Recently, Kit Harrison. a White British actor appearing in Jeremy O Harris' play 'Slave Play' spoke out in support of Black Out nights in which audiences are reserved for Black and Brown people.
Black Out nights are ostensibly designed to make theatres, which are historically very White spaces, more inclusive. They also serve a deeper and somewhat more profound function, given the subject matter of the plays that have offered these nights. Whether it be Slave Play by Jeremy O Harris, Tambo and Bones by Dave Harris, or Daddy by Jeremy O Harris, the content deals with the particular historic and present-day experiences of social, cultural, and institutional racism experiences by Black and Brown people.
As such, the experience of witnessing and engaging with these plays must be profoundly different for Black and Brown people than for White people. To us, they are stories, sometimes shocking, but always stories, and ones we cannot fully comprehend. For Black and Brown people they likely convey a generational lived experience that transcends 'story' to become a visceral experience of history, both in the past and in the making.
To witness and experience such a play in an audience surrounded by White people must be difficult, to say the least - as a White man, I cannot begin to imagine how difficult. However, India Craig-Galvan, a Black woman playwright writing in the LA Times, described Slave Play as 'challenging to watch' but went on to say 'To experience the work sitting in a sea of whiteness is even more of a challenge' and in relation to Black Out nights said '...to remove the white gaze eliminates at least one hurdle in examining and experiencing the work.' To have a space in which to see these plays and then discuss in whatever way works the subject matter and the experience with other people with similar experiences can, as India Craig-Galvan indicates, provide a space for healing and a release from the ongoing experience of Whiteness.
This is, surely, a lesson that can be learned from and transported into the workplace. To provide spaces and regular opportunities for Black and Brown staff to meet and talk about their experiences of the workplace without any White people present not only speaks to a concern for staff well-being but also speaks to an awareness of and the taking responsibility for how White majority workplaces can be oppressive spaces from which Black and Brown people require some form of respite, albeit temporary and short-lived.
#inclusion #inclusiveleadership #DEI #EDI #Whiteness #racism #psychologicalsafety #staffwellbeing
