Central faculty member Tom Six is working with Emma Jude Harris and Aneesha Srinivasan of Global Origins to develop ways of challenging racialized representations in the theatre and they’re looking for input from people of global majority heritage who work in the theatre.
They’re looking for input from people of global majority heritage who work in the theatre, who can support the project by completing this short survey.
We talked to Tom about this research.
What’s your research about?
My work explores the politics of cultural production and reception, particularly in theatre and other kinds of performance. My book Theatre Studios, for example, looks at the twentieth century phenomenon of the theatre studio, in which groups of theatre-makers trained and worked collectively to make experimental theatre, and analyses the social relations of these organisations, their politics, and how the material conditions in which their performances were made shaped the kinds of theatre they created.
What are you working on at the moment?
My current research focuses on racism and racialization in the British theatre of the last thirty years or so. I’m looking, again, at the ways in which cultural production is funded and organised, and the relations of power that can be seen to shape it. The focus of this project, though, is on culture as a part of the system of racial ordering that – as many scholars have argued – has defined Western modernity for at least four hundred years. I am therefore analysing the operations of institutional racism in the production and reception of theatre (as well as anti-racist campaigns to resist and overturn them), and the ways in which we can trace both shifting patterns of racialization and critiques of that process in theatre productions from the last thirty years.
How are you doing this research?
I’m reading a lot of policy documents and reports as well as plays and reviews, and I’m interviewing people who have been at the heart of anti-racist initiatives in the theatre since the early 1990s to try to get a more detailed understanding of this recent history. I’m also collaborating with people who work in the theatre today, so that collectively we can gain a better understanding of the ways in which race continues to shape theatre, and what kinds of changes to policies and practices could prove most effective in ending racism in the sector. The end goal is simple: to contribute to making theatre production a space of liberation for people who are racially minoritized, and also thereby for us all.
Can you give us some examples?
My colleague at Central Jessica Bowles and I are working with Rafia Hussain, who’s an independent producer, and Helen Jeffreys, who’s Executive Director and Joint CEO of Tara Theatre, on a project to improve training and career development opportunities for global majority theatre producers. We will be making our recommendations in a report at the end of the summer.
I’m also working with Emma Jude Harris and Aneesha Srinivasan, who are collectively known as Global Origins, on a project called Challenging Racialized Representations in British Theatre. Our aim is to produce recommendations for policies and practices in relation to race and its representation in theatres, which we’ll publish later this year. We’re interested, obviously, in how people are cast, but also what kinds of stories are made, who makes decisions about race and its representation and how those decisions are made, and we want to hear from as many theatre workers of global majority heritage as possible.
How did you come to be working with Global Origins?
I knew that Emma and Aneesha had created a network and platform for international, multicultural & diasporic artists and were doing really interesting events and hosting great conversations about the kinds of issues I was working on, so I got in touch and we chatted about how we could work together. This project came out of those conversations.
How can people participate in this research?
The simplest way would be to fill out this very short survey. Its aim is simply to help us to establish some headlines about the scale and significance of racialization and racism in the theatre. We will also be conducting short interviews to gain a more detailed understanding of the issues, and finally convening a focus group of people who work in the sector and have experience of antiracist organising, who we will talk to about our findings and who will work with us to set out recommendations for making change.
You can complete the Challenging Racialized Representations survey here. The survey will close on 31 May.