Dear White American Theater: Open letter says racism mutes POC plays, musicals

'Soft Power' by David Henry Hwang is one of the few Broadway productions with a largely Asian cast.

ASAM NEWS

In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, America takes a good hard look at itself in addressing systemic racism in institutions, the glare of the spotlight has turned to the theater industry.

Hundreds of theater industry workers published an open letter Monday condemning racism in the theater industry. Among the signers are dozens of AAPI artists including Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Conrad Ricamora (How to Get Away With Murder, Soft Power) and playwright David Henry Hwang (Soft Power).

The letter comes as protests condemning the killing and mistreatment of Black people continue around the world heightening racial inequities throughout US society, including Broadway.

The open letter was addressed to “White American Theater,” according to TIME Magazine. It called out the theater industry for systemic racism and demanded that changes be made.

“We have watched you exploit us, shame us, diminish us, and exclude us. We see you. We have always seen you,” the letter reads. “And now you will see us.

The letter slams the theater for its acts of racism, patriarchy and white privilege. It accuses theater executives of whitewashing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) stories to satisfy white audiences. It also discusses the theater’s history of tokenism, saying that the theater would promote BIPOC stories and work only when it was convenient for them.

“We have watched you amplify our voices when we are heralded by the press, but refuse to defend our aesthetic when we are not, allowing our livelihoods to be destroyed by a monolithic and racist culture,” the letter reads.

According to an annual study from the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) found that in the 2016-17 theatrical season, 86.8 percent of shows were written by white playwrights. Around 66.8 percent of roles were held by White performers.

The AAPAC study found that 7.3 percent of roles were held by Asian American performers and 1.5 percent of shows were written by Asian American playwrights.

The letter also specifically called out anti-blackness in theater.

“We have watched you promote anti-Blackness again and again. We see you,” the letter reads.

There is also a website called “We See You White American Theater” which details how the letter began as a small private discussion and evolved into a much larger one. The website has a link to a petition that demands change for BIPOC theatremakers.

“This ends TODAY,” the letter concludes.

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

1968 -- when Asian Americans discovered each other and a movement took hold

1968 WAS A HELLUVA YEAR! Fifty years later, the calamitous events of that landmark year continue to impact today's Asian Americans.

A half-century allows us to view that year with more perspective, minus the passion experienced by those of us who cheered, fought, rallied and cried through those 365 days.

Recent specials recalling that landmark year by CNN do a good job covering that year but it left out the chapter on Asian America and the AAPI communities.

It was  the year that marked the shedding of the quiet and separate communities of what used to be called "Orientals" -- primarily Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos -- scattered throughout the country. It was the year that gave birth of Asian-Americans (with the hyphen), a term that united the disparate communities under a common banner and combined gave it a new-found leverage in political circles and a voice that could not be ignored.

it's become popular to blame Baby Boomers for the state of our country today: Everything from our degraded environment, growing traffic jams and distrust in government to the redefining of the American Dream and the election of the Donald Trump.

But we need to take a new look at what came out of that year and the many simultaneous revolutions that were nurtured or was born in that mixture of radical free-thinking and questioning of the status quo. 

It was my first full year at UC-Berkeley in the College of Environmental Design to fulfill a lifetime dream of becoming an architect. Little did I know of the twists and turns that was in my future that would steer me down a different path. 

I also didn't know that Cal -- along with San Francisco State and other college campuses -- would play important roles for Asian/Americans that year. 1968 marked the beginning of a decade of social consciousness, self discovery and political reckoning for Asian Americans.

1968 did not occur in a vacuum. Earlier in that decade, the Civil Rights Movement, the student-led Free Speech Movement, the Filipino-instigated UFW grape strike and the fledgling movement against the Vietnam War provided a bubbling cauldron of social unrest and dissatisfaction with the status quo. 

Asian America was born
Activist and historian Yuji Ichioka coined the term “Asian American” to serve as what sociologist Dina Okamoto now calls a “rallying cry to build this broad, collective identity around.” The Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos saw what was growing in the African American and Latino communities and felt left out of the battles for civil rights. Calling yourself Asian American meant self-identifying a people that rejected the derogatory “Oriental” label. It meant discovering a sense of kinship in a population that remained quite small until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act loosened quotas set in place for non-European immigrants and further changed the AAPI communities, a revolution within a revolution that continues to this day.

