an online exhibition exploring the history and themes of James Ijames' play White
July 19–August 4, 2024 at Langhorne Players' Spring Garden Mill
based on a true story
In 2014, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial was lauded as “one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States...”
Of the 103 invited participants, nine were black.
Out of those nine, two were women.
Of those two, one was Donelle Woolford, a fiction created by white male artist, Joe Scanlan.
This is her story.
white's early development
BALKONAÉ: The only plan I know about is how I'm bout to BLOW UUUUUUP.
2014
Whitney Biennial Controversy
Donelle Woolford, a fictional persona performed by Obie Award-winning Philadelphia actor Jennifer Kidwell, is selected as part of the exhibition.
2014-2015
Philadelphia playwright James Ijames develops White at the PlayPenn New Play Conference.
2015
Ijames wins the Philadelphia Theatre Company's Terrence McNally New Play Award for White.
JANE: This New America Exhibition is the first chapter in changing the current face of this institution. New America reflects the full range of America.
diversity in the art world
A 2019 study illuminates the harsh reality of representation across 18 major U.S. art institutions. These findings set the stage for the themes discussed in White.
Only 13% of artists were women, despite women representing just over 50% of the U.S. population.
85% of artists were white, compared to only 60% of the U.S. population.
The four largest groups represented across the studied museums were:
- White men (76%)
- White women (10.8%)
- Asian men (7.5%)
- Latinx men (2.6%)
All other identities make up the remaining 3.4%.
Between 2008 and 2020, only 11% of all museum acquisitions were works by women.[1]
According to a 2016 study, male artists outnumbered female artists in art history textbooks by a ratio of 4:1. Of the female artists, 79% were white and only 21% were women of color.
That means only 4% of the artists were women of color.
According to a 2022 survey, over 80% of museum directors identify as white.
identity tourism & cultural appropriation
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in the Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph - Racial Tourism! That's it!
Identity tourism refers to the adoption of an identity, be it racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, or socioeconomic, for purposes of entertainment, humor, provocation, or fascination.[1] Real-world examples include Rachel Doleful and Jessica Krug, who made headlines after altering their white appearances to claim minority identity status.[2] This harmful area of social behavior is the subject of ongoing study, especially as it presents in the world of cyberspace.
This behavior could be aptly characterized as a form of cultural appropriation, or the improper affectation of elements of a culture by the member of another culture. Cultural appropriation is especially harmful when the member of a dominant culture adopts elements from a marginalized one.[3] Writer Kjerstin Johnson agrees with White's Vanessa—the imitator has freedom to "'play', temporarily, an 'exotic' other, without experiencing any of the daily discriminations faced by other cultures."[4]
Cultures share features; fashion, food, stories, religion, and technology have all been shaped by cultures meeting and changing together. This is often assimilation, the process by which two or more groups merge socially, with one group usually remaining dominant.[5] Cultural appropriation differs from assimilation due to the power differential between members of dominant and marginalized groups, as is evidenced in part by the ability of the imitator to reject the appropriated identity whenever it no longer suits them.
DIANA: You must harness the magic within yourself and create something fierce.
an interview with playwright James Ijames
The play asks the question, why do people who have the most access, the most privilege, the most power in the world want so desperately to appear to be oppressed?
In 2021, Alison Scaramella Baker sat down with James Ijames to discuss his play White, his process, and what he hopes audiences will take away from their experience with the play.
AS: You’ve said that White was largely inspired by a real event, the Donelle Woolford / Joe Scanlan controversy at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. What struck you most about that event, and how did it inform the story you chose to tell?
JI: I think I was struck by the audacity. I just was so blown over by the impulse of the project. Like, I understand to a point the desire to be provocative and push boundaries. I get that part of the impulse, but I was just so curious about how it would happen. How could it happen? What were the conversations about it? Who knew what when? And all of this started to form itself into a play. I wanted to consider what the perfect storm of circumstances would be to allow a white man to hire a black performer to impersonate him and get featured in one of the most visible events in the art world. So, the play is my imagining of that with a healthy dose of my own life and experiences being a black person in predominantly white spaces.
