In Our Age of Cruelty
Why They’re Called “Arts and Humanities”
By Thatiana Smith
This essay is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Fellowship
The author, Thatiana Smith (Photo courtesy of the subject)
My first theater audition was as a child, for a small role in Good Manners: A Medieval Quest for Polite Behavior as Damsel in Distress #3. I had one line and I got to curl my hair and wear a pretty princess dress. The magic I felt onstage followed me to high school and beyond. Being onstage feels amazing but sitting in an audience experiencing a finished piece of art is a feeling like no other. I like to look around and see the faces of each person watching the show. I enjoy seeing people engrossed in a work of art or media — whether in a movie theater, in a playhouse, or in a museum. In an audience full of others, I recognize that we are keeping the arts alive.
Consuming art is a core way to experiencing empathy and it helps us understand the way the artist feels. Through different forms of art — especially in film and theater — we as an audience become more sensitized to what we are seeing on stage or the big screen. Being surrounded by an orchestra or a surround sound system makes us more conscious that we are experiencing someone else’s story. And with hateful language spread across social media apps and biased news sources such as Fox News, I fear many people lack empathy. Now, more than ever, we are being divided.
Art makes us human. Theater gives people a way to express themselves and connect with others, which fosters a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Theater is a beautiful distraction from the problems we face in our own lives because an art form that can harness such emotions is astonishing. It gets us to understand and feel on a deeper level. Theater is an outlet in which people share stories — and some stories aren’t perfect. They can be ugly, dirty, gritty, gripping and can encompass the audience in ways that help them understand the struggle and conflict in a story.
“Trouble in Mind” at Actors’ Co-op (2024): Roderick Jean Charles, Lorinda Hawkins Smith, Brendon Shannon, Kimi Walker, and Freedom (Photo by Kamal Bolden)
A show that left me wholly stunned was Trouble in Mind, produced by Actors’ Co-op in Hollywood. It was written byAlice Childress, and directed by Kimberly Hébert Gregory. The story takes place in a New York City theater rehearsal in the 1950s. While a Broadway rehearsal provides a very progressive setting for the period, there is still a struggle to keep the African American image in its most authentic state. The history many are trying to rewrite is laid bare for the audience to digest. This show has not left my mind. The privilege I have to pursue a career in the arts was given to me by the thousands of black creatives who fought for a chance, creatives like Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist-actress of Trouble in Mind. As a Black woman Like Wiletta, I too had to engage in actions that harmed my community for centuries — just to get people to like me.
Overcoming the need to fit in was hard in school. I wasn’t true to myself because I was surrounded by people who brought out the worst in me. An audition for High School Musical JR. in middle school reintroduced me to my passion for the arts. Stories like Trouble In Mind are ways in which one can learn more than what’s in the history books and why it’s vital that we rid ourselves of the stigma that theater is only musicals, or that it’s boring. It’s an ancient art yet it can feel so modern.
Almost all art is political in some way, shape, or form. The theater will always be one art form that’s able to tell the truth about our society in an age when literature and history itself is being removed from library shelves and government websites.
The musical Wicked deals with Elphaba’s green skin as an allegory for racism and prejudice, which many Black and Brown people face all over the world. We also see deceit and prejudice in our own government while people are turning a blind eye, just like the people of Oz when it comes to the fact that the Wizard is not who he presents himself to be. Director and producer Adam McKay shared a post on X regarding Jon M. Chu’s on-screen adaptation of Wicked after its theatrical release, stating, “On a pure storytelling level, Wicked Part 1 is right up there as one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made. I know Part 2 swings back to the center a bit, but Part 1 is nakedly about radicalization in the face of careerism, fascism, propaganda…What’s really striking about Wicked Part 1 is that it’s coming out now when America has never been more right-wing and propagandized . . . If America keeps going on the track it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the movie banned in 3-5 years.”
In my Junior year, I performed in the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time written by Mark Haddon and adapted by Simon Stephens. It’s a story about Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic boy who is on a mission to discover who killed his neighbor’s dog. As the story unfolds, he discovers things about himself and his family that aid in the mystery. It is a juvenile “whodunit” that received a lot of controversy in the autism community due to its portrayal of someone with Asperger’s Syndrome. In a blog post titled “Asperger’s & autism” published on the 16th of July, 2009, Haddon states that he knows very little about the subject and he did not research for …Curious Incident; a prime example of the need for studious research when sharing stories that are not our own. We can have this amazing idea for a story that falls short in the execution if the creator is too cavalier to explore/research the heart and mind of their subject, when that subject is from a different world. When crafting a piece of work, our job is to crawl inside the mind and the feelings of a person or group. That’s the essence of empathy, and empathy is the foundation of art.
Harmful stereotypes can even injure a community or persons involved. Minstrel shows are a type of theatrical performance where White actors put on blackface to characterize Africans on southern plantations as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and violent. These kinds of performances were very popular in the 1800s. Art serves as an essential marker in this important period in history because it captures the biases of an era and presents how far we have progressed as a society.
We have so much to learn from the arts. Each and every work of art is important, not only for the artists but also for us to progress as a society. So many works of art are cemented throughout history as being groundbreaking and progressive. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye got people to discuss the demonization of Blackness in America and how harmful beauty standards can be. The privilege of being able to read and write is often overlooked as we live in a society where education itself is being demonized. Some years ago, I would have been punished if someone found out that I knew how to read and write. We must remain vigilant. We must acknowledge our privilege of creating and consuming art, and how art feeds us, strengthens us, guides us to be more human in a culture lacking humanity.
Without art, we wouldn’t have known how the Egyptians communicated or experienced the beautiful works of Pablo Picasso or Stephen Sondheim. Without art, the world would be devoid of all beauty, creativity, color, and expressioncreated by humans over the millennia. Who would want to live like that?