Tet Offensive
The year started with the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government and politicians kept telling the American TV viewing audience that the U.S. military sees "The light at the end of the tunnel. Though militarily a failure, the Tet Offensive showed how wrong U.S. leaders were. The nd of the war was not near, as the U.S. military and the President Lyndon Johnson administration claimed. The boldness of the strategy and its implementation belied the belief that Americans would easily steamroll over Asians.

My Lai Massacre
The murder of Vietnamese villagers - men, women, children - by U.S. troops in March of 1968 was, for many Americans, the turning point in a war for the hearts and minds of the U.S. public. The military campaign in Vietnam became a moral issue and raised the question, "What is happening to our young American men?" Americans, used to being depicted as the good guys, begin questioning that image. The war and its atrocities fed the growing anti-war movement and placed Asia and (by extension) Asian Americans into the consciousness of Americans. The following month, President Johnson declared that he would not run for a second term.

Third World Liberation Front
Also in March, at San Francisco State, Asian American students joined with other students of color to form the Third World Liberation Front with the Black Students Union, the Mexican American Student Confederation, the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA), the Latin American Students Organization, and an American Indian student organization. They allied themselves with the the more militant Brown Berets and Black Panthers to form an historic partnership. The Asian American Political Alliance joined TWLF by summertime. A member of PACE was elected as the TWLF first chairperson. In an age before social media, chapters were quickly formed in other campuses including UC Berkeley, UCLA, San Jose State and throughout the U.S.

The assassinations of MLK and RFK

The assassinations of the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Robert Kennedy was like a one-two punch in the gut. It convinced the legions of their followers that "the system" didn't work. If change were to come, it would have to come from outside conventional means. Both men sought the end of the Vietnam morass. In the last few years of his life, MLK began preaching against the Vietnam War, bringing the lexicon and values of the Civil Rights Movement -- which up to then was considered a black-only movement -- to emerge within the Asian/American movement. Kennedy was supposed to be the man who would bring the troops home. He was supposed to be the standard bearer for a reform of the government institutions to accommodate the new, diverse America. With the death of these two leaders, hope for an orderly and peaceful change also died. 

Growing militancy
In May, the Asian American Political Alliance was formed at UC Berkeley. The AAPA S.F. chapter became active in the increasingly militant SFSU TWLF. The liberation front staged a sit-in at SF State President Summerskill's office. Resulted in opening of 412 admission slots for students of color applicants over the next two semesters, and the creation of at least 10 faculty positions for minority professors. Sit-ins also involved first major act of police violence against student demonstrators with clubbings, 10 injuries requiring hospitalization, and 26 arrests. Summerskill resigned a few months later and there was no fulfillment of earlier agreements. Student frustration leads to divergence from traditional protest channels.

Student movement goes international
In June 30, 1968 Berkeley mayor Wallace Johnson declares a state of emergency and a three day curfew in the city in response to violence in the wake of student demonstrations at Cal in support of Paris May Uprising of students and workers the previous month. Student uprisings in Columbia University, Great Britain, Manila, Tokyo and other cities gave the impression of real revolution and pundits shaking their heads and asking, "What the hell is going on?" This is when I got my first exposure to tear gas as the city, Alameda County and the state brought the full force of law enforcement to control the student demonstrators.

Olympic protest

That summer, two African American sprinters, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, were on the Olympic podium in Mexico (which had recently violently slammed down student demonstrators at the University of Mexico) and when the national anthem was played, they each raised a gloved fist to bring international attention and to show solidarity with the (what was considered the more radical) Black Power movement. The two students of San Jose State were the peers of thousands of college students of color who saw the sprinters' unconventional protest as a signal to take the so-called revolution off the campus and into streets and institutions of power.

The International Hotel
On October 28, 1968, the first eviction notice was served on 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants of the International Hotel in the Manilatown district of San Francisco. This marked the beginning of a nine-year long anti-eviction campaign against financial district redevelopment interests. Widespread student and community grass-roots support imprinted this event as a milestone in Asian American civil rights history. Students allied themselves with the manongs. An attack on the senior citizens' home was an attack on Asian American heritage. "Remember the I-Hotel" became a rallying cry for thousands of Asian American students for the following decade. The campaign culminated in 1974 with the deployment of over 300 riot police, mounted patrols, anti-sniper units and fire ladders in an early morning eviction raid. A 3,000-person human barricade that surrounded the three story brick structure was brutally cleared away by authorities before the elderly tenants were physically removed from the premises.

