On Topic: Season Two, Episode Two

On Topic is platform exploring the complex and lucid cultural conversations that represent the DNA of MCAD. If you like this episode, you can explore events, writings, and more episodes. 

Sarah Bellamy is President of Penumbra. She has designed several programs that engage patrons in critical thinking, dialogue, and action around issues of race and social justice. Select programs include Penumbra’s RACE Workshop and the Summer Institute, a leadership development program for teens to practice art for social change. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Ms. Bellamy also holds an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. She has taught at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and served as Visiting Professor of Theatre and Culture at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Bellamy is a leading facilitator around issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion and has led coalition building efforts to address inequities in philanthropy and theatre. Her lectures on the power of race and representation have been presented across the country illuminating the ways in which images, narratives, and media influence perception and ultimately shape lives. She is a founding member of the Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition and has served on the Board of Directors for Theatre Communications Group. She is currently serving as a board member for the Jerome Foundation. She has been awarded a Hubert H. Humphrey Public Leadership Award and is a 2015 Bush Fellow.

Full Transcript: 

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Sanjit: For this episode, I was honored to speak with Sarah Bellamy of Penumbra Theatre, one of the nation's oldest and largest African American theater companies based in St. Paul. Sarah spoke about Penumbra's history and how the organization grapples with the social condition of Black Americans, while also serving as a beacon for the community.

Recently, Penumbra has transformed into a center for racial healing and developed a racial equity training program. Sarah joined me on the first day of the fall semester for a community conversation, in which the campus gathers to hear from someone who can inspire us in our own creative practices and beyond.

Sarah Bellamy is a nationally recognized racial equity facilitator and practitioner of racial healing. Her methods are holistic, profound, powerful, and foster powerful intimacy and authenticity for her clients. She brings a wealth of scholarship, strategic acuity, and deep compassion to consultative and coaching relationships.

Her writing focuses on memoir, personal essays, plays, and short stories. She's a stage director and the president of Penumbra, one of the nation's oldest and largest African American theater companies. Sarah's a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago.

She's taught at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and served as a visiting professor of theater and culture at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Her lectures on the power of race and representation have been presented across the country, illuminating the ways in which images, narratives, and media influences perception and ultimately shapes lives.

Sarah's been awarded the Hubert Humphrey Public Leadership Award of Bush Foundation Fellowship and serves on the Board of Directors of the Theatre Communications Group. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Jerome Foundation.

During our work together on the Jerome Foundation Board, I've gotten to know Sarah. I'm so impressed with her passion to see the world change from a lens of equity and inclusion, and her ability to go ahead and speak so poetically about this work in a way that I think touches so many people. We're really excited to have Sarah.

I'll talk to you a little bit about the format. Sarah will talk for a bit about Penumbra, and then we'll enter into a conversation with each other about both her anti-racism and anti-oppression work and the writing and scholarship she's been working on. Welcome and thanks for joining us.

Sarah: Thank you so much, Sanjit, for the warm welcome. Thanks so much for making space for me to join you today. I'm Sarah. I use she/her pronouns. I'm coming to you from St. Paul, from my home, which is about two blocks away from Penumbra. I'm excited to be with you for a number of reasons. I've always been really fascinated by MCAD. When I was a small child, I used to visit the campus with my mother who attended school there as an artist. I always felt like it was a magical place and have enjoyed coming back and seeing student shows and things like that. I think it's really important for arts organizations at this point to be in conversation about how we hold community.

I want to tell you a little bit about Penumbra. I'm going to assume that you don't know anything about it. Then, we'll have an opportunity to talk a little bit more deeply about where we are as an organization today. Penumbra is a nationally renowned Black theater company, located in St. Paul. We are actually entering into our 45th year of continuous production, which is no small feat for a Black legacy institution.

Many of the organizations that were founded around the same time as Penumbra Theatre have closed. Penumbra was founded out of the Black Arts Movement, which was a time period when, sort of on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement. When artists were looking at ... There was a lot of good will, but change was slow to be cemented.

