The Danger of a Single Story

Gender parity in Canadian theatre is an important issue that requires immediate and critical action. But any discussion, initiative, or action about gender parity cannot be considered separately and in isolation from racial parity and representation. Thus, it is an unfortunate reality that while it admittedly sucks to be a white female actor, director, designer, or playwright, it is six times harder to be a theatre artist of colour, regardless of gender. Theatre is about telling stories, yet Canadian theatremakers continue to tell what is basically the same story from the same perspective: the story of how white men either dominate or perceive the world. Most of what we see on Canadian stages is little more than a variation on this theme. The danger of the single story is that we fail to see the possibility of other stories that have been ignored or erased from history because they were deemed unimportant or uninteresting by the dominant demographic who recorded that history. After all, it’s called his-story for a reason. Unless we recognize and address the white affirmative action and sexism embedded in our systems, the danger is that Canadian theatre will become even more irrelevant to our ever-increasing visible majority.