Everyday now I think about Bl3ss saying Theatre niggas are the weakest link

What this is about, to me, is musical theatre and The Chorus which mines Black talent, sanitizes it and socializes it to fit in for literal white people to consume. Even “Black” shows.

I remember while workshopping “Superfly The Musical” (SUPERFLY!) Bill T Jones saying out loud that we have to make this show make sense to “40-something white moms from Jersey”. How profane.

But theatre’s chorus requires a false sense of community & camaraderie while exploiting/limiting Black folk economically. You HAVE to fit in, be liked or else you do not work. You get fired. Or not rehired. And your job is to perform for white folk & the people who love them

You spend an unhealthy amount of time with relative (antagonistic, white-oriented) strangers for survival and all based on a passion which in some way also convinces you of the potential of prosperity and cannot shake the table or else you can’t eat. It’s a death trap

The people who thrive here HAVE to be the feds. They HAVE to be the enemy. They literally have to! Even more than other entertainment fields tbh...

It sounds terrible but, for this reason, I actually hope NY theatre does not recover and is instead forced to contend with the potential of a new reality for the art form