And so, artists began creating work that was both inside spaces, outside spaces. Really trying to agitate and get people organized. We come from a social practice that is about activism, that is about building on the legacy of the social justice movements that Black folks in this country have been shepherding for a long time.

That's part of our proud legacy. We create new plays. We stage about five plays a year. And then, we have some pretty robust education and equity programs that we run as well, which I'm happy to talk about. We're located inside the historic Rondo Community, which is actually a really fascinating area. If anybody hasn't been over here, it's now gotten rebranded a bit as the Selby-Dale area. But folks from the neighborhood, we still refer to it as Rondo, because that's the historically Black neighborhood that was here. It's one of the first neighborhoods that actually had an anti-lynching law passed. We sent a bill forward.

This is the seat of political activism in the Black community here in St. Paul. And so, there's a great history here. The building inside which we're located is a community center. We've been there for the duration of the company's life. We were actually started out of an arts program that was designated for the community center and have remained there.

And so, even as the neighborhood rapidly gentrifies around us, Penumbra stays, we hope, as a beacon or a lighthouse. Rather than place-making, we're really focused on place-keeping. We are working really diligently to be in an authentic and deep relationship with native nations and to respect the sovereignty of native nations here. That's the work that Penumbra's doing around, "Place."

The other thing that we do, is we use our art to really get people active. I think in Penumbra's early years, that might have been a little clandestine. But at this point in our life cycle, it's front and center. We really want to make sure that we're taking the opportunity to bring audiences into deeper empathy and deeper awareness about what's going on, about the plight and the success and contributions of Black folks in particular in the United States.

The company began with a standing company, which is quite rare at this point. Not many organizations can afford to keep a standing company employed. Basically, what that means is regardless of whether or not the artists in the company would be on stage in a play, they would still draw a salary. It's something that I would love to return to at some point, but it is costly.

What that meant, in the early years, is that the artists that were also on stage ... They built the sets, they answered the phones, they sold the tickets. They cleaned the bathrooms and the dressing rooms. What that created is a real powerful ensemble aesthetic that continues to guide the company today, because everybody did everything.

They began this idea that, "There are no stars at Penumbra." Or, "The playwright is the star." And so, this ensemble aesthetic drives the work, but it also really drives how we're in relationship with each other and with our community. One of the most powerful things that I've heard the company members say to one another, as they are engaging either in rehearsal or after work or on stage is, "What do you need?"

I think that's the deepest expression of this ensemble aesthetic, "What do you need? How do I help you show up? How do I be with you in community today?" Wholeheartedly, I still believe that today is the leader of the organization. That part of what we're doing is world-building, whether we're on stages or off doing equity work. That's what continues to drive me and motivate me to this day.

The company was founded by my father, Lou Bellamy, and a group of other artists and scholars. Some of them were theater practitioners. Others were visual artists, writers, dancers. There was a whole group of people that would come together, create art, grapple with the social condition of Black Americans. Really argue with each other around concepts of ethics and artistry.

That really created this very rigorous aesthetic that we're known for today. Sometimes it becomes surrealist and avant-garde. Other times it's very naturalistic. We do magical realism. We do brand new plays that are breaking barriers and trying to think about the different ways that we can engage audiences. And so, it's been a really exciting, dynamic place to be a part of.

This 45-year old Black legacy institution that's been built really primarily around theater is now moving into a space of serving as a center for racial healing. What that means is we're going to be continuing to produce powerful thought provoking, provocative art. Supporting Black artists, supporting other artists of color that work with us.

We're going to continue our really extensive racial equity training program that we've got going. A lot of it is digital, which has been allowing us to expand our footprint even more at this point. We're adding a whole wellness component into our services as well, because what we understand is that we really do need to detoxify our bodies from the toxic stress of living in a racially stratified society.