The International Hotel was located on the final block in a once thriving Filipino American enclave. Originally consisting of over ten square blocks and located near the edge of San Francisco Chinatown, Manilatown was considered home to many Filipino farmworkers, merchant marines and service workers. 

Student strikes

In November, "On strike! Shut it down!" became a famiiar cry as the student strike at San Francisco State began in which PACE played a leading role. The strike at San Francisco State College lasted five months, longer than any other academic student strike in American higher education history, and, miraculously, was less violent than any that were to come. The strike inspired sympathy strikes on various campuses in California. As the militant students linked up with the anti-war movement and civil rights movement, the feeling of a genuine revolution was in the air, much to the dismay of the status quo which unintentionally created a simmering backlash that was kept under wraps for decades but has finally emerged, full-throttle, under the Trump administration. The student strikes at SF State resulted in the nation's first College of Ethnic Studies and the first Filipino American Studies courses. Similar efforts results in ethnic studies becoming a legitimate course of study at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA and schools throughout the country.

Nixon elected
Partly as a backlash against 1968's turmoil most Americans wanted more stability, Richard Nixon was elected after sabotaging the peace talks in Paris, thus, allowing the Vietnam War to continue until 1974 at the cost of thousands of lives. It was the first election when the Dixiecrats, southern Democrats, showed their true racist colors and voted for Nixon. Nixon would go on with his dirty tricks leading to Watergate his eventual resignation in disgrace. America lost their trust in government. The Presidency hasn't been the same since.

* * *

With the luxury of time, it strikes me what seemed like social progress to many of us, was a threat to many more. What was happening on the campuses affected only a tiny fraction of America. One only had to drive a few miles to California's suburbs and into the Central Valley to discover that what many of us saw as necessary and progressive, was filling the people of the Heartland and South with fear and resentment. 

A generation gap developed between parents who came of age in the 1940s and ’50s and the more experimental views of 1960s youth. The gap was even more pronounced among first generation immigrant parents and their children who have become too "Americanized." Some saw long hair and bell bottoms as signs of anarchy while others saw explorations with drugs and sex as immoral. Critics often labeled student protesters as self-indulgent and inexperienced. 

And they represented the broader American citizenry who saw these uppity people of color as a threat to their established social and economic position on top of the heap.

It's important to remind ourselves that while Asian Americans were struggling with identity, social unrest was going on throughout American society. Besides the anti-war movement which had taken over the so-called hippie movement which culminated in the Summer of Love the year before, women were asserting themselves, environmentalists were organizing, African Americans were still being beaten in American cities, Chicanos were walking off of campuses. 

It also wasn't just the United States that was in tumult. Violent student riots in Japan, France, Great Britain and Germany roiled the status quo in those countries. And just to remind students how bad a backlash can be, Russia invaded Czecholslovakia to quash any dreams of creating a democracy.

With all this upheaval going on in the world, it is no wonder that the generation that fought WWII would feel that the world was falling apart. When the Beatles sang "Revolution," all that middle America heard was the word "revolution," and not the rest of the lyrics:

But when you talk about destruction; 

Don't you know that you can count me out

The lessons of 1968 are continually being  relearned -- in each wave of new immigrants who come to this land -- from South Asia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, South Korea or the People's Republic of China. Newcomers have no idea what it means to be Asian in this country. Every time a door is closed, a promotion denied, a person is attacked or belittled because of his or her looks or accent, every time a just cause is ignored -- that is happening to all of us. 

Today's Harvard discrimination case threatening affirmative action, the cultural phenomenon of #AsianAugust giving AAPI people representation and immigration trends that indicate more people coming from Asia may or may not auger a new Asian American Age as some pundits have proclaimed, but opinion columnist Ross Douthat may have hit on something when he wrote in the New York Times about the dawning of this era.

"So after the Trumpian moment passes, our ethno-political fights will be gradually reshaped by how Asians relate to American culture, how American politics relates to them, and how they (because 'Asian' contains multitudes) relate to one another."

In 1968, we had no idea that we would still be fighting the same causes, but today, our battle fields have  extended far beyond the east and west coasts and Hawaii, but in areas we don't usually associate with Asian America -- the Midwest and the Deep South. 

The struggles for equality, equity and recognition have gone beyond the college campuses and are now being fought in the courts, the halls of academe, the nation's newsrooms and corporate boardrooms, Congress, state legislatures and the city halls and school boards scattered across our country. 

Fifty years later, the so-called "revolution" as it turns out, was one of mind and spirit as well as political and cultural. Again, as the cultural icons of 1968, The Beatles, say -- it wasn't a revolution, but more of an evolution.

