10/13/2020
How is a white woman qualified to write a play about racism? Good question.
I’d like to tell you about why I wrote Wolff's Law, and why it needed to be me who wrote it.
Several years ago, I knew I had to try to do more about the racism that was playing out in our country. It wasn't just that I was horrified at what I was seeing in the news and in my day to day life-- the PROBLEM was that I didn't see enough other white people being horrified.
As families of color continued to be shattered through racist violence, oppression and prejudice, I could hear a vapid echo of apathetic whiteness whispering "What a shame..."
I had to get my head around this. Why weren't more white folks up in arms about what was happening to other Americans in this country? Why was there a collective *shrug* and a lot of head shaking, but no discernible action? Where were the white Americans saying "THIS IS NOT OK!”?
I spent months thinking about how to illustrate this issue through my storytelling. Then the answer hit me like a sledgehammer.
One of the reasons white people aren't responding is because white people are programmed to visually disidentify with ethnic minorities.
We hear all the time about how minorities "don't feel seen,” but the issue goes so much further than socioeconomic differences, differences of circumstance, or cultural variables. White people are literally programmed by media, history, industry and family lines to NOT SEE minorities.
So I went at this scientifically. I set out to create a way of telling peoples’ stories in a theatrical petrie dish that could be chemically altered to produce a new result. In doing so, I hoped that the unseen could become seen, the unfelt would be felt, and new neural pathways might be built to change our future awareness.
I also knew that I couldn't simply vilify white people and at the same time expect them to come to my play and be affected and changed by it. I'm a mom: I know that you can't shame someone into change. You can only try to create an opportunity for them to see a need to change all by themselves. That's the only way it'll stick.
So I wrote a play in which I could proffer instead of preach. Knowing that we white folks are programmed to accept that Black suffering is a norm, I created a mirror image second act which would help a white audience to witness a day in the life of a person of color, and finally be able to see and feel themselves in the picture.
And a quick note about my use of the word "them." Please know that I am not excluding myself from the white population and pointing fingers. That said, I do what I hope all white folks will learn to do: I check myself. I check myself and check myself and I allow myself to be checked by others.
Peel back enough layers, and we'll discover the many little ways our programming has us not seeing our brothers and sisters. And when we don't see, we don't feel, and when we don't feel, we don't respond. And when we don't respond, we don't help.
So, I wrote the play.
--Liz McConahay
Liz McConahay is a Broadway and television actress, playwright, director and choreographer, and the published author of two self-help books about how changing your perspective changes the course of your life. A proud member of Actor's Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and the Dramatists Guild, she is a lifelong multi-disciplinary member of the professional theater community. McConahay is the recipient of the Jefferson Award For Community Service for co-founding the Benedictine Academy theater program in Elizabeth NJ, an endeavor which provided an avenue of theatrical expression for hundreds of female students in the under-supported urban Newark metro area.
www.wolffs-law.com
