making resistance irresistible
Photo by R.D. Smith on Unsplash
"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible."
This is a quote from writer, filmmaker, activist and mother Toni Cade Bambara. Ms. Bambara was speaking with Kay Bonetti in a 1982 interview for the American Audio Prose Library when she said this. She was speaking about the role of the artist within their respective communities. The above oft-cited quote isn't exactly what she said. What she actually said was this:
"As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. And one of the ways I do that is by celebrating those victories in my community.” (19:24)
I like the edited quote. I would like it to form the backbone of our National Theater of Resistance. Not as a slogan or anything, I don't want to co-opt it, but I'd like it to be the inspiration.
But I like the long-form quote too, for so many reasons.
She calls herself a "cultural worker." I want to be a "cultural worker" too.
She makes clear that her job is to celebrate victories in her community.
Celebrate. Victory. Community.
Make. Revolution. Irresistible.
Ever since I became a Theater Kid, I wanted to use my art as my activism. I wanted to make theater to fight injustice, inequality, bigotry, racism and the systems that profit from it.
Capitalism. Patriarchy. Systemic Racism.
I used to think that my job as an artist was to point out and/or make fun of things that were f#%ked. The idea was to make all the f#%ked stuff look uncool. (More on Theater Kids and being cool in my next post.) Now, there is nothing wrong with that, per se.
But Ms. Bambara has me thinking about it another way. Instead of constantly pointing out what is so very uncool, it is also possible to make the alternative so very cool as to be irresistible.
Make. Resistance. Irresistible.
Yes. That is what we must do with our National Theatre of Resistance.
We have to make resistance look so f#%king cool that only a real dummy wouldn't want to be a part of it.
Photo by Niclas Gustafsson on Unsplash
Photo by Costa Mokola on Unsplash
my art holds up a mirror to society.
As a cultural worker myself, I wonder if Ms. Bambara means that I need to make theater that celebrates not just victories big and small, but to be truly irresistible, I need to create theater that imagines those victories, prognosticates them, wrenches them into existence where before there was only the raging tire fire we are currently sitting criss-cross applesauce in.
I think a National Theater of Resistance can transform revolution from a duty to a desire.
Hear me out. As cultural workers in the here and now, we must stage the future we want to live in. Theater that holds up a mirror to how things suck is necessary, but it isn't particularly radical. But what might be? Theater that stages joy. Theater that stages hope.
We must stage the change we want to see.
I’m not suggesting this.
A National Theater of Resistance must put on stage not only what is possible but what is undeniable and inalienable.
I'm not suggesting Pollyanna.
I'm suggesting Theatre as a Weapon of Joy. I'm suggesting joy that is disruptive, collective and contagious.
History shows it can be done. The theater of oppressed communities has always done it. The New Federal Theater staging Black life and Black joy in the face of everything that wanted to erase it. Vaudeville on the Lower East Side, immigrant artists making their survival and their humor into something you couldn't look away from. Drag shows — not just in a few cities but in every city in this Never Quite Great Nation — artists who have been told for centuries that their existence is the problem, getting up on a stage and making their existence the most spectacular thing in the room. Not to mention this year’s Oscars. Joy as defiance is not a new idea. It's an old weapon that keeps getting rediscovered because it keeps working.
And I know this is happening right now. In Seattle and in cities across the country. I want to hear about it. Please reach out and tell me about your theater of resistance. I'd like to write about it here and share it with other cultural workers.
We can design an Irresistible Stage. We can direct irresistible stories. We can look to Bertolt Brecht, who understood that theater could make an audience think by refusing to let them get comfortable. To Augusto Boal, who blew up the wall between the stage and the people watching it and said: you are not the audience, you are the protagonist. To Suzan-Lori Parks, who stages history and grief and Blackness and beauty all at once, and makes you feel the weight of all of it without ever losing the music. These aren't just names to drop. They are a tradition. They are proof that this can be done.
We can make our dramaturgy irresistible. We can imagine what real freedom feels like and stage it.
That is what "irresistible" means here. A revolution that is deeply human, emotionally compelling, and fueled by culture, pleasure and joy. It can break through cynicism and apathy faster than argument, faster than facts.
In the same interview, Ms. Bambara said something else that stopped me. She said:
"When I look at my work with a little distance, two characteristics that jump out at me is tremendous capacity for laughter, but also tremendous capacity for rage.” (22:41)
Laughter and Rage.
Laughter that doesn't know rage is just entertainment. Rage that doesn't know laughter burns itself out. Together they are the thing that keeps you in the fight. Together they are, I would argue, what irresistible actually feels like.
Sounds like a good place to start.
Photo by Brooke Balentine on Unsplash
If you are a fellow theater kid and are interested in what a National Theatre of Resistance might look like, reach out and tell me:
What is your irresistible act of resistance?
Further Reading:
Toni Cade Bambara — The Salt Eaters
adrienne maree brown – Pleasure Activism / Emergent Strategy
bell hooks – Teaching to Transgress
Augusto Boal – Theatre of the Oppressed
José Esteban Muñoz – Cruising Utopia
Alice Walker – “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
