Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2021 - 27

you should sift through all the information
that is out there, I can't. Instead, I'd
like you to reflect on how you interact
with and absorb the information you are
presented with. I challenge you to interrogate
the information and the world
around you. Ask yourself, " Who put that
there? Who analyzed it? Why did they
present it the way they did? And what is
the context in which this was created? "
What we know now is that large
swaths of historical events and stories
have been erased from our baseline education,
a literal rewriting of history. This
erasure has targeted black indigenous
people of color the hardest in an attempt
to redefine, suppress, and eliminate the
successes, tragedies, and lives of these
communities-stories we are still struggling
to piece together today.
Do you question whose voices you listen
to more frequently? If your information
is coming from an echo chamber
of people who have similar lived experiences
as you, do you start by asking why
that is so and peeling back what implicit
biases have become embedded in your
information gathering? Do you more often
listen to and follow a piece of advice
that, say, is presented from somebody
who looks like a cisgender white man,
and why that is so? Why are most theatrical
textbooks written by predominantly
white authors? Do you have the discipline
to seek out knowledge that isn't as easily
accessible or isn't one of your own lived
experience?
Once you've decided, okay, this is
great, this is the information I'm going
to ingest, and I'm going to apply it to my
own craft, I'm going to create practices
around it and make decisions with it,
my next challenge to you is, can you lean
into discomfort and have a growth mindset
of being wrong? On CBS Sunday
Morning on the 28th of February, when
posed the question about masks and why
do they keep changing their minds from
no mask recommendation a year ago to
double-masking recommendations now,
chief scientific officer of consumer reports,
James Dickerson replied, " I would
argue that it's not changing one's mind.
Knowledge changes. That is
actually
a fundamental component of science. "
Can we have the discipline to leave information
and a practice that no longer
serves us? Can we release this notion of
this is the way we've always done it by
WHEN YOU
KNOW
BETTER,
CHOOSE TO
DO BETTER.
IF YOU HAVE
RECEIVED
INFORMATION
THAT
YOU
NEVER
RECEIVED
BEFORE, MY
HOPE IS THAT
YOU WILL
HAVE THE
COURAGE TO
CHOOSE TO
DO BETTER.
-HOO
questioning what created that very practice
and is it still really right now?
As we climb up the ladder of our industry,
it feels really good to be celebrated,
to be seen as an expert, someone
others call for advice. Discovering the
information you once preached and upheld
as a guiding principle was maybe
misguided because it held a narrow
sliver of truth and isn't the way forward,
can be both terrifying and threatening
to one own's reputation and beliefs. So
the desire to maintain status quo is very
strong. Instead of leaning in and actively
listening to voices that may not have been
centered before, one tends to want to retreat
back to familiarity. I urge you not to.
I urge you to want to sit in this discomfort
and start peeling back those layers of why
this is making you uncomfortable and
growing with that.
Not too long ago, I held the belief of
the bootstrap theory, the belief that individuals
pull themselves up to a better
station in life simply through hard work.
And I judged others for not being able
to do so. It took me awhile to peel that
back. I really had to ask myself why I so
believed in that information, and maybe
it was tied to the value I had given myself
for being hardworking instead of recognizing
my privilege-privilege that I was
born into a middle-class working family,
born with parents, and a full extended
family, all of whom valued education and
had the resources to invest in that for me.
I had to lean into the discomfort realizing
I may have caused harm by what I said to
others along the way around, " hey, you're
not working hard enough, " which leads
A screen capture of Audrey Hoo's Keynote address to viewers of USITT 2021: Virtually Anywhere.
SUMMER 2021 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | 27

Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2021

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