This is part of a series of blog posts about different theoretical frameworks through which to analyze theatre. Intersectionality, as a concept, deals with how peoples’ identities and experiences are not based on singular vectors like gender or race, but rather on an array of personal, social, and economic circumstances that affect them in different ways at different times. While anyone can be affected by political or social oppression, those living at the intersections of marginality due to their race, sexual orientation, ethnic identity, or other factors, are far more likely to suffer from oppression and injustice than others.
It was the compounded suffering of Black women in the United States that spurred Kimberlé Crenshaw to write her seminal study on intersectionality which opened a new field of academic analysis. Since her article in 1991, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color,” the use of intersectionality as an analytical framework has extended far beyond the criminal justice system. I’ll use intersectionality as an analytical framework for looking at the way Black identity is constructed as a non-issue in the play The Drawer Boy, what that might mean in relation to the narrative of Canada as a multicultural and inclusive society, and how it interacts with the concept of colour-blind casting.
To set the context for the analysis, I’ll first examine Canada’s status as a multicultural and inclusive society. As Enakshi Dua, Narda Razack, and Jody Nyasha Warner argue in their article, “Race, Racism, and Empire: Reflections on Canada,” any study of race and racism needs to encounter and engage with the expropriation of Indigenous land and resources and the ongoing subjugation of racialized immigrants. They point out that we live in a paradoxical relationship to racism and racial social inequality, that Canada “has a long history of Indigenous colonization, white settlement policies, settlement of people of color through racialized immigration polices…On the other hand, Canada is…characterized in national mythology as a nation innocent of racism” (1). I would argue that this sense of innocence is prevalent in many Canadians who are lucky enough not to live through personal experience of racism or broader marginalizations.
As Mullins, Morgan, and Quelling argue in their article “Canada the Great White North where Anti-Black Racism Thrives,” this attitude of innocence is often accompanied by a “narcissistic outlook about what Canada stands for in respect to human rights” (20) in relation to other countries. They discuss two incidents of anti-Black police action in Toronto, how these incidents and how they were treated by the police, the public, and other authorities demonstrates an ongoing, systemic, and institutionalized problem of anti-Black racism. These articles help establish two critical points: that anti-Black racism was and is prevalent in Toronto and Ontario, and that Canadians in general feel innocent regarding racism.
This innocence is manifested in multiple ways including the actions of some institutions to position themselves as actively engaging in equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. One such institution is Edmonton theatre, where land acknowledgements before every play are becoming the standard and statements of intent to move toward a more inclusive and equitable programming and production practice are prevalent. We can analyze how that goal plays out in one circumstance, the Shadow Theatre production of The Drawer Boy, a Canadian classic.
The Drawer Boy premiered in 1999 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. The play tells the story of a young Toronto actor who goes to live with two elderly farmers in rural Ontario to gather material for a collective theatre piece about rural life. The play revolves around the power of narrative for shaping and maintaining identity. The primary narrative in this case is the story of these two farmers, Morgan and Angus. Friends since childhood, they both enlisted in the army for WWII. Angus suffered a brain injury that resulted in memory loss. Many years later, they share a farmhouse, and Morgan looks after Angus. Almost every day, Morgan recites a story to Angus about how they had been engaged to two young women, and that the women had died in a tragic car accident. This narrative calms Angus and maintains the equilibrium in their lives. The young actor, Miles, enters this situation and disrupts it.
