Feminist Curious: Nothing Spookier than White Supremacy

In this issue:

• Featured Feminist: Sayda Trujillo

interviewed by Rory Smith

• Queer Couples Halloween Costumes

by Rhiannon Lewis and Rory Smith

Featured Feminist: Sayda Trujillo

Interviewed by Rory Smith

Sayda Trujillo is an actor, theatre-maker, and educator specializing in voice and movement. I am fortunate to have Sayda this semester for Accents, and I wanted to sit down with her to talk about her philosophy on decolonizing theatrical education after doing more research into her background and previous work.

Rory: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me and do this. So we wanted to interview you because we read your article for HowlRound, “Liberating Terror.” And we were very intrigued and inspired by your perspective. So the first question that I want to ask you is what made you want to get into theater education?

Sayda: Thank you, first of all, for having me here and for reading that.

You know, I think as I look back at how I came into theater, it all kind of stems back to having had teachers. I met one of my, like my first acting teacher who then taught me in undergraduate school when I was 14. And, I was part of a youth program in Lincoln Heights at Plaza de la Raza. Looking back, I realized that experience modeled for me what theater could be like.

Here was a person who had a life as a theater maker, you know, like she was a teacher teaching at a university and bringing her students to work with us. And there was this sort of mentoring that was modeled for me. So that seemed to put theatre as an essential part of education. Because when you're 14 or 15 or 16, I feel that it wasn't the kind of program that was trying to be like, you're going to go and audition. It was a program that, when I think of the cohort, the people that did that program with me almost two decades ago, they're not all in theatre, but they're certainly all, most of them involved in art and arts education and community; and others have quite successful or traditional, um, you know, careers in art.

So for me, I feel that I never said, "I want to do that." It just sort of, it just happened as a result of the people that were teaching me, those people that were inspiring me and, and I never looked at teaching as a backup thing. Like a lot of people go through this phase where they don't know if they're gonna get that audition or they're, you know, "I have to have a backup."

I never wanted to have a backup thing. I knew very early on that I wanted to fill my day with work that I enjoyed doing that kept me connected to myself. And that there was no compartmentalization of like, "oh, I'm just going to wait tables," or "I'm going to make copies in an office," or "I'm going to do a marketing, you know, phone marketing jobs." Of course, I've had to do lots of jobs, but I've always tried to do jobs that I can learn from. And I can think, "I'm me in this job,” you know?

Yeah. And I think that as a student you can tell when a teacher is like, "I'm just doing this as a backup." Because they have a sense of like, not quite like resentment, but a little bit like that. I can tell, pretty much, with all my teachers, that they want to be here and they want to be, teaching.

I want to know, how do you define the decolonization of theater pedagogy?

It's a definition that is very much alive and is much, it's very much an inquiry. There are strong intuitions, and so I can tell you what I'm exploring. First of all, I'm always trying to push towards how does it manifest in the body, what shifts? So to undo or to shift or to change something that has been limited and oppressive in some, and actually in most circumstances, right.

If a place, a country or people, or mind has been colonized, those colonies haven't had a choice in the matter. And so for me, personally, it has meant going back to Guatemala where my family comes from and sitting with the fact that Guatemala is a colonized country. That even my first language is a colonized language. That even though I have a majority indigenous blood in me, I don't speak any of the 26 indigenous languages in Guatemala.

So what it means to me personally is it's a lot of sitting with a lot of "hurts." Some kind of pain, like the body wanting to hold that and see how it moves in the life that I have right now. So from there, moving on to a close examination of how I've become a theater person and putting together that all of my training is Western, Eurocentric training. And also noticing much like I speak about clowning. People have ideas about what clown is, (and) even though I experienced those experiences with certain teachers who couldn't see beyond what their definition of clown was, there was still in me a part of the clown that is just there and no one can take that away.

Similarly, I feel that with the colonized spaces that I inhabit, I'm myself; I'm still me. I'm actually taking space with what I have into it. So directly to decolonization in theater, I feel that I'm working with very specific points of white supremacy characteristics. The ones that I feel affect the physical, the actual relationships and environments of the theater that have to do with time. So the sense of urgency and production is something that I really try to change and in how I teach. And I may have a plan and I actually always want to have a plan when I teach. It helps me and I know it's going to help my students, but I'm not then going to just make sure we hit everything there.

