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Background Information
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This one-woman theatre piece, written and performed by Anne Sibley
O’Brien and directed by Michael Rafkin, examines whiteness
– the often unconscious patterns of attitude and behavior acquired
by white people.
Using storytelling, music, movement and metaphor, the piece traces
how these patterns are acquired, what toll they take, and how they
might be dismantled. White Lies invites viewers to discover their
own stories of whiteness. An opportunity for reflection follows
the performance.
The piece has received support from the Rebel Blend Fund, Coffee
By Design, Portland, Maine, and the Eleanor Humes Haney Fund.
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The study of racism, and consideration of what to do about it,
is usually conducted by examining its impact on people of color.
In order to devise effective remedies, we need also to understand
what happens to white people: How are they coerced into a system
that is so damaging to others? If they are to become truly powerful
allies in the struggle to end racism, white people must explore
how racism has damaged them also.
But discussions about white racism tend to be laden with heavy doses
of blame, guilt, defensiveness, obligation, and resistance. Given
these “bad feelings”, many people avoid such discussions
whenever possible. What if we imagined another approach? What if
we simply began, without judgment, to tell our own stories?
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What was your experience as a child? When did you first notice that
there were white people, and there were people of color? Where did
you see yourself in this picture? Was your early life spent with
people of different races, or primarily with one group? What kind
of relationships did you have across race? If you were to imagine
your own story of race as a fairy tale or myth, how would you tell
it?
These and similar questions can be the catalyst for an exploration
of how white people are socialized into whiteness, as individuals
and as a group. Such a process is, in fact, the first step in dismantling
such social patterns.
First, we have to be able to see them.
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One of the definitive qualities of whiteness is its invisibility
to most white people. As the dominant group, white people are systematically
trained to not see their own race and its attached privileges, but
to see themselves as the norm.
The very process of becoming aware of whiteness, like any breaking
of an imposed silence, begins to disturb the patterns. As one African-American
viewer remarked to white viewers in a discussion following a performance
of White Lies, “This is the first step; this is reclaiming
your psychic ground.”
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White Lies is composed of three strands.
The Guide narrates the piece, using the structure of the Hero Journey.
The “Annie stories” illustrate the stages of the journey with events from the life of the playwright.
The Ghost pieces offer metaphors for the patterns of whiteness, each one represented by a white garment.
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residencies, cirriculum connections,
workshops
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