The New Yorker Radio Hour - What to Do with the Problematic Past, Part I

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

We draw meaning and comfort from traditions, but when the world changes, traditions can stop reflecting our values and cause us pain. This episode features three people struggling against traditions that have become problematic.  The producer Ngofeen Mputubwele talks with Jeanna Kadlec, the author of “Heretic,” a memoir of leaving the evangelical church; and the actor Britton Smith, a leader of Broadway Advocacy Coalition, which seeks to make Broadway an equitable workplace for performers of color. “The fire was loud and the reckoning was very visible to everyone,” Smith tells Mputubwele. “The fire crumbled into ashes, and now the ashes are starting to settle.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Gauphin Boutoula. I produce stories on this show about how we all use language and music and theology and even law to order the world we live in. Now, we all enter this world naked. Then, little by little, We get things.

Within seconds, we get swaddled in blankets, then wrapped in diapers, we get booties, and then clothes, all these things that were here before us are laid on top of us. As we grow up, it's not just clothes on our backs anymore. We're wrapped in beliefs, in practices, in traditions, in songs, in all the ways that things are done. and have always been done, so that by the time we're adults, we may not even notice everything we've acquired. It's wrapped so tight. But then, at a certain point, something changes.

One or more of the clothes that were laid on you starts itching, chafing. Something doesn't quite fit right. It's binding you, and you break out in hives. That's where things get interesting. In the spirit of starting a new year, This episode is all about that moment when you realize, wait, I don't think I want to wear this anymore. Can I throw it out? Or this thing is harmful, but I still kind of love it. What happens next? To start us off, we're going to go to one of the foundational stories, the story of God. I wrote a memoir this year by a woman named Gina Cadillac. She and I aren't from the same place. I'm from Tennessee. She's from the Midwest. But we grew up in the same corner of what we call the capital C church.

And when I went to interview her, our shared background came up very quickly. Before we get started, I just want to sing something. Yes. A benediction. I mean, I don't know if it's a benediction. It's more like, I want to sing something and then see if you can join it. Okay, do you know this one? Father Abraham had many sons.

Oh, my God. And many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them. And so are you. Oh, my God. So let's just praise the Lord right on. Because you did that, can I, I'm going to sing something to you in turn that you may also well know for you. Yes.

I am a C. Oh, yeah. I am a C-H. I am a C-H-I-S-T. I-A-N, N-I-S-E-R-I-S-T, and my H-E-E-A-R-E-A-R-E-A-L-I-A-L-I-A-M-A-A-L-A-M-A-S. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, wow, that's a good, that's what, that is the right one. That's the right one. Oh, my gosh. I love the ease with which we both pulled that out of our bodies and did not need to think. For Gina, some of the associations that come with evangelicalism are very, very warm.

To me, it really goes back to, to, like, being in my mom's red station wagon. Like on the gravel country road to church in rural, rural Iowa. And like listening to Christian contemporary Christian music at the time, listening to children's worship tapes like that. My mom really, she made sure that like we were surrounded by it. The signs that Gina rubbed up against the story she was raised in came really early. It was just everywhere. Eve is sinful and so are you.

You are one of Eve's daughters. Like, do not tempt your brothers to send. I couldn't tell you the first times I heard those. I definitely had early experiences at starting in sixth grade. It was the first time I started getting pulled aside by church ladies for purportedly dressing inappropriately, which the thing is I could never cover up to anyone's satisfaction. It happened in public sometimes. But my parents were never brought in for these conversations, were never informed that they'd happened. Yeah.

Gina Cadillac's memoir is called Heretic. Just a note to listeners, this conversation touches on suicide. Kyle was seasick on the whale watching tour during our honeymoon. He didn't take dramamine because I didn't have any. I don't get seasick, and I didn't know he was prone to seasickness. We had never been on that kind of boat together. How do you not have any? He asked me, his voice slow from the nausea.