If I see that something is asking, I'm going to take this space. Right. So, and that's a hard thing to balance within academic settings because sometimes, there are very rigid goals that must be accomplished and there's no room for interruption. So, that's one very graspable way that I feel I'm in this inquiry of decolonization, how I handle time and production. And even though in theatre specifically challenging the language that we use, because in theater, we use language that seems like we're okay. But in the end, I think we end up seeming like progressives and liberals that feel they're not racist because they protested in the sixties, you know what I mean? Um, it's just like this ridiculous way of like "cross that off, because I do this."

So in theatre, I feel that we have the language where we hear, "We really value process," but how that manifests, how that is practiced is not always there. That there's a sense of process only until "The show must go on at the expense of anything, of anyone." You know, I'm directing right now. I have a team that isn't necessarily–my sense is that they're not, this is not at the top or the front of their goals. And so I also have to realize, well, I have to go back to collaboration. Sometimes collaboration means collaborating with people that don't think or want the same things as you want.

So there's always this juggling that's going on as part of decolonization for me. What are the fixed notions in theater? We could question the progression that students go through, "They, they have to do Shakespeare at this, in this year. They have to do Chekhov, or they have to do Tennessee [Williams]. They have to do a period piece." There are these things that are fixed. And I love some of this work. I love Chekhov, he is one of my favorite authors, but I'd like to see how we can imagine this structure that's been comfortable for so many, but not for those of us who don't relate.

Yes, it's important to read and understand Shakespeare and redo it and re-imagine it, but it's not the bar. Like it's not the thing you have to do so that you pass on to be a third or a fourth-year or it's not the thing you get to do in your fourth year because you've achieved. Right. There are so many other texts of that caliber. So those are the things that I'm excited about, and people are so afraid. It's like, "No, but they have to learn." So it's an interesting time.

Can you tell me a little bit about your work with Clowns Without Borders?

Yes. The work with Clowns without Borders is volunteer work. They're an organization that runs on volunteers, and not until the last, maybe five years that they have had three paying positions. So there's the director who gets paid, which is good, and a couple of other administrative positions. And then I've been an artist volunteer. And then for the last four years, I've served on the board. So I've been a board member. I came to work with them in 2005. So it's been a good solid 15 years. What we do is go to places around the world that have suffered, that are living in dire circumstances because of a war. Because they're in a war zone where there's an actual war going on, civil war, or they have been displaced because of natural disasters.

And so the focus is children. The mission is that no child should be in the world without a smile, and that laughter is healing. And that, yes, when those things happen, we need shelter and we need food. But the thing that doesn't get looked at is this home, like the body. Because of all of those things, the trauma paralyzes our ability to move our breath, to move our voice, to move our body. And so the mission of Clowns without Borders is to do that through laughter. And so with clown being a physical form, it is wonderful because we can do it anywhere and not depend on language. Working with them shifted everything about theater. For me, it really meant, oh my God, you, weeks of rehearsal––talk about decolonizing, like shifting the perspective to when we're on tour with Clowns without Borders, we can arrive somewhere and not know where we're going to perform. Right? Like if the land is going to be flat, like if it's going to be inside, outside, and so there's a sense that at any minute they can say, "okay, you're going to start in 30 minutes." Okay. And you'll have your stuff, you have your suitcase, you maybe, put your nose on, you're going to do something.

It really breaks this sense of what we do in the theater is special. It's so special there because it's beyond what we've rehearsed or the commodities that come with having a theater and designers and all of that. It just goes straight to the heart. So it's connection and relationship. All those things we talk about in the theater. That's that work.

I started as an artist volunteer. And then I became a trusted member of Clowns without Borders, where I started to lead some of my own projects and I led a few trips to Palestine. I became kind of the lead person for the South and Central American connection. So we would travel to Guatemala and El Salvador. I've traveled to Colombia, Ecuador with Clowns without Borders and as a board member. I really talked about "How do we shift?" How do we not fall under this "humanitarian" stuff? Like we're "helping" those who have less. This notion I think is a tricky line too with those of us who are theater artists and also do education and do community work. To have those lines very clear that we have nothing for (ourselves).

