Systems, Equity, and Change

I've been thinking about systems a lot recently.

For much of the semester, as tenure looms and I navigate that particular system (within the larger systems of institutional and American academia), a lot of my brain has been taken up with those particular systems.

But I also think about a personal testimony I heard a decade ago about the impact of 'divide and conquer' colonialism from a Cypriot man; when you can distract a people or population with internecine conflict by creating factions that fight each other, no one is left to fight you. The system doesn't suffer, the people do. It's a lesson I learned from history books, but the pain of a man who saw centuries-old blended communities of Turkish and Greek citizens, neighbors, and friends torn apart by colonial policy was a different kind of lesson. In my mind, I associated such tactics strongly with colonialism and post-Civil War America (that includes right now); I hadn't associated the same tactics (or at least the same effects) with things like play submission processes (thank you, Jackie Goldfinger) or syllabi until recently. Stick with me, I've got a story that I hope makes this clear in a second.

In my teaching, I've been thinking about one of my courses (a year-long Dramaturgy/Theatre History/Dramatic Lit hybrid), and its role in the system that is our degree program. I've thought about logistical challenges (three courses in one, increasing enrollments) and how they might be eased. I've thought about what services it offers the department (foundational knowledge expanded on in the second year, practical dramaturgy skills, induction into program-specific language and modes of play analysis), and how we could make some top-down changes to improve its capacity to do that.

As I try to serve many goals (personal, pedagogical, and programmatic) with the course, a certain amount of ruthlessness about what does and doesn't make it in is necessary. I aim to make that ruthlessness transparent to my students, reminding them that any canon, any textbook or anthology, any syllabus, is a product of the inertia of 'how it's always been' and the biases of the person who created it (what they think 'good' or 'essential' art is, me included).

This year, I left a TBD week (originally two and one got sacrificed earlier in the semester) in the syllabus so we could decide together on a missing voice from their work this year and pitch ways of filling it. I got a list of about 15 distinct 'missing voices.' It could have been longer. We narrowed this list down and pitched plays that, ideally, served more than one missing voice. When it came time to pick one, however, I also saw students facing down a potentially crushing workload as they try to wrap up a long and difficult semester. So I gave them the option of not adding anything to the syllabus. That's what they chose, and honestly, it was the right decision.

But here's the thing: it's what's happened every. single. year. The thing I plan for the final week always gets cut. And if the thing I plan for is meant to further diversify their experience, then it's that opportunity that gets lost. And it always will so long as diversity and inclusion is a predominately spring semester (1870-present) imperative. Sure, I've added women and POC to the pre-1870 syllabus. I've got gender parity in the Spring, but looking back at my last two syllabi, only a third of playwrights are POC, only a handful are queer.

The course itself is a system. A system I create and perpetuate, and while it keeps looking like 'the way it's always been' and I keep treating only the last third to half of it as my opportunity to change and challenge the canon of white, cis, hetero, Euro-centric material, I'm never going to get beyond this point. And we're always going to sacrifice another voice to the practicalities of the other systems to which we belong.

So, basically:

I've been thinking about more radical changes to this course for ages and--with this big push of writing that will, hopefully, be behind me by July--it's time (more than time) to start implementing them. Because as much as I might talk about the above with my students, and as much as I might create a laundry list of suggestions about policy changes, the fact is that course is ultimately mine.

So here are the thoughts I have so far about changes. I value any and all input, criticism, suggested readings, plays, sample syllabi, personal experiences, tips, etc. etc.

1) Pair old and new plays from the very beginning.

Find thematic or stylistic resonances and start the conversation about why theatre history matters, and how we use it today, from the start. Ex: pair a Greek play with Suzan Lori-Parks' Father Comes Home from the Wars or Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice. Pair Seneca with Sarah Kane, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Everybody with Everyman.

2) Use modern plays to fill gaps in our historical understanding.

There are a lot of smart playwrights who write plays about history, who find and champion missing voices from the past and give them to us, often to tell us something true about our time.

3) Rethink and retool what has seemed non-negotiable.

Does the final project need to happen all in the spring semester? Could it start in the fall? Do they need to learn (and how quickly) the play response format we expect the course to teach them? There are others, but I'll stop here since it's probably opaque without explanation and a bit boring if I do too much.

4) Look at the course in context.

Mine is not the only course they take. What do they get elsewhere that alters how I teach and what my priorities are? I've been doing this to some degree since I arrived , but I think a conscientious and comprehensive dive is timely.

I won't get down to this work until the summer, probably, and it'll be a multi-year process; but it's been so much on my mind that I had to put it down here before I could focus on finishing the semester.