okay but if we're gonna talk about this, here's a little thread on personal experiences/experiences of friends/former classmates with racism in the blair theatre department, particularly k*ll* *'c*nn*r who is in charge: https://twitter.com/YouKnowAkosua/status/1276945392362553346

we did a "bollywood" version of a midsummer night's dream where it was set sometime during british colonization of india the "royal" characters were represented by the british and the "lowly" characters were represented as the indians

for the music we played in the background of the show, k*ll* *'c*nn*r just took some random songs from a random bollywood she was obsessed with at the time that had no real significance to midsummer

she also found an indian student to be the show's "cultural consultant" (which is something she did anytime blair did a show relating to a culture she is not a part of) who knew traditional indian dances, had her choreograph dances for us, then changed the dances

according to her, the dances the choreographer came up with were just not pretty enough or something to dance in front of the audience and didn't tie into her image of what traditional indian dancing was, so she rewrote all our dance sequences

the outfits that we wore were just "indian-looking" outfits she'd thrifted and dressed white students in them + allowed white students to apply henna as part of their costumes. she also used those same costumes for kismet, which is set in the middle east and NOT in india.

students of colour were likely to be cast in the ensemble, and those who were leads of the show were often used as the "tokens" to ensure that all our shows were "diverse"

one of my best friends is a black woman and did shows as well and was always typecast in damsel in distress roles over and over, even if she persistently asked to be cast differently because she wanted to expand her repertoire, and was told it was just cause she looked the part

countless of black female students have talked about how they were almost ALWAYS cast as just men in shows

( @Misspsquared and @_birish_, i'm @/ing y'all specifically cause you KNOW we'd have this convo so many times )

students of colour, including myself, continually asked to do shows where our talents could be better showcased and to do more diverse, and modern shows, but our ideas were always scrapped and overlooked to do "shakespeare but with a culturally appropriate twist!" a hundred times

doing shows during february was hell because the spring musical overlapped with sankofa and a lot of us were involved in both shows, and it was made clear by k*ll* *'c*nn*r that the musical was more important and we'd get in trouble for prioritizing sankofa

(even if sankofa rehearsals and shows LITERALLY came first and started before the spring musical, AND it was february!!! it was literally black history month and apparently if we went to sankofa rehearsals instead, our roles would be in jeopardy)

k*ll* *'c*nn*r would ALSO basically be hunting down male students in sankofa, but particularly and specifically male students of colour and would try to "convince" them (and by convince, i mean bully) into taking part of the musical to make it seem like the shows were diverse

k*ll* *'c*nn*r ALSO has compared either being a poc or being jewish to being irish catholic (which she is) when students would express discomfort towards cultural appropriation
(as someone who knew k*lly very well, she never brought up being irish catholic UNLESS for this reason)

AND if we're gonna bring up antisemitism in the blair theatre department too, damn do i have stories about that too from my jewish ex-gf who was the "cultural consultant" when we did fiddler on the roof

first off, fiddler is literally a musical ABOUT jewish traditions + cultures, and most of us in the cast were gentile. there was barely any education on actual jewish culture throughout, and if there was, it was coming from a white, gentile woman with no grasp/respect of judaism

there were two "cultural consultants" for fiddler, one of whom was my ex gf, and she and the other student CONSTANTLY fought to fix the direction of the show to make it culturally accurate and appropriate but were almost always shut down for the sake of "aesthetic + beauty"

there was an instance that almost caused the other student, who was a lead, to quit bc she had a fight with k*ll* *'c*nn*r because the student insisted that traditional jewish attire meant wearing muted colours and k*ll* thought that would be much too ugly for the show

k*ll*'s EXACT words in response to the student calling her out for being antisemitic was, "i JUST want some colour in the show, is THAT so culturally appropriative?"

anyway, this has been a whole ass thread, i honestly have tons more stories and experiences, but i've been digging up a lot of old trauma in regards to blair the past couple of days and it's just emotionally a lot (also i don't remember some things because i repressed shit lol)

i know lots of my old high school mutuals have just as many stories too, so feel free to add on your own experiences/add onto specific things i've already mentioned on this thread, i know we ALL have shit to say about how problematic blair theatre is