Whitegirl

Another piece of what Matt and I talked about: white people writing people of color characters and the inevitability of getting it wrong. (Yeah. Clearly that's my version of it.) So far, despite its origins in a phrase popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and first coined by an abolitionist preacher in an anti-slavery sermon, Living (it's not a working title if ya don't use it) references and seeks to learn from African American experiences of diaspora and freedom-seeking, but doesn't have any black characters. (Of course, directors can cast however they want; I mean characters written to be of necessity black.)

And despite the wrestling with questions of diaspora, homeland, Palestine and Israel, there are as of yet no necessarily Arab or Muslim characters either. The agent, the one character I thought was going to be from the Middle East, has turned out not to be; he already had two or three identities, and I was putting too much on him. Plus, the agent is essentially alternately a helper or a a villain, and that wasn't a duality that I wanted to saddle a major character of color with.

I spent today writing a scene that features a character named Sadako, a young girl who survived the bombing of Hiroshima only to die ten years later of leukemia. (Based on a real person, Sadako Sasaki.) She, like Einstein, is a ghost. Matt made a good point that's it's likely no coincidence that the only person of color I'm writing is more remote from me---in time and in terms of personal experience, how implicated I personally am in the questions of justice that arise from our shared histories. If it's even possible to say this, a choice that is less charged.

I'm just acknowledging that and noticing it, not feeling bad about it. (Note to self: Remember: At present the completion is in the future.) If it's the safer choice, it's at least made it possible for me to expand who's on the stage/embodied in the text right now. And I guess I'm trusting to metaphor/poetry/jazz to make the unwritten legible/felt/known, through resonance.

I'm pleased with the work I did today. I am also, on the sidelines of my mind, aware that she's awfully mystical and helpful to the central, white character. (My main concern with Belize/The Travel Agent in Kushner's Angels, doublecast as a nurse who was the former lover and current best friend of a white character with AIDS, and a magical travel agent who helped the white wife of a closetcase escape her overwhelming life. His whole onstage life, as the only major character of color, was in relation to white people.)

Of course, Einstein is pretty mystical and helpful, too. They're ghosts. And Living is, at heart, a really personal exploration of my own shit. So it's all, more or less, in relation to the character of the Performer. I guess I'm working for less. And to use the Performer to put my own shit in relation to more.

I know that what I need to do right now is write it. And then go back and check myself on the Orientalism.