What we envision is a center for racial healing that nurtures Black artists, advances equity, and facilitates wellness for individuals and for communities. The way that we're doing that is through a theory of change that I've developed. I call it the Three A's.

Basically, what it means is that we need to be willing to acknowledge historic abuse and trauma, which is something that we're notoriously not so great at in the United States. But we need to face history bravely, so that we don't replicate some of the things that we've done in the past.

That we do need to attend to the vulnerable. That in any society, in any community, in any organization, there will be a group of people who by virtue of the intersection of their identities will be the most vulnerable.

We need to attend to those folks first. We have to prioritize when we do this work. Everybody needs attention, but it's really important that we acknowledge that there are people who are really in some dire need of support.

And then, finally, we address inequity with meaningful and proportionate action. Of course, I think on the heels of what happened here in Minnesota, everyone was really eager to know what to do. They wanted to be active and take up good work.

And that's wonderful. It's a wonderful impulse. But I think if we're not willing to sit with a frank recognition of our history, and then a deep understanding of how we prioritize our work, the actions that we take actually can be harmful. They might be misguided or poorly informed.

And so, part of what we're trying to do is help people understand ... Yes, there's a need to triage, but there's also a need to plan for sustainable equity practices. You really do need to take the time to build that plan and learn as you go. That's where we are now. I'm really excited to be exploring into the work. We're in a deep, strategic planning process right now and excited to see where the organization is headed. I'm feeling pretty hopeful.

Sanjit: That's great. Sarah, thanks for that overview. I have to say that ... I guess the first question that I have is that it seems like taking a historic legacy institution like Penumbra, and then going ahead and making a significant course correction isn't something that's done overnight.

I guess I'm just curious to know how that shift was received. How do you reconcile people feeling like you're leaving certain things behind over that shift? And I guess I'm just curious about that, in relationship to specifically what went on with Penumbra ... But also to think about other institutions that may go through similar shifts and changes.

Sarah: I started working on the vision for the Center for Racial Healing in 2015. Part of the way that I was raised and taught ... There were two things that I was taught by some pretty profound thinkers and leaders of social and artist movements.

One was Amiri Baraka, who told me our job is to enter into these places of higher education where intellectual capital gets stuck, and open the doors and the windows and bring as much back to our communities as we can. That was one thing I was taught, which infuses all of our education programs.

And the other was it's really important to sit at the feet of the elders. And so, as I was developing this vision, I spent a lot of time really in conversation with elders. Both company members and community leaders around what we were thinking about.

Sanjit: Not a theater practitioner myself, but I certainly see parallels towards looking at how you're working in the field, where you're starting to try to really intentionally see how the framework was set up through a Eurocentric point of view.

And then, you're starting to go ahead and ... Whether it's holistically looking at community care, starting to go through that active process of decolonizing it.

I guess I'm wondering ... Are there steps you're still trying to achieve regarding Penumbra that are still down the line? As part of that process of transformation of the organization itself.

Sarah: Absolutely. That's one of the reasons why we're taking such a long time in the strategic plan. 18 months is a long time for a strat plan. But there are a couple things. One, when I came into the artistic directorship in 2012, I was in a co-artistic directorship with my father for four years, which is both amazing and also strange.

You have to figure out how to not talk about work stuff at home and home stuff at work. And so, that was a fun thing to negotiate, but I love working with him. But I was like, "Okay, I'll be an artistic director. I get to curate a season of content for people to engage and appreciate Black culture."

And then, I realize, "Oh, wow. The inequity in this field is so steep. I'm going to have to be an organizer. I'm going to have to be a travel rouser." And so, I spent a lot of my time and still do advocating for transformative philanthropy. I'm excited by the trends that are occurring now. We're seeing deeper investment in arts organizations of color.

But one of the things that I had to contend with is ... Not only do the individuals who have been denied for so long need healing, they were always worthy of deep investment, even if they couldn't make the case. But the organization itself needs to heal. The systems and structures that were supporting an under capitalized organization actually need to be advanced.