Don't you know it's gonna be 

 All right, all right, all right

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Diversity increases on Broadway but not for Asians

The cast of 'Hamilton' accounts for a lot of the increase in casting of minorities on Broadway.

THE LIGHTS of Broadway appear to be shining brighter for minority actors, singers and dancers but they dim when it comes to Asian/American performers.

Though the 2015-2016 season was touted as the season of diversity with the musical Hamilton leading the way, there were fewer Asian American artists hitting the stages of New York City, the live performance capital of the U.S, according to a report compiled by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) released its annual report, "Ethnic Representation on New York City Stages."

“It’s a very positive outlook for the industry,” said Pun Bandhu, a member of the AAPAC steering committee. “However, Latinos and Asians are very removed out of the diversity conversation still,” he told NBC News.

Diversity on New York's stages shows overall improvement with 35% of all roles going to actors of color and disabled actors, a new high, according to the report. 

Overall, Asian representation dropped 5 percentage points from the previous season, to only 4% according to the latest report. It was the steepest drop among all minority groups.

This drop came despite the short run of the George Takei-inspired musical Allegiance, which featured a predominantly Asian cast and marked the first time an Asian/American composer and lyricist, Jay Kuo, was produced on Broadway, according to the report.
"We hope this report will be used as a resource to track casting trends, point to inequities where they may exist and provide a measure of how much further we have to go. We are hopeful that these numbers hint at better days ahead and are grateful for your continued interest and commitment to these issues," said the AAPAC steering committee in its report.

Although the last four years has shown a trend of increased use of minority actors, as has been the case since the AAPAC began its annual reports, white actors continue to dominate the stages. Caucasians are the only ethnicity to over-represent compared to their respective population size in New York City. 

According to the 2010 Census, whites made up only 33% of New York City's population while 26% were made up of African/Americans. 26% Latino and 13% Asian/American.

The season of Broadway hits Hamilton and The Color Purple was the most diverse in the 10 years for which AAPAC has data. Representation of actors of color hit a new high of 35% of all roles, besting last year’s record of 30%. Non-traditional casting has largely remained unchanged over the last 10 years, but jumped significantly this past season. 

The news, however, is not as celebratory if you’re not a musical theatre actor. For the first time since AAPAC has been collecting data, the study was able to compare plays to musicals on Broadway to further analyze where opportunities exist and where they is room for improvement for minority actors. 

READ the full AAPAC report.

While Broadway musicals hired 43% minority actors this season, plays on Broadway hired only 16% with the vast majority, 14%, awarded to African/Americans) helped by productions such as Eclipsed, which also brought the rare instances of an African/American female director and an African/American female playwright to Broadway, The Gin Game and The Crucible. 

While Hamilton and On Your Feet brought more Latinx performers to Broadway audiences by making up 11% of all roles, that good news was offset by having no Latinxs at all in Broadway plays. Asians did not fare much better with only one Asian actor who was cast in an ensemble role.

The racial breakdown for Broadway 2015-2016 follows:

• Caucasian actors: 65% of all roles
• African/American actors: 23% of all roles
• Latinx actors: 7% of all roles
• Asian/American actors: 4% of all roles
• Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) actors: 0.83% of all roles
• American Indian actors: 0.08% of all roles
• Disabled actors: 0.67% of all roles

The 'Miss Saigon' production employs an almost all-Asian cast.

Thus far, the best season for Asian/Americans was 2014-15, which saw them landing 75 out of the total 642 roles on Broadway. Closer examination shows that it’s largely due to just one production: The King and I, which features lots of Asian/American performers, but centers around a white character. 

That was also the year that the critically acclaimed musical Here Comes Love, based on the rise and fall of the Philippines' Imelda Marcos, had an extended run off-Broadway. The short-lived musical version of Gigi, featuring Filipina/American Vanessa Hudgens in the title role premiered on Broadway.

The King and I  and the Allegiance productions have closed down but in its place was the revival of Miss Saigon, which features a largely Asian cast, including Tony-nominated Eva Noblezada, who portrays Kim, the lead role. Later this year, the musical Once On This Island will be brought back featuring Lea Salonga.

“We applaud our colleagues at AAPAC for compiling this report and continuing to hold all of us in the theatre community accountable as we strive to create a fairer and more inclusive industry,” said Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, in a statement. “Much more needs to be done and this report from AAPAC makes that very clear.”

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