AS: While White has been performed a number of times professionally, including at Philadelphia-area’s Theater Horizon, this is the first time you have directed it yourself. How does your relationship to a play change when you take on the role of director for your own work?
JI: I think I’m more critical of the writing. I’m finding that I want to clarify the language. When I was writing the play initially, I don’t know how much I thought about how it would be realized and now that I’m having to create the embodied version of the script, I’m seeing the places where the play could be better, where the play has aged poorly. And so, I’m actively playing playwright, director, and editor all at once. Which I have to say is very satisfying. I don’t have to explain myself to myself. I can look at a line in the play and say, “You don’t really mean that, you’re being cute, you’re being glib” and then I can, in that moment rewrite that line and then guide the actor in real time to the choice. It feels really collaborative and thrilling!
AS: Did you encounter any parallels between the contemporary fine art world and the contemporary theatre world while writing this play? Do you feel like there are parallels in the act of placing monetary value on something as subjective as art and questioning who gets to be the arbiter of its “worth”?
JI: I think the parallels are so subtle because theater is ephemeral. It happens and then it goes away and the audience who “consumes” or “possesses” the art in theater are instantly dispersed after the art is completed. And this happens over time, so each night the art is slightly different. Then each person who sees the play brings to it their own life, their own experiences etc. So, the parallels of monetary value between the visual art world and contemporary theatre lies in how we compensate and care for people who are making the art and who gets access to the art whether in terms of price, location, and content. The worth of something is defined in the theatre by a very narrow set of perspectives in the same way that visual art is held by a select few.
AS: White deals in part with the often-problematic relationship between predominantly white institutions and BIPOC artists. The theatre community in particular has undergone quite a reckoning this past year with organizations like We See You, White American Theater leading the charge. Can you talk a little bit about how this play engages with that conversation?
JI: I wrote this play in 2014 so if you think about how much has shifted since then this play was almost speculative fiction. The play asks the question, why do people who have the most access, the most privilege, the most power in the world want so desperately to appear to be oppressed? It’s just so strange to me and I see it all the time. I think what I couldn’t have imagined when I wrote the play, is the shift in practice, policy, and systems that the WSYWAT document requests. So, I think at the time I was writing this play to try to appeal to white audiences first. This is a real confession here. I don’t even think I was conscious of just how much I was doing that and that of course is what is so insidious about privileging one set of values, needs, experiences over anything else. So this production is allowing me to refocus this play. I’m much clearer on who I want to be as a writer, and this is in large part because I have done work on my own personal analysis around race and racism. This production will feature a play that has the wisdom I’ve gained since I first wrote it.
AS: In a note for Shotgun Players’ production of White back in 2018, you wrote, “Make’m laugh. Make’m cry. Make’m call their senator. But by any means necessary. Make’m do something.” Can you talk a little bit about how this philosophy on theatre, entertainment, and social change manifests in White?
JI: Well, I hope it’s funny. But I also hope it unsettles and disorients people. When you shake up people's assumptions you can get a whole group of people to see things with new eyes. And I personally like to do that with humor and pathos. If you can make people feel something you can make them do something. We saw that in the summer of 2020. Whole systems changed.
AS: White will be opening the Villanova Theatre season and welcoming back our audiences to live, in-person theatre. What about this play made it feel like the right choice to start our season after such a difficult year? What do you hope our audiences will take from their experience with the play?
JI: I hope the audience will consider where they can make a little room for someone they perhaps have been ignoring. I want the audience to think about the places in their life where they are causing harm or even oppressing someone. And then I hope the play will make them change. Plays affect individuals which feels insignificant, however individuals vote, they consume, they can make a difference in the lives of the people around them and that’s the power of theatre.
the full story of donelle woolford
VANESSA: But it was truly an experiment in becoming
someone else...One day there will be all of the versions of me floating on the ...wherever things like that go when we are done being that person.
The following case study was prepared by Alison Scaramella Baker for the 2021 production of White at Villanova University.