And so, what we're doing now is moving into a sense of abundance that we've never had before. We're looking at transformative HR practices. We're looking at radically shifting the ways that we contract with artists to recognize IP, and try to acknowledge some of the ways in which institutions have actually been not serving individual artists, freelance artists very well.

There's a lot of work to do. It goes deep. It's exciting, but it feels like, "Wow. If we take everything apart, are we going to be able to put it back together?" Fortunately, we have a lot of really wonderful teams that are working on that right now.

Sanjit: In your shift to working in racial healing and equity practices ... Are there certain things that you think institutions, especially well-intentioned institutions, just don't get and that you're seeing patterns of?

Are there certain things that you think that they're making significantly dangerous assumptions on that you're able to detect? Or is it just all over the place?

Sarah: Well, I think in ways it's all over the place. I think there's regional specificity to contend with. Probably, the thing that I'm seeing the most that concerns me is the performative nature of doing equity work. Like the, "Keeping up with the people next door," kind of thing.

What I find, at least when I consult with organizations, is I really have to get them into a more patient place. Into a place that understands, "This is going to be deep. It's going to be long." And that is the way that you really change.

It doesn't mean that we can't take immediate action. That's what I mean when I talk about triage, but we have to unlearn so much. We've been so socially conditioned. And I write about this a lot ... That, to move into a space where our bodies are actually metabolizing this new knowledge, we do need somatic processes that are with us.

I think a lot of people stay really cerebral and intellectual when they think about how to do this work. But then, when we get into those awkward moments, we never register it in our brains. It's in our guts. Our hands get sweaty or our breathing gets more rapid. That's because it's a whole system thing. This is about relationships with people.

I think, at the end of the day, the best equity work is about deepening your relationship with yourself and with others. That's truly what it is. And so, for those folks that are willing to go on that journey ... It's endless. There's so much reward and richness there, but you have to have patience and stamina.

Sanjit: I like the way you boiled that down to very elemental humanistic terms. It's not necessarily about policy. It is about relationships and your place in the world. I'll read Adam's question first, because I think that relates to it.

"I'm inspired by your vision, Sarah, and looking forward to what's ahead for Penumbra. I'm curious to know if you have community partners you're working with on racial healing?"

Sarah: Thank you, Adam, for your question. Part of what we did when we were moving into this new vision is, we identified four core areas that Penumbra had already moved into relationships with organizations with to think about how to focus on not just equity but healing.

And so, those areas are climate justice, criminal justice reform, education, and health equity. These are also areas where you see just really paltry numbers for Black and native people, in terms of inequity here in Minnesota. Actually, the Dakotas, Illinois and Wisconsin, we're in a bit of a regional hotspot around those things.

And so, we are really intentionally moving into partnership with different entities. We've been working with health partners a lot to think about ... In particular, better health outcomes for Black women and our babies. We've been really focusing on that.

We're establishing a new relationship that I'm very excited about with People Serving People, to look at positive racial identity development work for Black and native kids. Doing some early childhood education programs, which I'm so thrilled about.

We are still investigating the right relationships in terms of the climate justice work, but we have one of our company members, Seitu Ken Jones and his wife Soyini.  We have Frogtown Farm in St. Paul, which is another place that we're moving into relationship with. We're just at the cusp of that.

And I'm glad you asked that question, Adam, because intrinsic in what you're asking is, "What is the constellation holding the work?" No one entity can do this alone. I just feel really, sometimes overwhelmed emotionally, to the point of tears, when I look around and I see all of the people that are trying to move this state forward.

One of the people I'm so impressed with is Dr. Rachel Hardeman Jones, who's starting the center for anti-racism and health equity at the University of Minnesota. Really powerful work. There's just amazing people everywhere and I'm like, "All right, we can do this. We can do this. I believe in us."

But we need these leaders to not like get tired. Right? To not burn out. And that's part of what we're going to be doing with a Leadership Institute at Penumbra, is trying to figure out how we can sustain, particularly leaders of color.

