Hello folks,

After the intensity of last week, it's been a sedate week personally. Finished off a long-lingering draft, had some gentle evenings and survived my neighbour upstair's sudden desire to take up the electric guitar (he's actually very good, go figure, but nobody needs an amplifier turned up that loud - he's serenading the whole block).

It was, however, an intense week in theatreland. It was a situation I couldn't really get out of my head. Partly because I've been writing a long blog about the roles of "heroes" within the arts, especially ones that carry the burden of representing and promoting the interests of a minority group. Partly because I've heard so, so, so many stories like Tori and Sarah's from good friends of mine over the years - the vast majority of whom are women. 

There is so much to unpack, both in the original letter and the subsequent responses from Idris and Kwame, that when I started trying to pull it into that blog I hit the six thousand word mark. God knows when/if I'll finish that piece, but for this newsletter (which will be longer than usual, sorry), I am interested in whether there are any immediate useful learnings from this moment, particularly when it comes to figuring out how to navigate this as an observer, one with limited access to the facts, but an interested observer nevertheless that has - to some degree - stakes in how it all turns out.

I'm going to mainly write in broad terms here but, when being specific, will try to do so with empathy and with the assumption of good faith from all parties. I accept that this may not be what you want, but considering I don't know anyone involved super well, I respect the work of all them that I've seen so far and that I don't have access to the full picture, only three differing and sometimes conflicting narratives, I feel that this is probably the fairest position to work from right now.

Basically - two sets of people you like and/or respect are having a dispute. One of them is explicitly asking for support. You feel that it’s important to do that publicly, or even just to ask yourself where you stand on it. Where do you start? How do you unpick the micro of a specific incident whilst also considering the macro of the broader contexts in which the incident sits?

Well, here are some humble observations/suggestions on my part. I don't think everyone will agree with it and happy to enter a constructive dialogue, but here's where I've landed on as a guide for myself, looking at things with a little distance.

Begin at the bottom of the gradient

I think it behooves us - as best practice - to lean towards giving the benefit of the doubt to those with less power and place the burden on the more established parties. This won't always necessarily give you the truth of where the situation lies, but to me this feels like a clear lesson to draw from the last couple of years - to be vigilant and scrutinise those who hold power, even if we like them, even if we believe them to be of great integrity, for their own sake as well as ours.

Especially if they're men. I think most men aren't inherently decent*, myself included there. The world makes it so easy for them to not have to be. However, I do also think that most men, more often than not, want to be good. A reminder of the water that we swim in, that supports us without us seeing it, that lets us get away with so so much without having to ever digest it, is useful as a way to make those attempts to be good as active as I think they have to be.

Keep the focus on the behaviour in the disputed situation, not the individuals as a whole

This is tricky and I know this is probably the most controversial take here. But in amongst the (sometimes necessary) heat of social media, there has to be a way in which we can scrutinise individuals we otherwise want to support and I think the best way to make positive change is through a sharp focus on the problematic actions themselves, rather than the people. Partly because most problems we encounter have a strong structural element and partly because nobody is all or nothing and we make it difficult to bring hesitant people, who have personal investments in those individuals, onside if we act like that's the case.

I'm not saying we should discount individuals and their track records entirely. Someone accused of treating another individual badly may have a long history of supporting other artists. It is useful to bear that in mind when considering if this is a one-off cock up, or a long-running issue with that person that has only now been exposed. This plays both ways - previous supportive behaviour also doesn't negate the possibilities that they've got it wrong, potentially badly wrong, in this particular instance. As I've said in one of my Tweets, it's not a betrayal of your heroes to ask them to be better. Keeping the focus on the incident-specific behaviour makes it both easier for us to point out the problem and ask the individuals to consider it, without jumping into attacks on the person more broadly.

There is an obvious caveat here of course in that there are actions so egregious that the individual deserves all that gets put on them and they should be removed from power so that they might not use it to harm others. It feels fairly clear to me what those actions are but I don't think it discredits or lessens accusations of problematic practices for us to be able to be discerning in our approach if we are looking to find something more productive than a straight up pile-on.  On that note...

Beware the depths of the pile-on

I should say that, from what I saw before I got myself off Twitter for the month, there wasn't all that much of what would be fair to call a pile-on to the Tree accusations. In fact, in the reaction to Tori and Sarah's letter, most of the responses I saw were dignified, selective in their anger and pointed in their critique, reflecting the measured tone in that letter. That is surely the lead anyone commenting on the situation should seek to reflect.

