On Saturday, February 6 at 7:30 pm WAM Theatre is partnering with Multicultural BRIDGE, the Berkshire Theatre Group , and Yvette “Jamuna” Sirker to present a staged reading Facing our Truth – a collection of six 10-minute plays by Winter Miller, Marcus Gardley, Dominique Morrisseau, Mona Mansour & Tala Manassah, Dan O’Brien with Quetzal Flores, and A. Rey Pamatmat – at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.
We sat down with Project Director Gwendolyn Hampton-VanSant, CEO and Founding Director of Multicultural BRIDGE, Production Coordinator and WAM Artistic Director Kristen van Ginhoven, and Artistic Coordinator Jamuna Sirker to talk about this provocative project. In addition to their behind the scenes roles, Kristen and Jamuna are each directing one of the plays, and Gwendolyn will be acting in one of them. Click HERE for a complete list of individuals and organizations involved with Facing our Truth. Click HERE to buy tickets now.
WAM Theatre: How did you get involved with Facing our Truth?
Kristen van Ginhoven: When WAM was producing In Darfur in 2014, there was a shooting in Pittsfield. In Darfur playwright Winter Miller told me about Facing our Truth. She was one of the six playwrights commissioned to write a ten-minute play by New Black Fest in NYC after the George Zimmerman verdict came out in 2013 – all playwrights were commissioned to write plays in response to Trayvon, race, and privilege.
After the shooting in Pittsfield, there was a lot of conversation on Facebook about ‘what can we do’. I sent an email to a few community leaders suggesting we do a staged reading of Facing our Truth. Finally, last summer, Gwendolyn, Jamuna, and I decided to just do it and now, after months and months of planning and co-producing this project above and beyond our day to day work lives – here we are!
Yvette “Jamuna” Sirker: My mission as a playwright, director, and producer is to empower women and people of color by sharing their/our stories in a theatrical setting. Kristen van Ginhoven is a friend, fellow theater activist, and someone whom I greatly admire; I work with her whenever I can. (This is my 5th WAM Theatre project.) When Kristen contacted me several years ago with an invite to join her in producing Facing our Truth, I immediately responded with, “Yes!” Icing on the cake was when I discovered Gwendolyn Hampton-VanSant was on board as I applaud her contribution to Berkshire County and I had long held an interest in collaborating with her.
Gwendolyn Hampton-VanSant: Kristen and I have worked on projects in the past – mainly connecting my Women’s Group to WAM productions, and one of our youth groups at one point as well. Kristen proposed Facing our Truth to a group of African-American community leaders and given BRIDGE’s mission and our Towards Racial Justice in the Berkshires Campaign, I committed to the project. It is mission-specific and central to BRIDGE’s work in Berkshire County. We have held community dialogues on race since 2009 in collaboration with the Department of Justice, faith groups, BRIDGE Race Task Force, school forums, and more.
WAM: Gwendolyn, who is partnering with Multicultural Bridge on Facing Our Truth and how did you choose your partners?
Gwendolyn: I chose the Colonial Theatre because Kate Maguire and I have had candid conversations about her desire to have positive impact on youth and to support the mission of Multicultural BRIDGE. It is an honor to be on their stage and to have Berkshire Theatre Group support us in the heart of Berkshire County.
As I said, I have partnered with Kristen and WAM before. With Jamuna Sirker, I watched Shirley Edgerton’s ROPE program flourish with Jamuna’s artistic expertise as part of the inaugural teaching group working on Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enough at Barrington Stage and knew I would enjoy working with her on this project.
WAM: What is the title of the play you are directing, who is it by, and how did you choose it?
