Twenty-Two
Note: Originally, a large part of the text of this letter was posted on my Instagram on July 16, 2020. A fellow alum who is one of the organizers of Circle of Inequity asked me if I would share my story on the website, so I am.
While I am thankful for my training at Circle in the Square Theatre School, and the many amazing people I met who continue to love and support me to this day, I agree completely with the creators of this website that there are serious issues with the culture of the institution that need to be addressed. I stand with my fellow alumni who created this website, and affirm their demands. We want moral integrity in our industry. While the industry is on a pandemic break, I hope all white performers (myself included), theatre professionals, educators, and primarily white institutions take time to listen to the complaints and demands of our colleagues of color and consider where we have gone wrong, and what we can help prevent in the future. I hope Circle in the Square takes all these stories to heart and steps forward to make necessary changes, for the good of their students, their workplace culture, and the whole industry. The stakes are literally life and death, as can be read in Haley Boswell’s letter and others. And now, my stories:
*** RACISM: I have regretted a choice I made as a performer while at Circle in the Square Theatre School for some time now. It was 2015, we were preparing for showcase, and me and two other white girls were asked to audition to play the Puerto-Rican character Rosalia opposite our actually Puerto-Rican classmate’s fabulous rendition of Anita in a performance of the song “America”. I got the role, which I never would have considered myself for, and for which I should have never been considered by my teachers. I should have been a real friend to my Latina classmates, and when asked to audition, said no. I should have recommended they cast a Latina student from another class in the part. This did not occur to me, nor did it occur to the other white girls auditioning, nor did it occur to the white teachers casting. Why? We all know why. Racism is a sin that all white people are guilty of: whether the harm caused is intentional or conscious or not, it’s still a sin.
The year before, I had performed “A Boy Like That” with another white girl. I thought it was fine because it was not a real production of West Side Story, my voice sounded good in the song, and because my teacher said “It’s common for Italian girls to play this part”. But Maria’s story is not mine to tell. Rosalia’s story is not mine to tell. Those are Latina roles. I am not a Latina girl.
I could call myself and others out on more. As we see, it’s really easy to find ways to justify making decisions outside of a place of moral integrity and at the expense of other people when it benefits us or our “artistic freedom”. Our choices made in free will are our own, and we are ultimately the ones responsible for those choices and the consequences of those choices. However, I do believe that some teachers at CITS encouraged behaving outside of a place of personal integrity for the sake of artistic “bravery”, or “truth telling”, and that students often suffer/ed emotional and physical pain as a consequence of this. I also believe teachers sometimes pushed not only boundaries of artistic growth, but students’ personal boundaries of moral integrity, which is not their job.
MISOGYNY/SEXUAL MISCONDUCT: One time, my male teacher in his mid-fifties called me, a then high-school-age girl, a “bitch” in front of my whole class, in order to try to get a reaction out of me. I never let a man call me a bitch so I handled that myself, but it really was not okay. That same teacher also told a classmate of mine to “rub her cunt” on a bed in excitement during a scene. So rude, and beyond inappropriate.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: Another example: A girl, overcome with her “in-character” rage, spontaneously threw me against a wall by my arm during a scene in our first month of school. We never rehearsed this moment, or even talked about it before it happened. She could have broken my arm, which pissed me off. Instead of reprimanding her for her unsafe behavior, the teacher told me to “use my anger” to fuel the scene. NOT all of the teachers encouraged this, as “safety first” was clearly shown to be a top priority in many of our classes. But if that kind of behavior happened during a rehearsal on a professional contract, the actor would immediately get fired. It was the teacher’s duty to correct the student who stepped out of bounds, as she was paying him to be her guide in this professional musical theatre program. He did nothing to correct her behavior.
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT: I was also assaulted in Room 114 on campus by a male classmate. We were rehearsing a sexually charged scene, and in the scene, I had to straddle him on a chair. Behind the closed door of the rehearsal room, he told me that he was “so committed to getting into [his] character”, that us having penetrative sex on the floor of 114 would not be “going too far” in his mind. I told him he was wrong about that, and that I would never ever do anything sexual with him in real life, and he needed to understand that. We began the rehearsal, and we were kissing in character. I was on his lap, and he sexually assaulted me.
Betrayed and in shock, I ended the rehearsal shortly after and then had to go to another class. I had to go to work after that, which got out around midnight, and then I had class again the next morning, etc. Nonstop CITS schedule, ya know? So I never really had time to process this as an assault. I did the scene with him in front of our class because it was on the schedule and it was too late to put something else up, and frankly, I did not feel I had the emotional headspace or time to deal with it. He behaved himself in front of the class. Because of this assault, I now refuse to rehearse intimate scenes with acting partners without a third party present. An Intimacy Coordinator or an Intimate Scenes elective class with trained professional Intimacy Coordinators would be a really good thing to incorporate at CITS. Of course, my assault is not the fault of the institution, it is only my classmate’s fault. But I believe he really felt his actions were justified because he was “so committed to getting into [his] character”, at all costs.
I have faith that people on the faculty and staff would have believed my story and tried to help me if I reported it. I did not report it. I wish there had been a mental health counselor on campus. This would be a person I would have felt comfortable making an appointment with to discuss this upsetting encounter with, and discuss whether or not I wanted to seek retribution toward my classmate, and it all would have been completely confidential.
I remember crying from stress during a class, and my teacher telling me that students from Circle in the Square had a reputation in the industry of being “emotionally damaged”. That says more about the institution than the students. Circle is not the only educational or theatrical institution being called forward to undergo crucial changes in its culture. But unlike some of these other schools, I hope Circle actually listens to the stories of the alumni and acts on their demands, and can make the essential changes now, which will affect people, the industry, and therefore the world in a positive way.
Best,
Abbeyrose Garner
Class of 2015