You all must remember last Sunday night when Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin’s acceptance speech set the Internet on fire? Let's jog your memory! On stage, Chavkin went on to talk about diversity on Broadway (a must-needed chat for the industry), asking theatre producers and others in the industries to bring together more artists of colour and stressed upon hiring women artists especially.
“It’s not a pipeline issue,” said Chavkin, who was the only woman to direct a Broadway musical this season. “It’s a failure of imagination.”
Chavkin helmed Hadestown which is a mythological love story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The show's brilliant execution earned it eight of its 14 nominations at the Tonys, including best musical, best director, and best original score for singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell.
It’s the first musical by an all-female principal team to win best musical.
“We’re trying to use the 'great American novel' to wrestle with twenty-first century America,” said Chavkin, winner of the Best Direction of a Musical award. “It deals with white supremacy—the whiteness of the whale takes on loaded significance in this adaptation—but also climate change. What’s our relationship to nature as hunters, consumers of nature?”
READ: Ali Stroker Becomes First Wheelchair-Bound Actor To Win A Tony
Previously nominated for ‘Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812’ in 2017, this was Chavkin's first win. In her powerful speech she advocated for women highlighting the importance of diversity.
“There are so many women who are ready to go,” she said in her acceptance speech. “There are so many artists of colour who are ready to go. And we need to see that racial diversity and gender diversity reflected in our critical establishment, too. This is not a pipeline issue. It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job is to imagine the way the world could be.”
When asked her for how long she had you been working on the speech, Chavkin told ELLE, “I'd been working on it on and off since the nominations came out. Amber Gray Hadestown’s Persephone> and I sat with each other and read each other our drafts. We were almost like sports coaches drilling each other. You have to make sure you get to the second half, because it's too important for you not to say.”
Talking further about her speech going viral, Chavkin claimed, “I think the speech has gotten this reception because people in different fields are going, “Yes! This is resonant.” Because in the laws of physics, a system once in motion tends to stay in motion. We are in a patriarchal, white supremacist, cis system in America, where men are rewarded on their promise, and women—and people in non-dominant culture groups, so disabled artists and artists of colour—are rewarded for proving themselves.”
She added, “But the degree to which you have to prove yourself is so profound that it requires its own marathon. People get frustrated, hurt, exhausted, and drained by the degree of resources it takes to be able to self-produce. Nothing is in a vacuum. Economics in this country are profoundly tied to racial and cultural background. This is not specific to the theatre. This is a problem in journalism, too. It's everywhere.”
Feature Image Credit: Playbill
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