My mom always has it. it. I had no response to that. I leaned over the rail, watching the whale leap in and out of the Atlantic, which stretched out as far as the eye could see. The vast expanse felt endless, breathless, like if I closed my eyes, it would carry me away. The breeze rucked my dress up around me, threatening a Maryland moment, but for the first time in my life, I could have cared less. I was in my body, present, unselfconscious, in a new way. in a way that was foreign to me and finally comfortable. I didn't have to be on guard about being overly modest.

I didn't have to be on guard about men and their desires. I had a husband. I was claimed. I was married. I was safe. Marriage in the church means safety. Churches are organized around relationships, and married couples in the hierarchy are at the top,

and single women are suspect. If I was married, I was safe. And if I was married to a guy like this, I was especially safe. I could be as like intellectual and smart and academic and career driven as I wanted. And because this man had signed off on my decisions, no one could say shit to me. What were the early signs to you that marriage wasn't going to be the thing that you thought it was going to be? The sense of internal pressure that I felt to perform domesticity, to make sure that he was okay at all times, it felt like it was on me to make sure that the house was okay, that everything was taken care of, that we had groceries, that the bills were paid. And then I also was having to be performing in the bedroom.

Gina writes about that time in her book, and the passages are heavy. But as her marriage is falling apart and she's doubting her place in church, something else is happening. She's falling in love with a friend who's a woman and discovering that she's queer. You have this real struggle that's sort of like I can't leave. this and not just I can't leave a marriage because leaving a marriage is bad. It seems like part of it is you being like if I believe what I believe, if I believe who the Lord is, and I believe the promises he's made, and I've committed my life to him, then what does it mean if I break this vow? Yeah. What am I saying about God? Yeah. And nothing bad is happening in air quotes. Right. So like what is

what's my problem? Right. I mean, basically what you just said articulated, like, my, like, the one of the worst years slash the worst year of my life because I, it felt like such a breaking point in my faith. Even in all of my years of faith and, like, hearing so many people I knew in college be like, well, why does God let war happen? Like, if God exists, why do bad things happen in the world? And those kinds of questions never trip me up.

I always had an answer. I always had some, like, kind of dense. You know, theology for them. But this, like this question of why God would allow me, like, why his plan would be for me to marry this guy if I was a lesbian. And also why that would be his plan for my husband. Like, my husband's just this really devout, solid dude. Like, why would that be his plan for him, you know? And I just kept getting tripped up on that.

Like, how could this happen? Meanwhile, my mental health is rapidly disintegrating. I was in a really dark place where I just ultimately became really convinced that it would be better for me to end my life than to stay married. Because I was convinced that ending my life would be more God-honoring than getting a divorce would be. because I could at least like die still in this marriage. And not having broken it. And not having broken that vow to my husband, not having broken that vow to God.

It's me and Jesus and then me and my husband and then everybody else. I feel like someone might think that the issue is, okay, so you made this vow to God and you don't want to break that because breaking that is against the rules. And that's what's hard. And it's like, it strikes me as like, that's not the problem. I didn't know how, like something I didn't realize until I, you know, left, like, my relationship with Jesus. I say left the church, like, as kind of a shorthand.

And what I really mean is, like, that I broke up with God because that sounds, I think, a little bit extreme for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, believers know, like, what that means. And one of the things that so struck me was, like, I don't even know how to think without God as an intermediary. I don't even know how to like articulate what I want without checking in. And I felt so stripped down and just raw. Who can't articulate any single thing that they want? I just, I felt like I was starting over from total scratch,

just crying on the floor. Because I didn't feel like I could pray. I don't know how to live without God. I don't know how to live without Jesus. I don't know how to live without this way of life informing my every day. Who am I without this? You leave the marriage, and you describe experiencing exile from the church. I was cut off and, you know, ghosted basically to varying degrees by almost everyone.

And that's the other thing is that very few people, I actually don't think anyone really had the guts to say it to my face. You know, if someone was going to cut me off, like, have the guts to, like, stab me in the front. Like, don't stab me in the back. These are women who I loved and who I trusted and who I wanted to process things with and talk things through and, you know, kind of have that space to work things out, you know, do life with. as the saying goes, and they just never responded, which was a message in and of itself. The church is broken. It cannot be fixed from the inside. Evangelicalism is rotten, shot through to the core with the kind of infectious hatred

that cannot be undone one person at a time. The institution is designed to work against women, against queers, against anyone who isn't white, against anyone who wakes up while still plugged in. It's designed to press on us until we are crushed within it, unrecognizable to ourselves. Leave it behind. Purn it down. Go build something new. You decided to leave your faith completely behind. Why? It was partly a choice and it was partly, I will say it was partly not a choice, because there wasn't space to exist as a divorced queer woman in the churches that I was that I was in.

