BLOG 20 Treat it Like A Tragedy

“Do we feel sorry for Othello?”  the professor asks.  The obvious answer is yes.  That’s what makes this a tragedy. And of course, the most prominent characteristic to me that makes it a tragedy is that he fulfills his stereotype.  But I won’t say that.  I won’t say it because she won’t call on me. 

I’d spent the better part of my life being less than popular.  These past two years at this university were no different.  It doesn’t surprise me.  There are bonds formed between people in the same graduating class, a thick membrane around the group that I can try to tear but will never break through.  The most fascinating staple of being kept out was that I was instantly labeled a bitch.  To this day there is no specific situation to site.  At least not a real one.

While working on my first production here, I was sent out of the room, along with another student.  She was not happy and proceeded to curse in the hallway and mock everyone who was left in the room we had just been asked to leave.  A year later, someone said that they heard every word I said.  A perfect beginning.

“What makes you feel sorry for him?”  Very predictable answers ensue.  Because Iago is screwing him over.  Because Iago is pretending to be is friend and turning him mad right under his nose.  Because Desdemona is acting so weird what else would he think?  Because he knows that people don’t necessarily approve of his marriage.  In my head I say: Because he becomes the beast people were suspicious of him being.  The manipulation combined with the pressure and pre existing stereotypes set him up to be exactly what they all thought.  My hand starts to get cold from losing blood.  Oh well.

“There is a clear link to racism and incarceration.  We will focus on a smaller scope by studying this state and the west coast.”  Professor Hames Garcia dictates to a class 120 people but I heard every word as if we were in the room alone. Nicknamed the Lily White State, Oregon’s miscegenation laws weren’t banned until 1951.  Miles Davis was already in his Blue Period and different colors still couldn’t marry.  There were exclusion acts for Asians, Hawaiian, and Native Americans in this great state.  And today you can still see the ignorant flags of the confederacy on pick up trucks there.  I suppose no one has the heart to tell them that they weren’t even a state during the civil war. 

“Do we feel sorry for Richard?”  She asks.  Of course not.  “Why?”  Obvious.  Because he’s getting people killed.  Because he’s greedy for the throne.  Because he only cares about himself.  I read one of soliloquies and he reasons that because he looks like a monster he will play the part of a monster.  This acknowledgement to the stereotype is where the sympathy really drops for me.  Because now, he is taking advantage of his unfortunate looks in a way that empowers him at the expense of hurting others.  Another realization gone unshared.  But not for lack of trying.

“Just in case we seem to loosely connect racism with incarceration, we will look at statistics of arrests made in this state and we will follow these arrests all the way to prison or to court.”  The amount of Arrests for black people in Oregon is horrific.  There’s a huge gap between white and black and what’s more shocking is that black people don’t even make up 20% of the state.    However more than 40% of the black population in Oregon is incarcerated.  Recalling this information now I feel I am aiming low just so I don’t look like I’m being dramatic.

I sit down in the Dean’s office and I can’t figure out what’s going on.  I’m not being cast and I haven’t been able to help on a show.  I was the only student in the history of the department to interview and audition for both performance and technical production and got accepted for both.  I’m 6 months in and  I can’t even get a position to pull a curtain open.  I don’t understand.  “My understanding of you Amanda as a student is that the faculty views you in a way that you think you know everything.  Therefore they perceive you as unteachable.”  I didn’t know what to say.  I cried. She buffered the situation by claiming that she saw I obviously wanted to be a part of this department and that perhaps I was teachable.  I later tried to get into her class.  Twice.  No dice.

“What makes the Merchant of Venice a comedy?”  People get married.  The principle characters live happily ever after.  I am disgusted.  The crux of forming this comedy was based on the placement of a Jewish man in a world full of Christians.  Now that’s comedy.  That’s all the cliché movie scenes of putting a man in a room full of women or putting a white guy in a black club.  Yawn.  However, it doesn’t really start offending me until I see the title “The Jew of Venice”.  As the class progresses, I find that people are losing sympathy of Shylock when he openly admits, “I hate him for he is Christian.”  The slander on Antonio’s behalf is completely overlooked the moment Shylock says this.  And people furthermore overlook his forced conversion and the loss f his property, his money, all future profits, and his daughter.  What a laugh.  What baffles me is that the reason Shylcok is a Merchant in the first place is because Jews were not allowed to legally do certain business.  They were restricted to things as such as merchants.  And the only way to make a living was to charge interest, which was frowned upon by Christians.  But all we can do in this class is hear the greedy Jew scream “My daughter, my ducats!”

