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 real event that occured).
Like so many things, art requires collaboration, creativity, vulnerability, and risk; but when social justice dominates, these pursuits become impossible.
In this video interview, Kevin breaks down just how bad social justice activism in the arts has gotten and how he’s overcoming it.
We discussed:
The tactics activists use to force conformity and punish dissent
How critical social justice is being embedded in everything
Kevin’s experience with Westboro Baptist protestors and how they compare to social justice activists
How artists can overcome activist pressure to conform
How today's art students are being miseducated
Jump to the following time code to go straight to your area of interest:
0:00 - Intro & Kevin’s story
3:14 - What is "critical social justice"?
10:33 - How social justice is embedded in everything
17:41 - How Westboro Baptist protestors compare to social justice activists
26:36 - How critical social justice takes control rapidly
34:06 - Standing up to bad ideas even when you do so alone
38:43 - How today's art students are being miseducated
47:40 - A struggle session on stage
55:03 - Is social justice turning audiences away from theater?
1:06:16 - How Kevin makes art despite a hostile creative climate
1:14:39 - Advice to artists for making great art today
This conversation needs to reach people far and wide—especially people who aren’t aware of the reality that anti-racism is far darker than it seems. We aren’t trying to build an echo chamber of people who all agree on the problem, we’re trying to help others realize there’s a problem at all.
That’s where you come in, readers of The Black Sheep.
Please watch this video, share it, and leave a comment with your favorite point to help us reverse today’s collective dysfunction. The more we boost the truth and offer an alternative path, the more people we can redirect away from bad ideas.
Thank you for your help.
This is excellent Kevin! I can't believe I only discovered your writing here now after several chats on this topic on Clubhouse, sharing your thinking on the topic. Love you work!!
Social Injustice Warriors turn all things of beauty, creativity and art into shit.
I used to attend plays at Chautauqua, but the last few years, they have gone “ woke” and now their plays deal mainly with identity. ..DEI is their mantra. Art is lost to it ,which is sad.