I would say even more specifically, Black women and queer BIPOC folks, because these are the people that are really pushing in ways that they weather a lot. They're really proximate to the sticking points and the systemic defense mechanisms and their bodies show it. That's kind of the work we're trying to do.

Sanjit: I know. I think it was back in June or so ... Last June, a year ago, where you'd written an essay called Performing Whiteness. It's in the Paris Review. I was really impressed by the heartfelt and personal qualities of it, but at the same time your ability to want to go ahead and think at the 30 or 40,000 foot level about what this means. About how to make sense of this and how to come to terms with that.

And so, a lot of what I've heard you talk about so far fits in within what I saw in this essay. I guess I'm just wondering more about ... As you're wearing so many different hats, how passionate are you about scholarship? About going ahead and writing and trying to make sense of this from that meta level?

And then, maybe from that we can go ahead and ... From an educational perspective, what do you think colleges, especially small ones like MCAD, can or should do to welcome and protect Black community members?

Sarah: That's an excellent question. Writing is how I think. It is literally ... That's how I greet the world. It's where I process. It's where I find my ancestors. It's hugely important to me. I find that running an organization, trying to change philanthropy, being the mom of two small children. All of the things.

How do we find time to do those things that are our touchstone clarifying rituals that help us greet the world and greet ourselves? I try to make space for that. That's one of the things I work on a lot when I'm coaching leaders. Trying to create days of integration, where we can really begin to pull all of our pieces together.

I'm committed to writing. I'm actually working on a book right now. And I love, love, love teaching. I love engaging with students. I love how they push me to think of things differently. I love making syllabi.

I do not like the first week before classes, because I'm like, "Oh my gosh." You know that month right before classes start? Where you're like, "I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can go back and teach." Definitely have sympathy for that.

But I'm deeply committed to it. And I'm deeply committed to Penumbra remaining a space where we are inviting provocative thinkers who continue to challenge us and make us uncomfortable and push us. I think it's always been a space of deep scholarship and responsible scholarship.

The history of Black letters, of Black humanities in this country ... And then, going back to before the Middle Passage, it's so profound. Yes, it just has to be. What we can do in colleges ... I feel like our work right now is to just acknowledge that by virtue of the bodies that certain folks are born into, the moment they leave a classroom, they will be more vulnerable.

Even in the classroom, as we're engaging material. And so, I think the more that we're willing to create space to see that we're not all coming to this content from the same place ... That we're not all moving around a campus in the same way. Depending on how we look, how we present, all of those things. Some folks are really radically unsafe and some folks are really radically invisibilized. Some folks don't have to contend with that at all.

And that is a conversation that we have to keep having. Every institution needs to figure out their own organic path through that work to create more safety and comfort. I think comfort is really a huge piece. Yes, safety is great. That's the bare minimum. How do we actually help people feel at home and not rely on them to do the work for us?

I don't have neat and tidy answers in five minutes, but it is something that I'm committed to being in conversation with institutions. Especially, through the racial healing work we're trying to do at Penumbra. Part of the thing that I think about when I think about art, equity, and wellness ... This idea that racial healing somehow sits at the confluence of these three rivers.

For me, art is this place where we dream new worlds, where we dream our liberation. We move into things that we didn't know were possible. The equity work or the wellness work is where we are trying to attend with our bodies and the fact that they need to heal. Connecting our minds and our hearts and detoxifying.

And so, you've got these people that are dreaming big and that are feeling better in their bodies. Now, the world needs to be ready for them. These incredible beings. And so, that's where the equity piece comes in. I really feel like investigating the dynamism between those three things can lead to some really exciting policies and practices to protect folks.

Sanjit: I think that's a great way to frame it. Especially, around the notion of knowing that there are different ways that individuals are occupying these spaces. They're the same spaces. It's not necessarily about the creation of additional spaces, but it's about acknowledgement of the way people occupy that.

