We Mad? Oh, We Mad: POCs in the Acting World

Last night, something glorious made history. Let me show you.

Need it spelled out? That's cool, I got you. Little Black girls everywhere watched a Black woman—several, in fact—be a magical, beautiful queen. On live TV.

I loved The Wiz as a kid. I inherited it from my mom; she and her girlfriends loved it too. Of course, I loved The Wizard of Oz, because what little girl doesn't? (I assume.) But this was something special. This was for me. The Black stars that I knew from music, from TV, from my parents—they were all doing this age-old story. It meant that I could, too.

I didn't necessarily know I wanted to be an actor. In fact, I was kind of the opposite of a future actor, personality-wise. All I wanted to do, really, was sit in my room and read books. (Living the dream is real. I didn't think I would be broke when I grew up, but I'm still hiding in my house reading, so we good.)

But then I had that moment. I was standing center stage in a corset, where I'd been for about 6 hours for cue to cue, stripper heels totally destroying my feet, and the light hit. I opened my mouth and my ass-tired voice was like, "There's only now. There's only here. Give in to love, or live in fear."

That Beyoncé wig tho.
L to R: Michael Lorenzo, Kyle Boatwright
Photo credit: Kait Rankins, 2011, RENT, Exit 7 Theatre.

And I had this burst of energy. Suddenly, I knew what I needed to be doing with my life. I'm amazed that I had that moment. Do people have those sudden come-to-Jesus moments? I don't know, I've never thought that kind of thing was real, but either way, "NO DAY BUT TODAY" is permanently etched on my arm in ink to remind me to be true to that moment.

So, okay, so I had that sweet moment, that split second where I knew what my purpose was. And so here I am, five years later, having just watched some leaders of my community completely own this show that I watched as a kid—and I know they watched it back then too, just like that little girl with the Afro puffs. Just like me.

I went to the best liberal arts college in the country, and I have an interdisciplinary degree in music, theatre, and creative writing. I studied at Harvard with top professors from Moscow Art Theatre. I've paid my dues playing terrible parts and doing shit for free and letting the few Equity points I have expire, just like every other sad non-famous actor in the theater world.

So someone tell me why I work in a bookstore for minimum wage. Younger Kyle is thrilled to be alone, surrounded by books, but adult Kyle is broke and not pursuing her career.

I absolutely accept responsibility. I know I don't hustle enough. That's really the long and short of it.

Mostly.

The other teeny, tiny little aspect is that I am a Black woman. We all know by now that slightly obese Black bitches don't make bank, but it's not just about the basics of being overlooked as a minority.

The opportunities, both on stage and on screen, are shit. Hands down, they are shit. And we have people working hard every day to make less shit, for sure, but it's still a problem. A big one.

First things first: the Internet blew up last night because The Wiz is an all-Black cast (except for that one white dude in there who was WORKING). "How is that not racist?" is what people are essentially saying. (Check out this little gem on Queerty to see the actual idiocy.) Let me shut it down real quick.

THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE SHIT. The Wiz is not about excluding white folk. The Wiz is about creating opportunities where there are none. It is about every little girl with Afro puffs who wants to be Dorothy and about every little girl who is going to grow up to be strong, to do something, to exist in this world. It's not just about the art. It's about the example and the representation and the possibilities and the love.

Twitter be throwin' shade because ignorant folks don't know that I needed that. Mad about it.

So there's that, and then there's more. Obviously.

A few people I know around here want to do The Wiz. The show has been pitched a few times, but it gets turned down because leaders in our theater community are worried that we don't have enough POCs to fill out the cast. I could go either way on that. Some people think that new folks would come out if the opportunity were there. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't.

Then there's the one white guy that thinks we should do it with white people. Love him, but he wrong. This is how our conversation went.

Him: We should totally do The Wiz!
Me: With what Black folk? We goin' to Springfield?
Him: Psh, it doesn't have to be all Black anymore. We're past that. The country is past that.
Me: N**** don't you know that we ain't anywhere NEAR past that, because—oh wait right. Welp. Gotta go, love you, see you soon!

(I didn't actually use the N word at a white guy. This mess is complicated enough.)

Yes. Yes, we irate.

The point is, even with sympathizers and allies, the few opportunities that exist get taken. There's a new play going up about rape that was written for an all-Latino cast (with the exception of one random white character). Guess how many POCs were cast in it? One, and he ain't even Latino. Guess who he plays? The rapist. The drunk, angry, Black rapist. This was an opportunity created very pointedly for POCs, and yet that opportunity is now gone. It was an opportunity to explore a difficult topic for women, and it was cleverly engineered so as to not make race an issue. Now race is an issue, in the worst way. It's The Emperor Jones. It's even Training Day. It's the Black brute. It's yet another innocent blonde that we have to feel sorry for, because there's not even a question anymore: the Black guy done did it. And it's typical.

And let's not even mention the Kent State University production of The Mountaintop, a play about Martin Luther King...in which some fool cast a white man to play one of the most effective seekers of justice of all time. Okay, I mentioned it. At a college? A college? This is infuriating for all of the above reasons, and now we're passing this behavior deemed as acceptable on to our students—passing it right on to the future.