Yet within the inevitable avalanche of responses, there were those messages which were clearly powered from either long-standing grudges or from a thinly disguised racial animus. One reply that made me want to reach through the screen and slap the individual was someone taking glee in this being the comeuppance for "the self-proclaimed Messiah of BAME voices". Where do you even start with that? You don't. You tell it to f*ck right out from where it came. And in the - absolutely correct - defence of the individual being targeted by dickheads, we lose our nerve a little in confronting them with their actions. Nobody wants to be on the side of the dickheads, do they? So while we should call out those comments for what they are, we lessen the possibilities or urgency for change if we let them drive the narrative or our considerations.

Similarly, elsewhere, there were shady accusations about the two women who'd written the letter. Again - I think we do better to focus on the actions, not the individuals. You do not have to like Tori or Sarah or be free of past grievances with them to see that this situation feels desperately unfair and reflects the experiences of many others in the arts.

I accept that even talking about this as a pile-on can be seen as dismissing some of the legitimate upset in the conversation. There is so much strength of feeling in the responses because the story that Tori and Sarah laid out is so familiar. But if they are so familiar, if you're calling for one person's head and not doing the work to talk about the industry more broadly? That makes me distrust your motivations for engaging in this conversation.

Basically, not all critiques are equal in either quality or intention. People who are quick to delight in the possible failings of minority artists whilst ignoring the actions of others in the sector who have done similar are showing you their stripes. And there is an irony of those who attempt to hold themselves to a higher standard being judged more harshly than those who don't try at all (see: left-wing awfulness vs right-wing awfulness - both definitely awful, but one gets a lot more attention).
 

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Phew. OK, I think that's enough! Again, happy to talk about any of that. I don't present it as a gold-standard or necessarily a useful template for everyone but more as a reminder to myself, which might help you find your own settled thinking.

I do also have a few other observations about the industry as a whole springing from this conversation, so bear with me:

Minority leadership continues to be precarious

Continuing from the last point, there is no getting away from the fact that artists from minority background are expected to be consistently flawless to earn their positions. It reminds me of the point about Obama vs Trump in terms of what they needed to do to legitimise their presidencies: Obama had to be a Harvard Law professor - as establishment as it gets - to be elected and even then people questioned his legitimacy. Donald Trump is...well, Donald Trump.

Power can afford to be more generous

I've been dropped off of scripts. Only in telly and film, where I've expected it and the compensation has been decent. Sometimes you're just not the right person for the job anymore and being taken off it is best for all involved. It's not inherently bad. But that doesn't mean it still doesn't suck.

And it sucks more to be dropped off of something that you feel is your big break.

That, I think, is a slightly under-discussed factor here. As an emerging artist, you put so much of your self into what you think will the project to the detriment of other ones that you will naturally feel you deserve more from it if it goes south, regardless of the contracted reality. Simply put: it demands more from emerging artists without a salary or income from success to involve themselves in a project than it does for established ones. Because of that, there is a huge difference in what it means to take them off projects. We should try to recognise that, both when approaching that dismissal but also when looking at compensation.

Credits, in particular, don't mean as much when people know you. But they are huge when they don't. It could be the thing that lets you leave the old project behind with grace and without ill-feeling because it gives you a firm foothold for the future. I recognise there are potential legal issues there, but it does strike me as something that we can attempt to be more generous with when dismissing people. Also when talking about the work down the line - the talk about authorship within that Guardian interview, for example, felt a little unedifying in light of the letter. I've definitely failed a this. When the heat is on, the deadlines are coming, when you're giddy with the excitement of what you've made, it's easy to forget the contribution of others. It's not pretty and it's not defensible, but you will do it. So I try and remind myself too.

What seems reasonable and transparent in theory isn't necessarily either of those things in practice

I think Kwame's response is largely decent in expressing his side of things and I think however you feel about it, it's good to have a personal response alongside the corporate one. I'm glad he made the time to address it and quickly. Others have different gripes with it, but the one thing that really stuck out to me was the offer of a public forum to solve this dispute. While I understand the idea of an open discussion in principle - transparent for the public and no hiding from questions for him - in reality, that set up will favour people with the charisma and position that both and Idris have.

An outside eye helps enormously

This situation is one that was/is crying out for arbitration from an outside body. In this case, a union. Unions are good. Join your union. If you're a writer, please, please join the Writers' Guild.
 

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To conclude, I will tell you where I have ended up in all of this. 

There are two things that I believe to be true:

1) Though there is perhaps a need for introspection, British theatre would not be better for the loss of Kwame Kwei-Armah's presence as an artistic leader. Both in the sense that he has much to contribute and that validating some of the disproportionate, and in some cases racialised, ire sent his way would feel grim.

2) Theatre would be better for not exploiting the labour - consciously or not - of emerging artists and recognising the overwhelmingly familiarity of this story from women, both historically and in the present moment. In that regard, Burn Bright as a thing to exist, backed by the people it's backed by, seems to me an unequivocal good.

It would be a mistake and I think, in this case, unnecessary to set these parallel truths in opposition to one another.