In some ways, I really felt that when you started to talk in that essay that I posted about. That idea of racial inheritance. The entire construct of racial inheritance is an embodiment of a specific form of thinking, but also a very specific form of trauma that communities of color see.

Sarah, if you could just talk a little bit more about racial inheritance and what you think it means for institutions to acknowledge that. Or what you think it meant for you as someone that's witnessing and also translating these things to young children and to another community.

Sarah: That's a huge question. I'll do my best.

Sanjit: We'll consider this the first part. We'll invite you ...

Sarah: The first part of it. Racial inheritance. First of all, I think of racial healing as excavating both traumas and resiliencies that are buried within our bodies based on our racial and cultural experiences. It's important that you hear me say, "Traumas and resiliencies," because we carry both.

How Black culture thrives today is so incredible. Considering what Black folks have been through here in this country. So it's both. I also really want to ... I'm very curious about and committed to exploring the trauma that learning to be white actually does to white folks in this country as well.

That is a social construct. It is a very highly disciplined, policed construct that people are disciplined into. And there's some great thinking around it. One of the people that I love is a writer named Thandeka. She actually has a book called Learning to Be White and I think the subtitle is Race, God, and Money in America.

But it talks about this sort of spiritual toll that it takes. And then, [00:30:30] the literal toll. Children are told they can't play with certain people or young folks are told they can't date certain people. You lose things along the way. And so, I'm really fascinated about that.

In fact, I'm giving a talk to a group next month about that. About the grieving I think that white folks need to do as they come to terms with racial inheritance and being raced. I also want to say very clearly, I think that's their own work to do. I think that there can be cultural midwives to support that work, but that they need to be very clearly choosing to step into that space.

Too often, we're like, "You're a person of color on this board. You should do X, Y or Z thing." Some of us really have capacity for that and others don't. It needs to be a decision that's made. And then, those folks need to get resourced.

Not only paid, but supported in that midwifery that happens as people start to move out of a space where they're unconsciously practicing whiteness and into a space where they're consciously engaging with the construct.

Racial inheritance is profound. I'm of the mind that it's one of the most, if not the defining quality or characteristic of Americans. It's up there. It's baked into our founding documents, and we never really resolved the intolerable contradictions that are there. People were imagining a free country that was on stolen land and powered by slave labor.

That's just never been acknowledged truly, deeply. And the other thing I'm really interested in is how, when we're not conscious of these things, our bodies actually start to lurch into behaviors that may be ancestral. We're actually performing race in ways that we're not thinking of.

We're not actually ... It's more reactive. That's a really dangerous place to be. That's what I was writing about in Performing Whiteness. And I'm exploring that a little bit more in an extended chapter of the book. I just feel like it's the work of a lifetime.

For someone like me, who's a light-skinned Black identified woman, who grew up code switching a lot and figuring out how to be a chameleon in different spaces ... The privilege of a lifetime was being exactly who I am in every one of those spaces.

I think if we do that for people, that's what equity work ought to strive toward, is that we want people to show up authentically themselves and feel safe in doing so.

Sanjit: That's great. It's great to go ahead and go into such depth with you about things that you're passionate about. I have a feeling that when we were asking questions, when you heard a question about who you're partnering with ... I think we're also thinking that we've got to do more together between Penumbra and MCAD.

I think that's a given. But really, I couldn't think of a better way for us to start our first day of the new school year, back in-person, than having this conversation with you. I just look forward to future conversations and collaborations to come.

Sarah: Thank you. Thank you so much for welcoming me. It's been so nice to be with you today.

Sanjit: Thanks for listening to this episode of On Topic. To find out more about all of my guests this season and from season one, head to mcad.edu/ontopic, where you can find profiles and links to all of our guests.

If you haven't already, don't forget to like, rate, subscribe, and follow wherever you're listening. You can always find more content at mcad.edu/ontopic. This podcast was produced with Taylor Lewin and underscoreaudio.co.