The plot of White is inspired by a true story that took place in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 2014, the museum invited three outside curators—Anthony Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), Michelle Grabner (artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago), and Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA)—to each curate one floor of the exhibition from their varied perspectives and methodologies. Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney, Donna De Salvo, touted the exhibition’s offerings as, “one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.” However, of the 103 invited participants, just nine were black. Of those nine artists, one, Donelle Woolford, a 37 year-old woman from Conyers Georgia, was actually the fabrication of a white man, 52 year-old artist Joe Scanlan. This brought the total of black female artists in the biennial down to one.
Joe Scanlan, who at the time of the biennial was a professor and the director of the visual arts program at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts, conceived of the persona of Donelle Woolford in 2001. After creating a number of collages, Scanlan decided that, “I liked them but they seemed like they would be more interesting if someone else made them, someone who could better exploit their historical and cultural references.” In 2004, Scanlan began focusing primarily on the Woolford character, and in 2005, he hired an actress to play her for the first time. Five actresses have played Woolford, sometimes independently and sometimes simultaneously. Two of the most prolific have been New York-based actress Abigail Ramsay and Philadelphia-based actress Jennifer Kidwell who both participated at Woolford in the Whitney Biennial.
The Whitney made no reference to Joe Scanlan, Abigail Ramsay, or Jennifer Kidwell in its marketing of Donelle Woolford. When the reality of Woolford's identity began to circulate, the artists collective HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, also known as the Yams Collective, withdrew from the biennial, citing their objections to the piece and experiences of disrespect from the museum. The Whitney responded with the following statement: “While we understand and respect the decision of HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, we support all the artists in the Biennial and the curatorial choices of the exhibition’s three curators. The Whitney Biennial has always been a site for debate — no matter how contentious or difficult — of the most important issues confronting our culture.” This was the extent of their remarks on the topic of Donelle Woolford, and Woolford’s biography remains on the museum’s website without addendum.
When pressed in interviews on the ethics of the Donelle Woolford creation, Joe Scanlan has been adamant about his equal collaboration with the actresses playing her. He has also made the argument that, “there is a long history of black characters created by white authors...I don’t understand needing permission to do it." He later added that, "in the beginning, I saw it more as a right and obligation that I had as an artist to be willing to engage with all parts of the world, just as any novelist or screenwriter would. But I have always been aware of how fraught the power relation of myself to Donelle Woolford is. I am interested in that trouble and in seeing if it can be destabilized by taking it too far, on the one hand, but also by seeing if it can be dismantled, piece by piece.” Donelle Woolford went on to tour the country as part of the Whitney Biennial.
inspired? take action and make a difference!
We’ve partnered with the Bucks County Anti-Racism Coalition to engage with the difficult topics within the show. Join us for our talk-back night hosted by Kevn E. Leven from BCARC on Friday, Aug. 2 after the performance. Continue the conversation to be a positive voice in our community by donating and connecting with BCARC on Facebook.
Kevin E. Leven is co-leader of the Bucks County Anti-Racism Coalition, A 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity organization dedicated to educating, informing, and taking action on matters of racial justice.
references
based on a true story
- Photo of Donelle Woolford
- Whitney Museum of Art: Whitney Biennial 2014
white's early development
- Background image: textural manipulation of Emma Amos' Gold Face Type.
- Photo of Donelle Woolford.
- Photo of James Ijames.
- Photo from the 2017 production of White at Theatre Horizon in Norristown, PA.
- WHYY: Review: 'White,' or is it black?
- Photo of Philadelphia Theatre Company's Suzanne Roberts Theatre.
diversity in the art world
- Background image: textural manipulation of Joshua Johnson's The Westwood Children. Johnson is the "earliest known professional Black artist in the United States."
- Diversity of Artists in Major U.S. Museums
- The Burns Halperin Report
- The "f" word: A content analysis of "female" artists in art history textbooks
- Art Museum Director Survey 2022
identity tourism & culture appropriation
- Background image: textural manipulation of Alma Thomas' Red Rose Cantata.
- Intercultural Communication in Contexts: Sixth Edition
- NBC News: Jessica Krug, Rachel Dolezal and America's white women who want to be Black
- Oxford University Press: "cultural appropriation"
- Kjerstin Johnson: Don't Mess Up When You Dress Up: Cultural Appropriation and Costumes
- American Psychological Association: "social assimilation"
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