It's really important that I don't have anything to teach a community or empower is a word that's used a lot. When I go to those communities, they teach me more. I have games and I have some proposals, but really they're the ones that are dealing with like real stuff that we only get to imagine in the theater, you know?

Definitely. It reminds me because I'm taking a class right now on globalization and feminism and, um, the professor is great. She has multiple PhDs and she's from India. And we talk a lot about, you know, these savior narratives and how people will want to go on these humanitarian missions or donate because it makes them feel good. It makes you feel like you're helping these poor little children and like a far away place, but that's actually very self-serving and dehumanizing to them. Because you're coming from a place having more resources, but that doesn't mean that you have something to teach them necessarily, or that you can save them what they're going through, so thank you for that.

Are there any theater educational spaces that you've taught in that you think are actually doing the work that needs to be done to decolonize actor training and theatre education?

Mm. Since this kind of erupted, let's say, for me what happened? I mean, so many have been going through so many changes, but I think something happened, um, about a year and a half ago, right after George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and people speaking. And since then I've been teaching. How I choose where I teach has of course has been a combination of “I need work,” but also only teaching in the places where I feel I'm going to get to do what I want to do here. And also being very open in the interview where I say, look, this is the thing I'm challenging. I haven't come across a place yet, like a university setting that is really doing the work.

I think places are trying, but because the majority of the people that have power in these places are white, I think they're juggling something that's very hard. I mean, I try to imagine what it might be to have the comfort of good pay. You have tenure. You're able to have a house, provide for your family. You have everything that those of us don't have. What we actually get paid is not something you can live on. So there's a lot of fear, I think. There's a sense that the people that are in power for me in these institutions, not just the ones I teach, but others that I have access to, of, "I want this change, but I don't want to lose my power. I want to define what diversity and equity look like." I feel we're in that time.

I'm a faculty member at the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA). Um, yes, that's right. But MICHA, for example, has engaged in monthly, like, hard questions now. Not all the faculty go to that. Right? The majority of MICHA is a very white space and I happen to really trust and love the director of MICHA, the artistic director. And so, because that relationship that goes beyond the professional, I've invested in really voicing what I see is problematic.

And I feel like they listen now? And I can see clearly that sometimes it's not because there aren't good people in positions of power. It's because in the community, we all carry what we carry. We all come from where we come from and we're going to want certain things, so I think it's hard to tell sometimes, but this for me is like the best example I can give you. It's like, there has been a consistency of inquiry of actually being willing to have uncomfortable conversations. I mean, people come, but nothing, I haven't witnessed anything like that in academic settings and advocate in academic settings, the money is going to hiring somebody that can come and give a workshop.

And faculty think if they took that workshop there, they can click that box. And so there isn't integration. I feel that one of the characteristics of white supremacy is to compartmentalize and get things done. You identify a problem. We have to fix it. Well, this is not about fixing. This is about reconciliation. It's about really taking accountability, taking risks, being vulnerable, having humility. These are words that are not part of white supremacy because white supremacy is about power and money and holding on to power and money.

And then in that same vein, what changes do you think need to be made in both education spaces, the academic space, and theatre spaces that large?

So one thing, there are so many ways of going at this, right? For me, uh, these two things I think are really important that cut across are the sense of time, our relationship to time and expectation of production, like how we reward this kind of reward system. To me, those things have to be eliminated or fully investigated so that we see what else is possible. That we take a few steps back and just be willing to look at the structure. There are structures that cut across all of these. There's like a sense of this structure being powerful, and it tells everybody what their place is.

And I think if we take three steps back, whether you're a practitioner, an administrator or an academic mind, and actually are willing to look at that structure and say, "How can we change that?" Or at least start to change some things that we're going to honor across the board, because sometimes we say, "but we're going to process, oh, we're going to pay you more." But then you're still in an environment where somebody is operating the way they've always operated. And deadlines are deadlines.

So I feel I'm always going towards this place of integration. How can we not create this top-down structure? I'm more like relationships first, you know? It's so confusing, but that's where I am. I feel like we're not in a place where I can just start making wish lists because I just feel tired.

Sources:

https://howlround.com/liberating-terror