Coming into this independent study, I was excited to learn how to ethically produce work for minority groups that I may or may not be a part of. I love the idea of using theater as a form of activism, and for years have struggled as a queer woman to find spaces for me to exist in. The appeal of this project was creating spaces for queer people of color to command, even if I as a white person do not think that I am necessarily qualified to be handling this work. I suppose that was part of the learning process, but something about going into this blind felt wrong, even though I/we did eventually learn that in order for these undertakings to be successful, those who are in a more privileged position have to step back to allow the people for whom this project is being produced (queer people of color) to have substantial input and to listen to them when and if they have concerns regarding the piece.
As the head of marketing and communications for the project, I did not face too many ethical dilemmas regarding who was producing the work and for what purpose(s). It felt like a safe job for me to do, one that I would be good at and also enjoy doing, and it was. From working on past shows at Baruch, and being involved in some LGBTQ+ organizations off-campus over the years, I’ve been growing a network made up of both theater and queer people, which are two of the three major target audiences for this production. I have no doubt that between Facebook groups and academic connections that we will be able to fill our house of 70 seats.
Throughout the project, I also worked very closely with Sampson Starkweather, the Publicity Coordinator at the CUNY Graduate Center, Center For Humanities. We worked together a create a new graphic for the production, and to divide and conquer our outreach to our respective networks. We had one very productive meeting where we discussed which aspects of the production would be best to publicize, both visually and verbally, and we shared networks and ideas for getting the word out, including email blasts, social media posting and sharing, and word of mouth. Our Facebook event was our main catch, and I think we worked well together because we bounced a lot of ideas off each other and I was able to offer insight into the student marketing world that Sampson was not aware of.
My biggest struggle with this project was creating the poster art for it. To be honest, I didn’t think this would be part of my job, but I hated what the original one was – a rainbow plastered over a photo of the Earth. It was like someone had heard “O, Earth!” and “queer” and overlaid the first two images that came to mind. Sampson wanted to keep the images realistic, while I wanted to go for a more graphic look (because that’s the style I work in), but we both agreed that we wanted the artwork to be vague enough to be open to interpretation, while still relating to the show. I compromised by taking his rainbow Earth and putting the rainbow behind the Earth, with text overlaid on top, and a crowd of women – activists? – on the bottom. Below are the original and final products.
All in all, I had a really good time collaborating with Sampson on this project, and I hope we have a good turnout, because the turnout will pretty much determine whether I succeeded or failed at my job. I think marketing was the best role for me in this production, because anything more hands-on that required me to physically be somewhere would have been too much to handle, and I would not have been able to dedicate to it the time that it deserved.