And then it also, it was absolutely a choice for me to leave as fully as I did and for me to leave Christianity as fully as I did. And like I do talk about in the book trying to go to more, I guess what we would call more liberal and more accepting churches that like affirm women and leadership and women's ordination and that affirm racial justice. that affirm LGBTQ ordination and gay marriage and things like that. And so I tried, I tried those churches. And I just couldn't really allow myself that spaciousness. I really had to make a clean break in order to heal. These days, I don't pray to any Christian God, but I am, It took me many, many years to start praying again, but I am praying again. Gina Cadillac's memoir is called Heretic. In the passage she read referring to her ex-husband as Kyle, that's a pseudonym.

When we come back, we're going to explore change on Broadway. Y'all thought I was playing when I said I was mad? That wasn't a skit. That was real. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Gauphan.

Mvuehuehuehuehler. I'm hosting today's episode. And just a quick heads up, our next story contains its share of rough language. You know what I mean. Who are you? Who am I? You can answer however you want. I am Britton Smith.

I am a son. I am a gay, black megapaster. Britton Smith is not really a pastor, but you can tell he likes an audience. I'm an artist, I'm an advocate, and I'm a troublemaker. Sometimes I need reminder of my light, because the loudest courses and I got to do it. Last year, he won a Tony Award, the most prestigious award there is on Broadway. This is an incredible honor. Oh, my God.

But Britain didn't get his Tony for his singing or his acting. To make an industry better that wasn't even built for us. He got it for this organization he and his peers started called BAC, Broadway Advocacy Coalition. At the heart of the organization was the desire to fuse art and activism to make the policies around us more humane. One of their goals was to address the way Broadway treats black people.

George Floyd's murder in a global pandemic stopped all of us and brought us to our knees and it created this beautiful opening for black people to unite around rage, around hope, around redesigning this very room.

Whoa! So the year is 2020. It's June. And there's a lot of conversation about changing the status quo inside institutions. And one of those institutions was Broadway. A lot of theaters were posting things on Instagram saying, you know, what happened to George Floyd was ridiculous. We completely stand for Black Lives Matter.

And we do everything in our power to make sure that our team and our staff feels protected. And motherfuckers at home are like, are you fucking kidding me? you did this. You said this. You are a white-ass man with a white-ass staff who doesn't allow people of color to even work for you

because of a two-year internship. You want motherfuckers to do two years of free internship, and that's the norm. That system is drenched in racism. People were getting called out, major directors, major, I mean, major white figures

in our industry were being called to, by masses of people. So Britain and his colleagues convened this giant three-day Zoom meeting of actors, producers, theater owners to talk about what it was like to be black in the Broadway machine. A few years ago, I was in the second day of rehearsal for a show and a white stage manager, who I do not know, walked up to me, and he reached out and touched my hair and said, who, your hair is looking wild today.

Do you need a brush? Are you going to leave it like that? I was the only black woman in the entire space. And I told Cody, and I just remember Cody's eyes. Playing the game for a lot of us is silencing ourselves. And you don't know what to do. You don't know who you can talk to. You don't, because you're scared.

I don't want anyone from the creative team to know because then I might lose a job, which I actually did. Because when word got out that I was not being silent about what happened to me, it was told to a room of producers that I was a loose-handed who couldn't be trusted. George Zimmerman, I will never forget when I said, hey, do you mind posting this for me and company management telling me it's too much of a political hot button? That boy dying was too much of a political hot button. In the middle of the show, I found out that George Zimmerman wasn't indicted. And I broke down, I broke down under the stage management office, Ariana DeBose put her arms around me.

and I had to go back on stage with this sea of people who I don't know if they care about me tell me how many theaters are owned by people of color okay now tell me how many successful commercial producers there are of color meanwhile I have to look them in the eye and trust them on stage

but knowing when we walk out of that door you don't have my back because saying Black Lives Matter is a hard thing for you to say because it might mess with your money because it might mess with your money I don't want diversity. I want equality. Amber Iman, Cody Renard Richard, and Daniel Watts were among the speakers who shared their experiences at this three-day conference organized by Britain and his organization BAC.

