Portraying Struggle on Privileged Stages: Theater Should Reach All Audiences

On the set of “Welfare” at the Cour d’honneur in Avignon’s Palais des Papes, a commonplace gym floor stretched against a medieval stone wall, plastic sports equipment hung below gothic pointed arches, and dinky bleachers sat under a remarkable tracery window. While distracting, the visual incongruence fit the experience.

“Welfare,” a play about poor New Yorkers in need of government assistance, recently ran at the Festival d’Avignon, a world-renowned arts event primarily attended by affluent audiences. The aesthetically jarring sight of a school gymnasium welfare center constructed in a grand papal palace matched the socially jarring situation of well-off spectators gazing at well-off actors’ depiction of poverty. A New York Times writer recently criticized the “awkward” show for playing up hardship for entertainment — but upon further consideration, it becomes clear that this production of “Welfare” was not problematic. Theaters should welcome all types of narratives on their stages, including those that contrast their audiences’ real lives.

In most cases, seemingly out-of-place shows are appropriate to perform and productive to watch. Artists deserve the freedom to tell stories in any venue, and audiences need to take the responsibility to respond respectfully. When theatergoers see performances that feel uncomfortable or unrelatable to them, they benefit from the opportunity to recognize important perspectives and circumstances that they might never encounter otherwise.

At times, these performances seem ill-advised due to audience reception. If an economically privileged public watches a show portraying financial struggle, many of them may misinterpret the message. During “Welfare,” some audience members laughed at characters’ vulnerable descriptions of former incarceration, life after addiction, and inability to feed children. They laughed when an elderly woman learned that she cannot receive welfare checks because she was accidentally erased from government records; they laughed when a former veteran admitted that he steals small food items from stores because he cannot afford meals.

However, the impressive, emotional performances from the actors proved that “Welfare” does not intend to offer comedy. The festival should not be denounced for featuring the play simply because some theatergoers fail to understand it.

Discouraging artists from presenting heavy work to unprepared audiences prohibits them from expressing a variety of art, amplifying marginalized stories, and allowing the public to reflect on them. The audience member to my left chuckled throughout the show, but the audience member to my right was in tears. Deeply moved, she seemed to leave the theater contemplating relevant issues. Not all art should be easy and fun — and excluding shows like “Welfare” from certain venues would render art meaningless: diminishing many realities, silencing many voices, and erasing truth from storytelling.

This concern proves relevant in Boston and Cambridge, the home of The Harvard Crimson. In Spring 2023, plays like “Fairview” (focusing on racial prejudice), “Alma” (focusing on an undocumented immigrant), and “Clyde’s” (focusing on formerly incarcerated individuals) took the stage for audiences who, presumably, were primarily white, non-immigrant, and never incarcerated, based on these venues’ typical white, wealthy clientele.

Some may argue that these productions inappropriately emboldened privileged theatergoers to sample struggle as a leisure activity, but the overall impact was more positive than negative: They allowed artists to express meaningful work and allowed theatergoers to pay attention to ideas they may not come across on their own. Diversity is necessary everywhere. Access to a variety of stories serves creators and serves the public.

In 2022, Boston’s Huntington Theater Company produced a beautiful stage adaptation of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a novel known for exploring the intersections of race and gender. When a young Black character, Claudia, tore apart a white baby doll in frustration and rage and declared her desire to tear apart real white girls, the largely white audience roared with laughter. Their disappointing reaction highlighted the distance between many of the white spectators and the Black character. They did not understand Claudia’s suffering; instead, they found the scene hilarious.

But the misguided audience members needed to see the performance. Clearly, they had little prior experience thinking about the impacts of racism on Black children’s internal lives — many of them likely benefited from exposure to the concept. Additionally, since the audience was not entirely white, “The Bluest Eye” may have impacted the few audience members of color in different ways. I found the play cathartic, and I imagine that many of the artists found the process of developing the play fulfilling as well.

This past winter, the Front Porch Arts Collective and Huntington Theater Company collaborated on “K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” a play that features a Black, asexual teenager named Dani, among other characters. Again, audiences found humor in serious subject matter. Each time Dani explained his identity, his girlfriend invalidated him — and the audience, missing the legitimacy of asexuality, consistently laughed at them both.

Most of the theatergoers were on the older side, and were perhaps unfamiliar with asexuality or would never learn about it without their season ticket packages to The Huntington. In that case, despite their confusion, it behooved them to engage with the story. If an audience member’s next encounter with asexuality is their grandchild coming out, they might not laugh at that point, having previously met the topic in the theater. Regardless, asexual people deserve representation onstage — on any stage — whether or not it resonates with the majority of the audience.

Theater is a powerful platform for sharing real ideas and genuine experiences. It would be remiss to deny certain audiences access to its breadth. Not every play purposes to play around. Sometimes a performance aims to entertain; other times, a performance aims to initiate contemplation or change. Theatergoers must learn to approach each show with a suitable response, but that is their responsibility, not the theatermakers’ burden. Artists hold the right to share their work anywhere and everywhere, and they should — art that challenges anyone benefits everyone. While it is often awkward to perform a show about struggle for spectators who are far removed from it, embracing discomfort is far more appropriate than avoiding it.

—Staff writer Vivienne N. Germain can be reached at vivienne.germain@thecrimson.com.