Gabriel Brown walked down the corridor leading to the dressing room of the Hartford Pearl Street Theatre building. It’s time to change from streetwear to his costume. As he walked across the stage, Brown stopped and looked at the empty seats.
“I need to take a moment to get a feel for this space,” Brown said before the opening of the show last month. He took a deep breath and smelled the fresh carpet. Although the refurbished theater building exudes a new smell, he feels like he has returned home.
But this time it is not in the usual building. Instead, his audience sat outside, surrounded by the trees of Windsor and the Connecticut River. The grass is under their feet, and the moon and stars are on it.
The idea for the outdoor theater was brought up during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, including the maximum number of spectators, masks, and social distancing requirements. The team plans to hold the show in January 2021, when the positive case rate was high and vaccines were not yet universal. The team asked itself many times how to play while keeping personnel safe.
“The really amazing thing about the pandemic is that theater companies are actually embracing new forms in a way they have never had before,” said Zhang Mei’an, director of “Walden Lake”. The show is scheduled to last until August 29.
The guests walked along the gravel road to the wooden house, vegetable garden, chicken coop and picnic chairs in the distance. The audience is immersed in the center of the picture, facing the stage, wearing headphones to better listen to the performance.
The vegetable garden on the stage. The story takes place in the wooden house of a couple living alone in nature.
Showers can be part of an immersive experience, as can an orange sunset, but the outdoor experience is consistent with the show’s intent: to encourage viewers to care about the earth undergoing climate change.
“It’s really hard to get people involved because we don’t want to think about it. It feels so huge,” said dramatist Amy Berriman, who has written a lot about climate change. “This time it forces us all to be creative.”
The audience sits far away from the actors, but the headphones make them feel that the three actors are nearby. They heard the intimate sounds of pouring, drinking, breathing, whispering, and flushing the toilet. It is intentional to personalize the climate change story with stage and sound.
On the first page of Walden’s script, these explanations stand out: “When casting the play, please refer to the 2013 National Geographic article’The Change of America.’ Cassie, Stella, and Bryan should reflect a growing trend. The more diverse the United States.”
The play takes place in the near future. Since the U.S. Census Bureau allowed this option in 2000, people who examine more than one race have become one of the fastest-growing categories. If current trends continue, the Census Bureau predicted in 2015 that the multi-ethnic population will triple by 2060.
Berryman said that it is also important to reflect and attract communities of color through actors, because the climate crisis will affect everyone, regardless of their race.
So an unusual scene appeared in the theater industry last week. Two Korean Americans and a black man stood before a predominantly white audience as the only actors. However, they never solved their race problem throughout the game. Instead, they are talking about dreams, families, and existences that people of any race can relate to.
“When there is no indication of a person’s specific race, they usually don’t choose BIPOC actors,” said Jeena Yi, a Korean-American actor who played the role of “Cassie.” “If someone tells you the plot,’Oh, this is a movie about brothers and sisters and their journey and their complicated relationship with their father,’ In your brain, the picture you are going to draw is likely to be white -White body and white face.”
Yi said that normally, Asian American actresses in Yi’s age range will automatically enter the group and play a strong girl role. In her seven-year career as an actress, she was the captain of a family drama for the first time in “Walden Lake”.
Gabriel Brown has a similar story. As a black actor, he has often played the roles of drug dealer, criminal and slave in the past 10 years.
Brown said: “This is not to say that other dramas that do deal with racial trauma are unimportant and unnecessary, and have a great impact.” “But to be able to be completely regarded as a person and experience the elements of storytelling, this is what I am as a person. It’s great that African-American actors usually can’t experience it.”
The Korean-American actor Diana Oh, who played “Stella” in “Walden Lake”, was frustrated that movies, dramas, and music showed only a small part of Asian American abilities.
“There should be no demand, right?” Oh said. “No invitation. No role can intervene.” This is why Oh created his own plays, installations and songs. “I don’t have the patience to wait for me to finally step into this role,” Oh said.
Jeena Yi noticed that the industry is slowly changing. Yi met more people of color in power positions, including directors, producers, and writers. “People who need decision-making power say’yes’,” Yi said. “A lot of decisions have been made before I was asked to enter the audition room.”
The director of “Walden Lake” Zhang is a queer immigrant from Singapore. When they got the opportunity, Teo was excited.
“I don’t usually get hired by living white playwrights,” Teo said with a smile. They found themselves often collaborating with Asian and African American playwrights.
Hiring Teo as the director even had an impact on the design team. The four designers are all women and three are from different parts of Asia. But Teo said that they did not intend to bring a team of a specific gender or race. They choose people they like to work with and whose opinions excite them.
“For me, it’s a long process,” Teo said. “If you look at the representation of Asian Americans in the United States, especially in New York, where there are more Asians, it really shows that American theaters are seriously lacking in racial equality and justice.”
According to census estimates, as of 2019, Asians accounted for 14% of New York City’s population, but according to a report by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, 6.3% of the roles on the New York City stage in 2018 and 2019 were made by Asian actors Serving. According to the report, approximately 93.8% of all directors on Broadway are white, similar to 92.6% of Broadway designers.
When asked about the actors Brown admired, Tom Hanks first thought of him. He likes Hanks to play rich roles, which are unrestricted, just like the movie “You Have Mail”.
“I really want to be everyone — someone who lives here, falls in love, does his thing, does his job,” Brown said. He admitted that he was black. But he also knew that race was part of his identity, not his only identity.
He can’t wait to see consumers of color in the drama can choose rom-com with black Tom Hanks, except for stories about racial trauma. “That will be that day. It will be a beautiful day,” Brown said.
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Yehyun Kim joined CT Mirror in June 2020 as a photojournalist and reporting for members of the U.S. Army. Her role in CT Mirror is to tell a visual story about the impact of public policy on individuals and communities in Connecticut. Before joining CT Mirror, Yehyun filmed community news in Victoria, Texas, and worked as a photo and video intern in USA Today and Acadia National Park in Maine. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Yehyun was born and raised in Korea.