he asserts.
We’re reared by seeing ourselves in other bodies.
Only in the white world is there a refusal to do that.”
“There is no one way to be a Black man or a woman,” he notes.
“We’re not a homogenous group.
We’re not monolithic.
There’s no more diversity within the Black storytelling world and Black experience than there is outside of it.
We’re on the right track.
We’re just going to have the dominant culture pick up some of the slack.”
That extends to not “othering” the work in criticism.
For some people, my show is a mirror.
And for other people, it’s a window.
That’s been very radicalizing to me, because we live in such a divisive world."
That’s the beauty of theater."
We’d say that deserves a standing ovation.
