Theatre notes progress in diversity hiring

It is a universal truth in the financial world that the diverse portfolio is a strong one. Academic institutions also embrace that philosophy: Diversity within the ranks of faculty, staff and students strengthens an institution immeasurably.

However, increasing the number of people of color can be a daunting and sometimes elusive process. Since the 1980s, UW–Madison has made it a priority to improve access for people of color. Success often has been hard-won, though, since UW–Madison’s peer institutions also have been campaigning to recruit the same finite pool of individuals.

One of them, James Moy, now chairs UW–Madison’s Department of Theatre and Drama. Moy has been a success story in terms of his own recruitment to UW–Madison and retention for two decades, and for the changes he is instituting within his department.

In many respects, he’s on a personal mission, Moy says.

“I like Madison, but there’s clearly a lack of diversity here,” he says. “I decided that if I was going to stay in Madison, I was going to try to do something about the situation.”

Indeed, doing something may be a matter of self-preservation for colleges and universities. Demographers predict that the year 2050 will find people of color the numerical majority in the United States. “Universities will have to start adapting for that change immediately,” Moy says.

And he has been taking his own suggestion to heart. This fall, there are 17 tenure-track theatre and drama positions; of those, five are held by faculty of color. When he became chair three years ago, only he and colleague Norma Saldivar were members of a racial or ethnic extraction other than white. That lack of diversity was a problem for this particular department, Moy says.

“Theatre and drama is right on the front line of racial representation because the University Theatre (the production arm of the department) stages plays that the public, as well as students, faculty and staff, attends. If white faces are all that audiences are able to see on stage, it sends the wrong message about the university,” he says.

In 2001, the department will be able to draw upon the talent and expertise of faculty members Moy, Saldivar, Aparna Dharwadker, David Furumoto and Herbert Parker for diversity. Parker, who marks his first anniversary at Wisconsin this fall, says a diverse faculty makes new perspectives and more options available to students.

“When I was growing up and saw an African American in a play or film, or on the pages of a magazine or on television, it really made an impression on me,” he says. “Seeing them there made me begin to think that maybe someday I could be up there too.”

Consequently, Parker says he tries to impart to students of color the idea that they can do anything and play any part, even those not written expressly for people of color.

“Last year I played the role of Hardcastle in the University Theatre production of Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer.’ The woman who had the role of my daughter was blonder than blond, and no one questioned that,” he says. “I think that my appearance in the production told other African-American actors, ‘Yes, you can do the classics.'”

The classroom provides another channel for getting the message of opportunity out. Baron Kelly, a doctoral candidate studying the impact of an African-American actor on Norwegian theater, last year debuted a new section of the department’s basic acting class. The section, taught this fall by MFA candidate Harry Waters, has been geared toward — but not limited to — undergraduate and high school students of color.

“My goal is to show future students how the relevancy and diversity of the human experience can broaden their own horizons,” he says, adding that those benefits do not specifically require racial or ethnic theater pieces.

“There simply aren’t that many dealing directly with African Americans,” and even fewer written for members of other racial and ethnic groups, Kelly says, although last year the UT staged Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun.”

Kelly’s career shows that actors of color needn’t be limited to Othello. After graduating from New York’s High School of the Performing Arts, he appeared off- and on Broadway in such productions as “Salome” with Al Pacino and “Electra” with the late Colleen Dewhurst. He has had roles with his friend Kelsey Grammer on television’s “Frasier” and has just wrapped “Cultural Horizons” for the Public Broadcasting System.

Madison audiences have enjoyed Kelly’s work in the University Theatre production of “Master Harold and the Boys,” and, upon his arrival here in 1999, in the UT-Madison Rep co-production of “The Three Musketeers.”

Moy would like more Baron Kellys and Harry Waters in the department; improving the department’s student-of-color-to-white ratio is next on Moy’s agenda as chair. Theatre and drama has between 100-120 undergraduate majors, but only a handful are of color.

Moy says that piquing the interest of potential students must start before those students even start to think about college, so the effort will rely heavily on outreach efforts by theatre faculty and students. For example, Moy and Kelly visited six area schools last year to scope out students to take part in the new acting class section.

Manon van de Water, assistant professor of theatre and drama, is approaching the situation from the point of view of educators. Her Drama in Education course, mandatory for elementary education majors but frequently taken by other undergraduates as well, includes lab sections with elementary school students. Last fall, van de Water added an extra section, which meets at Madison’s Bayview Community Center rather than the usual Vilas Hall venue.

“In order to participate in our class at Vilas, someone had to be available to bring the child to Vilas Hall and pick her or him up. Transportation was often an issue — it can be quite a time commitment for low-income people. So we took the class into the community,” Moy explains.

Van de Water says the department is looking into the possibility of expanding the off-campus lab sections to other neighborhood centers, but transportation — for college students — could again pose an obstacle, as Bayview is the only center within walking distance of campus. However, she says, any ensuing hassle will be well worth it, for both UW–Madison students and the children.

“Drama is both an art form and a teaching tool,” says van de Water. “By its very nature it is interdisciplinary. In emphasizing inclusion and diversity in our class, this course contributes to the idea that drama — and education — is for everybody.”

In working toward that “everybody” goal, Moy says he would like to see students of color comprise between 20-25 percent of the theater student body during the next five years. Support from the UW–Madison College of Letters and Science, which houses the department, has played a critical role in realizing the success the department has had in recruiting new faculty of color, he says.

L&S Dean Phillip Certain says it’s gratifying to see the hard work pay dividends. “It’s very commendable,” he says. “Their efforts are education at its best, benefiting students, faculty, staff and the public.”

And especially benefiting those who have a decided contribution to make, but, for one reason or another, may have slipped under the rug, Baron Kelly says.

“We’re not looking for just the ‘best and brightest.’ We’re creating strategies to be as inclusive as we can, because, really, that’s the mission of the theater. We don’t want to separate ourselves from anybody.”