If you’ve read the last 2 posts, Bad Behavior in Theatre Communities and What’s the Point of Art?, read on! If not, scroll down and read those.
Ok. So these posts were in response to some specific events in my theatre community. But in conversations with folks around these events, and my responses, I’ve realized it’s not all they have in common. They may be in response to something, but both posts are actually about accountability.
If you’ve been in a workshop with me, particularly one I’ve done with Geri Brown and the Dance Education Equity Association, or read my thesis (I may reprint this section as a separate post) you know I have a particular view on accountability:
It is both communal and personal. The community can ask for it, but only individual who committed the harm can make it happen. I do not believe a community can “hold someone accountable”. You can only do that to and for yourself.
Accountability is not punishment. To use the title of a book I’m currently reading Conflict is Not Abuse.
The second part of this is that accountability has consequences: apology, repair, etc., but the goal of accountability is to restore community, not remove folks from it.
(I could go on for literal ages about how our carceral justice system, built on slavery, has conditioned all of us to believe that punishment, pain, cancellation, revenge, etc., is the only solution to harm. And that is some colonial, racist BS, and we can, and should do differently. But that’s another post. )
What is happening right now, as many theatre companies and theatre practitioners are attempting to “do better”: to select more diverse seasons, to cast more inclusively, to utilize Intimacy Directors and Cultural Competency Officers, to create Chains of Communication and/or Resolution Pathways for addressing harm, etc., is that those organizations and people are being asked to police the behavior of others.
And let us be very clear- policing is harm. It is not part of inclusion, antiracist, or unsettling work. I will not be policing folks. I will be asking folks to engage in accountability. But whether or not they do that, is up to them.
Also what is happening right now to the people and institutions that are doing better and doing “the work” of unsettling white supremacy in their organizations, is that they are being asked to do all of the work for everyone else, because we still have people and institutions who refuse to do better, or do anything at all to work towards better. For some reason, the folks willing to do the work and create change are being held to a standard of “perfection” ( which does not exist and is a characteristic of white supremacy culture….), while other folks are given a pass to continue to create harm. But, to borrow a slogan from Theatrical Intimacy Education, “better is better.”
None of us will ever be perfect. There will always be room for growth, improvement, change. And we should be in ongoing processes of accountability toward those things, especially when our attempts to do the work get it wrong. And we will. But asking some folks for perfection while others get to create harm without accountability is not equity. It’s not community. And we shouldn’t do it.