Drawing heavily for its context, content, and authenticity from a 1972 project called The Farm Show where actors did embed themselves in a farming community and produce a verbatim play from their experiences, The Drawer Boy has become a Canadian classic, won multiple awards and received multiple productions. Shadow Theatre produced the play in January of 2024, and took the step of casting a Black actor as Miles, the young student. The action of The Drawer Boy takes place in 1972, in rural Ontario. This was only nine years after the Great March on Washington in the United States and only four years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. While differences between the United States and Canada could be tangibly argued, it is also evident from the articles cited above that Canada has a long history of anti-Black racism and that this racism has been evident in southern Ontario — more broadly, also the case can be made that despite the explicit juridical and territorial lines between both countries, racism is something that permeates these boundaries in informing the broader horizon of North American culture which was built implicitly on colonialism and the aftershocks of the Atlantic slave trade. It is simply difficult to imagine that a Black student walking up to a white farmer’s door in 1972 in rural Ontario with a request to live with them for six weeks would face no racism or challenges based on their identities. We can ask then what the casting of a Black actor to play Miles might mean and use intersectionality as an analytical framework to do so.
In her 1991 article, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color,” Crenshaw studied three aspects of intersectionality in relation to women of colour and the justice system: structural intersectionality, political intersectionality, and representational intersectionality. Using the same aspects of intersectionality and applying them to this production of The Drawer Boy immediately generates insights into the production and into Edmonton theatre. Structural intersectionality relates to the way that intersecting power relations work within a given area of activity. Artistic directors have the power and responsibility to choose seasons and production teams, so power relations within Edmonton theatre are heavily skewed toward the white management.
Regarding political intersectionality while controlled by predominantly white management, Edmonton’s mainstream theatres exist within a government funding structure that promotes diversity, inclusion, and cultural representation in the arts. The Edmonton Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts all have mandates to promote inclusion and diversity. Each of these funders also has streams set aside for diverse or underrepresented cultures, so it is evident that theatres face some pressure to ensure that equity, diversity, and inclusion is practiced in their companies and seasons. How they interpret and implement that mandate is up to them.
The final area of intersectionality explored by Crenshaw, representational intersectionality, opens for discussion the area of colour-blind casting. Colour-blind casting is a practice that purports to choose each actor for their role based on their excellence as actors, regardless of ethnicity or skin colour. In her article “Colour-blind Casting in Twenty-First Century British Theatre: Colourism, Racism, and the Representation of Black People on Stage,” Monique Day discussed several initiatives in colour-blind casting in high profile English theatres and concluded that while such practices provided opportunities for Black actors, the nuances of colour prejudice still affected the productions and audiences. Day argues that the colour of an actor’s skin is part of “the appearance of the actor…a vital signifier of meaning created on stage” (347), and that therefore it was impossible not to have skin colour affect the audience’s perception of the character. In relation to The Drawer Boy, this simply means that audiences will see the Black actor playing Miles as a Black character, representing a Black person engaging with rural white farmers in 1972 Ontario. Since there is nothing in the script or the production that engages with the intersectional identity of Miles as a Black person, the audience will assume that the structures and manifestations of anti-Black racism simply did not exist in 1972 Canada — this is to say that it sees Blackness as solely a signifier of cultural identity detached from its material reality. This reinforces the national mythology that Canada is innocent of racism and allows audiences to ignore historical and current realities.
One of the entertaining aspects of studying different analytical frameworks like intersectionality and applying them to plays produced in Edmonton is that I know what some people in our society think about the analysis of theatre or society from academic perspectives. Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney dismissed intersectionality as “a kooky academic theory.” I’m sure others agree with him.
It’s also important to remember that the production team of The Drawer Boy probably had no intention of making any claims whatsoever about Canada and its history of racism. Colour-blind casting is held up by some people as the model for increasing inclusion and diversity in theatre, although, as is evident, the practice raises some concerns of its own. Some people will question the value of analyzing theatre from a theoretical standpoint and argue that we should consider only entertainment or production value in our analyses. All these viewpoints and entertainment practices are validated in the power relations that they unconsciously reproduce and reflect — to paraphrase an argument in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a practice or an experience is, after all, only intelligible under a conceptual and theoretical backdrop however implicit it may be, and here we are simply trying to make the theoretical concerns explicit with respect to how they shed light on our given practices as well as how they can inform our practices. How these power relations affect each individual is what intersectionality is all about.
