Who Are We Really Training?
Firstly, I’d like to make it clear that I do not have the mandate to speak for anyone. Here, I talk and write only for myself. These are my opinions, some of you will agree, and some of you will even protest them.
Going around and visiting drama schools this year, I have noticed the increase of students of colour. I’m proud of these schools who have looked outward instead of inward and have gone about to be more reflective of our society. While I write this, I start to think that maybe we have reached the glass ceiling moment, perhaps we’ve done it, and I begin to imagine what this feeling of accomplishment and relief would feel like and then reality hits. We haven’t done it. We are nowhere close to where we should be.
Yes, students of colour are visible but we are still invisible in the curriculum and faculty. We are still hugely absent. We are still training students of colour as if they are white. Students in their 2nd and 3rd year still do not know how to do authentic accents which are not Received Pronunciation, Scottish, Irish, Yorkshire, Mancunian and anything that is white British. Students still do not know the history of African and Asian dance. We put an emphasis on Shakspeare yet students still do not know who Kālidāsa was. So then my question has to be, who are we really training?
Hmm. You are all silent. Your lips are tight, and some of you will even start to debate me and talk about that one Black event you did last year or that partnership you have with that project. Congrats to you. Pat yourself on the back. But I make a valid point here; white students are still thriving and getting their money’s worth while students of colour have to fight purely for their existence in the curriculum and faculty.
Why should that be? It is not that we are not here, we are here. It is not that we do not have stories to tell, we do. My ancestors have been writing plays longer than Terence Rattigan, but the curriculum will make you think that old, dead, white men were the only people who were given a pen and paper. And they will make you believe that old, middle-class white men are the only people who know how to teach. Some will even make you think that we can not be anything other than thugs, gangsters, prostitutes, drug dealers, cleaners, terrorists, maids etc. Enough. I am tired, and so are the students I speak to who knock on your doors to remind you that they are present in your buildings.
I am forever being asked whether or not I believe things have changed and to be honest, I think we are in the process of change and I believe that if we really want change we must think of it beyond the surface.
In one of his famous speeches, Malcolm X (yes, I’m going there) said “Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate.” and I’d use that same quote for this argument… just being a student does not cut it anymore, we must be eating. We must be eating. We must be eating. We must be eating.