So here I am in my bookstore. This is not about playing the victim. This is fact. That show will go up, and no one will say anything, because the audience will be so blissfully ignorant that they don't even know that it's wrong. Idiots on Twitter will be outraged because there's no white version of The Wiz. (Literally, what. The. What.) White men will continue to be cast over Black men. And we will hunt for those opportunities that there are, and hope to God that we get the ones we deserve.

Also, sorry Queen Latifah, but you did not deliver. Love you, mean it, cast me instead.

Before/After: A Brief Flirtation with Toplessness and Philosophy

JUNE 6, 2015
I have to take my shirt off in front of a bunch of strangers in two weeks for several nights in a row.

Just so we're abundantly clear, this is not a stripping situation. Nor am I back in Vegas, lookin' like topless Gertrude McFuzz with sequin-y feathers on my ass. I already have a side hustle at Booklink Books, so I'm not too worried about having a hundred extra $1 bills in my wallet. Nay, it is an acting situation.

I'm in this play called Seminar at New Century Theatre, for which I am painfully excited. Fittingly, it's about four young writers taking a fiction seminar with a crazy dude (originally played by Alan Rickman). Also fittingly, I am the slut. (I am always the slut. I am ALWAYS the slut.) And AS the slut, it is evidently my responsibility to shake dem titties.

Here's the thing. It is unclear as yet whether it's straight up boobs or if there's a bra involved. The former might traumatize some of our older audience members, so I'm hoping for a bra. REAL hopin' for a bra. Sometimes I feel like an African woman in a damn National Geographic magazine. I'm not quite ready to share that much with the world...but so help me, I will do it for the Actors' Equity Association.

Either way, when I told my gentleman friend about it, he was like, "....WHY?"

"ACTING," I declared defiantly. "A real artist makes sacrifices for her trade."

He looked at me like, stop being a pretentious bitch. (He knew better than to say it, though.)

So I'm down to make the sacrifice. I was especially down 15 or 20 pounds ago, when I was chosen for the part. However, I fell all over myself this one time and ended up in a neck brace, and have not been allowed to go to the gym ever since.

All I can say is, I hope my father doesn't come.



JUNE 23, 2015
I'm in the midst of my run. I love this show, but I am having an AWFULLY hard time getting behind my character's philosophy of "be a stone cold bitch."

from Seminar by Theresa Rebeck 
New Century Theatre, 2015.
Photo credit: Carolyn Brown

That said, after five performances, I have received exactly two pieces of feedback on the topless scene (bra is involved. Everyone be relieved.):

"I mean, you looked better than the older guy who took his shirt off." —Guy I Used to Date
"You must be so secure with your body!" —Very Large Gentleman Who I Have Never Seen Before

Well, at least there's that.



SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
It has been three months since I whipped my shirt off and shook my titties at poor Myka Plunkett.

My mother was stressed. My godmother took illegal cell phone pictures of me and put them on the Internet. My girls in the front row cheered for me. And an old man who I was SURE was Donald Trump's dad took his glasses off, cleaned them, and put them back on. Then gasped.

Let me be clear. According to my BMI, I am overweight. According to myself, I am a big bitch. According to anyone who looks at me, audience members and friends alike, it's science: the majority of my poundage clearly lies in my chest.

Body image, body image, blah blah, I've examined it fully before, 8,000 other people have already picked over all of it, I have nothing new to contribute at this time about it. But it's there, and all of this is to say: I won't wear a bikini in public. For the sake of my peace of mind, those days are over.

But I will take my damn shirt off for a sold-out house.

from Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, New Century Theatre, 2015
Photo credit: Carolyn Brown

I think I heard someone say once that actors are whores. Was it a movie? I don't know (brownie points for anyone who can tell me where this is from, because it's bugging me). What I do know is that if this is prostitution, give me more.

I will do what audiences want me to do because it is empowering. It means that I get to take all of my insecurities and throw them the fuck away for two hours every night. It means I am in control of myself. Let's be real: I wouldn't have done it, taken my shirt off, if I didn't think I had the chutzpah somewhere inside me to do it. But I'm proud of myself for this small thing (or these two large things...if you will...). It was nerve-wracking and I did it, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have done my job. Not in terms of, I wouldn't be doing the thing that I was getting paid to do, had been hired to do—but in terms of, I would have put a limitation where there didn't need to be one, simply because I was scared. My pretentious ass wasn't wrong: an artist makes sacrifices for her trade. An artist makes sacrifices for herself.

I don't know if this applies to everyone or if it's just a thing that I need, but I don't much care. I will do the thing. I will be brave. I will do my best to make the art what it needs to be, because it does things I alone could never do for myself.

I'm saying this because I'm making this promise to myself. I'm bad at a lot of things, and I am dumb about a lot of things. I dropped out of my philosophy class in college because I couldn't do anything except be overwhelmed. But I think that now I know this one thing for sure: we, who are fundamentally insecure and afraid, deserve to make these promises to ourselves, and we deserve to follow through. Because contribution to the "universal All" aside, to society or to the zeitgeist or whatever, what is even in this life for us as individuals? Why the fuck are we here?

To show our tits. We are here to show our tits. Metaphorically.

I also took my pants off for that show. There were a lot of leopard print undergarments involved. Not sorry about it. Never will be.