The day before opening night, I lost it.  I lost it all.  I had finally gained my opportunity.  After being an assistant for four productions and a few volunteer gigs over the summer, I finally accumulated enough experience to design not only my own show, but a main stage production.  A BIG show.  But somehow, as always, I sensed some underlying tension.  I couldn’t tell why. I had been calm and polite the entire time:  When I was given pages upon pages of notes.  When I was talked to like a child.  When my ideas were shot down without even trying them.  When I sensed I was being overshadowed.  I kept my cool.  In retrospect the word doormat comes to mind.  And it wasn’t productive. There was sense of entitlement every time I heard orders barked at me, and it was a given that I would reply calmly. So the games of words and authority began.  I was being asked questions and losing ground every time I answered them less than exactly what my superiors were thinking.  I was being given requests that turned out to be rhetorical questions. Finally, I spoke up.  “ Just tell me what the right answer is.”  It wasn’t too dramatic, but it was enough for people to stop talking to me. The award for biggest outburst during tech week went to the choreographer, who slammed her computer on the desk and stormed out after a disagreement based on lighting.  I started to get upset because I was proud of my progress that evening.  It was also no coincidence that once the “requesting” stopped that more got accomplished.  I was also blessed with two last minute helpers to carry out tasks.  In that two day period, I feared that people would credit the presence of others and not the silence to the success of the show.  One of my helpers was a fellow designer and admittedly, I was afraid that he would get more than his share of credit on the show.  The day before opening night, the fear was confirmed when someone asked one of my helpers for permission to make a lighting change.  He did the noble thing and pointed to me immediately. “Ask her, she’s the designer.”  But I was already crushed.  It was clear that I hadn’t gained anything.  All the patience and the calm.  The silent discouragement.  The visits to the Dean, the volunteer work, the experience.  Worth nothing.  It was clear that these people had set me up to fail.  And when I didn’t, someone else was given credit for it.  I couldn’t scream.  I couldn’t yell.  Because I would become the monster they all thought I was.  I calmly walked away, waited for my helper to see me, handed him my notes and walked off calmly.

  

“The worst part about the blatant discrimination in California real estate during this time period is that real estate agents were determining successful and failed communities based on who they would sell property to.  As a result, banks would relocate if the minority population grew too large.”    Colors moved in property value was lost.  Value was lost in enough property, banks would move.  Banks, would move, economy in the community deteriorated.  Poverty moves in, and violence and theft increases.  Pretty soon you have a run of the mill ghetto.  And if you’re the 94 year old white lady who saw the first black person move in 5 years ago, you feel so powerful in knowing that you called this town going down the drain. 

I returned back to the theater shortly after.  The Dean/ director was in tears.  The choreographer had a sour face but pretended to be sympathetic.  “We’re so sorry you don’t feel appreciated.  We just don’t know what to do.  You are so hard to read.  And we feel like we are stepping on eggshells for you.  And we don’t want to say the wrong things.”  I felt as if everything they said to me was the wrong thing.  I felt failed as a student.  And it’s hard to tell who is responsible for that.  I felt unteachable.  Again.  How could I have put myself in this position only to learn nothing?  I am tormented by the notion that I have struggled only to subconsciously block myself.  And to this day, I still don’t know who should take responsibility.

While I was out of the room my helpers reamed the faculty.  They explained my hard work and dedication.  They put the injustice on the table and held nothing back from the Dean and the former chair of the department.  There was a sudden disregard for who they were in the world of academia and were scolded as smaller human beings.  As children.  I wasn’t given details of what was said, but tears from the Dean couldn’t possibly have meant pleasant words.

After we premiered, a small piece of negativity came up to my helpers after the show and asked who was really responsible for the design.  My helper was straightforward and set the record straight.  He later told me about the encounter.  I’d had enough.  I approached her and just as I was about to tell her to mind her business and where she could take her peeving little questions, I stopped. I told her calmly that it was my design and that her negativity was not needed.  She would not be my Desdemona.  No one was going to feel sorry for her and no one was going to demonize me.  I could feel it starting, too.  The day before opening night I was ashamed of my part in this production, I was ashamed of all behavior on all parts throughout this experience and I was severely disheartened by what this experience was intended to be. I wanted to walk into the light booth rip the disk with my design on it and burn it in the street.  But I remembered this was a tragedy.  And cried.