Kristen: I am directing Colored by Winter Miller. She is the playwright of In Darfur and I LOVE her writing, so am excited to be directing this piece. There are nine actors in it and each character’s name is a color – Blue, Purple, Teal, Indigo, Yellow, etc. It takes place in a subway car where three youths come on to ‘entertain’ and the conversation becomes serious. The playwright brilliantly uses the range of colors used as characters names as a metaphor for the larger issues Facing Our Truth explores. The cast is a mix of experienced actors, like Barby Cardillo, Anne Undeland and Tony Pallone, and community members and activists who are stepping out of their comfort zone and participating because they believe in the project, like Roberta McCulloch-Dews, and Jenn Smith. Marla Robertson, Lindsay DeWinkeleer, and JV Hampton VanSant round out the Colored cast and WAM Associate Producer Freda Grim is busy making colored caps and scarves for everyone! We will all meet for the first time on Friday, February 5 and have a few hours to rehearse all together before we present to the public, on the Colonial stage (!), on Saturday, the 6th at 7:30 pm!
Jamuna: I am directing Dressing by Mona Monsour and Tala Manassah. After several reads of the Facing Our Truth collection, it was Dressing that pulled most strongly, almost wrenchingly at my heart. Dressing brilliantly imagines the private thoughts of a mother whose son’s fate was similar to that of Trayvon Martin. Having lived through the deaths of my parents and two siblings, I know the difficulty of those moments when the funeral is over, the community has gone home, and one is left alone to grapple with the pain. Whenever I learn of yet another race-based hate crime, I often wonder, who is left alone with the horror and what is it like for that person? Monsour and Manassah have most skillfully answered that question in Dressing. More icing on the cake in directing Dressing is that I was able to cast Gwendolyn Hampton-VanSant and her son in the roles of Mom and Son.
WAM: What do you hope will be the result of this event, what change are you hoping to see locally?
Kristen: In Darfur was an awakening for me about race issues. As a director, I began my own journey of being truly committed to color conscious casting and as a person, I began to see all the issues happening in our own community and around the world in a different light. Gender and Diversity are often included in the same conversations and doing this project has continued my learning about the challenges and similarities that exist in both and how, with race, it is truly a whole other level of intensity and urgency. I believe that storytelling through theatre is a force for good in the world and is a great way to help people understand perspectives that are different from their own. Only when that occurs can change happen. I hope this reading can serve as another way to contribute to the conversations happening in our community so that, ultimately, we can all move forward together towards a more unified existence.
Jamuna: I am from New Orleans, where racial tensions remain rooted in the legacy of slavery. The New Orleans economic and social infrastructure is that of a Third World colonial society in which racism is consciously cultivated and perpetuated by means of economic oppression and dismal public education. Moving to Berkshire County, for me, was a deep breath of fresh air. The overtly expressed racial hatred I grew up around is not evident in these peaceful mountains. Unfortunately, beautiful Berkshire County is not entirely immune to the ills of social injustice. Less charged than the south, here racial disparity takes on the form of unconscious racism and segregation. The good news is that we live in a community filled with well-informed, compassionate, and pro-active people of all races. My hope is that Facing our Truth serves to galvanize these members of our community to come together to forge paths towards harmonious co-existence of diverse populations, and to celebrate of our collective differences.
Gwendolyn: The change I am hoping for is a mobilization and movement toward Racial Justice. The deaths and violence among African-American males in our community and beyond needs to be a central part of the Berkshire consciousness. Grappling with the issue of white privilege and the horrifying impact that privilege can have on people of African-American background is paramount to undoing racism and identifying bias so the harm is reduced. We expect and are already experiencing folks being challenged by the readings, the PR materials and the topic of Facing our Truth, and I will be facilitating a community discussion and panel response to the reading with Pittsfield Police Chief Michael Wynn, ROPE/Youth Alive Director Shirley Edgerton, and MCLA Education Professor Dr. Christopher Himes. We hope to evoke empathy and understanding by way of storytelling in order to mobilize more folks to join those of us who are already active working to eradicate racism, so that we can begin to build a safe community where we undo systemic barriers to health and success.
To hear more from the producers, watch this video below: