Festival 57 RED Programming and Opportunities
Hello Region 2! My name is Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson and I am your RED chair. Malcolm Womack is our RED Vice Chair and we partner with Cassie King our region Chair. R.E.D. stands for Representation, Equity and Diversity and is an essential component of KCACTF in every region. Our jobs, in short, are to make sure the festival is a welcoming and inviting place for everyone here.
Towards that end, here are our goals:
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Create a Welcoming space of Mutual Respect
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Center and Celebrate the Work of all Students
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Stay Open and Receptive to the Variety of Voices and Lived Experiences in our Community
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Invite Feedback, so that we can Continue to Grow and Change for the Better
Although it is impossible to guarantee a conflict-free space, we will work hard to recognize and respond to harm as quickly as we can, working to support our most vulnerable members for the ultimate benefit of everyone in our community. This includes at festivals and in the production responses we offer at each of our participating schools. I invite you to reach out to us at any time should our festival programming or production responses not center the needs of the students, honor each of our lived experiences or stay open and receptive to the variety of voices that are a part of our work. We are all artists here and seek to learn from each other with a spirit of authenticity and grace. Let’s make this an opportunity to grow for each and every one of us.
Events and Opportunities:
Students and Faculty! Join RED Leadership and Planning! Help us Celebrate and Uplift our Community!
Some of the work we do before and after festivals includes planning and assessing the impacts of our work and how we can do better. If you are interested in joining this effort – we are seeking both Students and Faculty who are interested in DEI work in theatre and Academia to be a part of our Student and Faculty of Color Advisory Board. This Board will meet via zoom a few times a year via zoom and once or twice at festival. In addition, Board members will be asked to host and or participate in our exciting RED events annually. See below for more information on events. And if you are interested in joining our board, please contact Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson at adn001@bucknell.edu. Thank you for your consideration!
Affinity Lunches
Affinity lunches: The Students and Faculty of Color Luncheon and the LGBTQIA+ Student & Faculty Luncheon. Sign up at the festival for these lunches free to students and faculty! Join us for a little Community and Connection!
Drag Cabaret and Talent Show
RED will be sponsoring an Open Mic Talent Show with a Drag Cabaret open to anyone interested in showcasing their performance talents! Sign up at the festival to perform – or if you’d like to help plan this and other events, please consider joining the S&FAB of color. See above for more details!
Panels and/or Workshops!
RED would love to sponsor & support faculty AND student panels, for folks interested in dialogues about issues relevant to our community. Some of the panels in the past have included:
- Strategies for Success for Students and Faculty of Color in Academia
- DEI Strategies for Theatre Departments
- A Positionality Statement Workshop
- Introduction to Deaf Theatre
- Speaking on Equitable and Self Liberating Spaces
- Community of Color – Conversations on Undergraduate Challenges
- Challenges and Opportunities for Undergraduate Actors of Color
- Community, Dialogue and Discussion for Actors and Color and their Allies
- Actors of Color in Undergraduate Programs
- Working Actors of Color – A Professionals Panel
- Playwrights of Color panel
- Marginalized Theatre Practitioners Roundtable (DTM panel)
Please let us know if you are interested in proposing a panel! We would be happy to brainstorm and support you as you consider what you’d like to share at the festival.
RED Resources
List of BIPOC Plays and Creatives
PMF DEI Committee’s 2020
Anti-Racism Series Syllabus
What Inclusive Teaching Means For Colleges In An Era of Social Justice Activism
National RED Initiative
The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival just commemorated our diamond anniversary! For 50 years, KCACTF has been a place where hundreds of colleges and universities come together to celebrate, encourage and recognize the artistic work of our future generation of theatre makers; our students. In retrospect, there is much to be proud of, but like any diamond, there are still flaws.
We know that we have areas that need growth, change, and rethinking. We have been talking for some time about how to make certain our organization continues to reflect the rich mosaic of the world we currently live in and want to serve. Now, we are ready for action.
The vanguard of this action is a reformed initiative. Our effort in this area was previously called Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). We have recommitted to this vital work with a new name: Representation, Equity, and Diversity (RED).
In order to seek change, we must scrutinize our current systems, structures, and objectives. This includes examining the words we use to describe our actions. Why are the words Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion arranged in that order? What do they mean, and how do we support these ideals? Under this examination, the word “inclusion” was deconstructed. Inclusion implies that someone is being “let in”. To be included, you are other. What word implies belonging? That word is “representation”. By stating our intention to create representation, we are committing to accurately reflecting the whole constituency we serve.
E Pluribus Unum; Out of many, one. Though this is the essence of our greater ideals in this country, we have not always lived up to them. The fierce urgency for our organization to model these ideals is now magnified. We are the artist-educators training the next generation of storytellers in an era of cataclysmic divisiveness. We must ensure that every storyteller and every story will have uninhibited access to being heard, supported, celebrated, and recognized within KCACTF. We must practice equity with intentionality, ensuring access for all and not just access for enough. We must unequivocally state and demonstrate that the rights of any individual or a group are neither more nor less important than the rights of another. We will be a levee, standing as a counter force to the rising tide of sexism, ageism, genderism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, racism, segregation, colonialism, and white supremacy in this country. With equity, we will seek to practice justice.
The following are the first steps we are taking to create equity towards the diversity in our organization:
- The establishment of RED Coordinators in every KCACTF region.
- The establishment of a National RED Coordinator as a member of the National Executive Committee.
- Standardizing and publicizing the pathways to regional and national leadership.
- Assembling the selection, scholarship, and award panels at Regional and National festivals that will create equitable representation of race, gender, gender identity, ability, and sexuality. At least 50% of any panel will be comprised of historically marginalized identities.
- Revising the KCACTF mission statement and strategic plan to give greater focus on representation, equity, and diversity.
- Seeking out a representation, equity, and diversity expert to lead the National Committee in strategic planning and implicit bias training.
- Committing to funding the ASPIRE Arts Leadership program on an annual basis.
Each of these endeavors are either currently active or are in the process of completion. This is only the beginning. While we look forward to the next fifty years, we understand that it will take constant diligence to organizational self-evaluation, an unapologetic commitment to equity, and a greater degree of personal and artistic empathy to ensure that our organization continues to become the more perfect diamond we hope to be. With past now prologue, we will strive for a more equitable future. Our students, all our students, will be the only priority that matters.