What Happens When Activists Take Over Theater? | Video Interview With Kevin Ray

Struggle sessions on stage are just the start.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how bad things can get.

For normal people who aren’t addicted to social media, when your activist employees talk about “equity” and “inclusivity”, you might give them the benefit of the doubt and assume these are new words for the good old ideas of the civil rights era. And that’s why you’ll end up forced out of your job by those activist employees over your lack of enthusiasm for spreading anti-racist propaganda (yes, this is a real event that occured).

If there’s one lesson I can sum up our most popular guest essay yet with, it’s this: however bad you think social justice activism in the arts is, it’s worse.

Kevin Ray is a theater director, independent producer, teaching artist, and front row witness to what happens when activists and art collide. In his essay, Kevin described his experience watching social justice activism spread through the theater, killing collaboration, demonizing dissent, and even reviving the practice of segregation (yes, another r…