Revolutionary Spaces: Julia Kristeva, Gwendolyn Brooks, and a Post-Pandemic Path Ahead in Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline

LIKE MOST AMERICAN institutions, the American theatre once again faces a reckoning with its racist roots and present practices. #weseeyouWAT and the resulting fallout from the summer 2020 racial justice protests spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement have inspired new introspection and scrutiny of both institutional practice and of whitewashed and half-hearted institutional goals, tokenism regarding play and season selections, and the narrow set of voices whose work and leadership are deemed worthy of representation in American theatre.1 The stories told on American stages at the regional and national level are not reflective of the diverse voices and bodies who comprise the space of the nation, and too often the stories that are told about or involving bodies and voices of color represent those individuals or families in an unrealistic and monolithic fashion, denying the multiplicity of experiences, choices, and relationships of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. To highlight this point, I urge readers to study American Theatre magazine’s list of the most-produced playwrights2 or the annual survey of who designs and directs in LORT theatres.3 Even a cursory examination of these lists reveals the extreme imbalance between white artists and artists of color regarding production and leadership opportunities across the nation. Furthermore, a quick perusal of the stories that were told on Broadway in the years prior to the pandemic closure reveals the disparity in marquee lights.4