I think in my years of auditioning, which is probably 10 or more years, I have seen two casting directors of color. two of colors and most of my jobs are jobs where I'm in an all black cast so imagine what it feels like walking into a room all your friends are black you're all warming up you're getting ready you're doing a black show and you are charged to like call on your ancestry as blackness calling what you know call on who you are calling your family call on this role what this is and bring all that blackness into a room where you walk in and you're ready to do your role You're ready to do your thing and it's an all-white creative team and an all-white casting. I have felt like cattle.

I feel like I'm bringing in something that there's no way you understand fully. Britain has had a whole career of experiences like these. Both he and I trained in college as classical baritones, and I wanted to ask him about his experiences, from training, to graduating and performing on stage on Broadway. Did you go to a predominantly white university to study to? Yeah. And all of that checking our blackness before or listening to edits.

I mean, my voice teachers were like, you sound, try it. And I mean, oh, my God. Just give me an example. So I started off singing in the church, and my voice is large. and it is free and it is there's a lot of joy and rage in my natural sound

through my blood I have found a map to go back home I've discovered that my sanctuary lives inside and it's big enough for all the pain

I try to hide so let's get drunk and go to church. Yeah, hey, hey, let's get. I was trained to be a classical baritone because I had a nice timbre, but they had to strip a lot of my soul from that

so that I could sound competitive. Give me industry successful tone, and then give me your tone. My tone is, is, hey, how are you? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yes, here we go.

The industry tone is more, yeah, how are you? How are you doing? Absolutely. It's, there's a lightness to it. My voice went through a lot of transition and singing more forward, like really allowing your sound to be more forward. And they tell you this for health. On a Broadway career, you have to be able to sing the same way eight shows a week. So there is a level of care and health.

health for the voice that if you're singing in a church, you don't have to have because you're letting it out one day a week, and you get to just like let the Lord use you and open up and just like sing to the heavens and use God to get through. You can't really use God to get through alone eight shows a week. You're going to be sounding like, oh, he ran out of God. That's running out of God. You have to rely on many things. And I was taught that I had to place my voice in a certain way, to sound a certain way, which I ended up sounding so thin, no color. It wasn't until I got out of school that I started seeing people like Billy Porter and Brandon Victor Dixon and Joshua Henry sing healthy and sound black. I'm thinking about, what was the spiritual I sang?

Oh, were you there? Were you there when they crucified? Yeah. It was like you use your classical tone, were you there? Right? Yes. But you also know that you can't, you can't, it's not a spirit, like, it's a spiritual, but you're in classical land.

So you can't church sing it, even though literally that song you've sung at church before. Mm-hmm. You keep it. There's a container. Yeah. And there's a way of training that black body to be. be able to do that container and make the container ancestrally sacred.

You can say, yo, you can't make what you're doing gospel because this song was in this time period where it was written. Let's dig deep about what was happening during that time period and what black people had to contain. And just lock into, this isn't about me, I am a vessel for my ancestors and how they sang this and I'm going to use my craft and how they did. did it to latch on to them while I'm doing this.

Nobody white can say that to a young black artist. Or to me, nobody in my program had that ability to go, I need you to do it like this. That's not a conversation you even have. You can't even have that conversation. Because the traditional musical theater canon doesn't offer anything but the great whites. In 2020, when the pandemic happened and we were all shut down, George Floyd's murder allowed people who normally wouldn't say things out loud to just feel erupted and feel broken enough to yell in a way.

So we got like 5,000 people to show up on a live YouTube version of a sexy Zoom meeting. So we curated speakers to be a part of this. And the first day was just like black people saying, yo, this is really what it is. knowing that on this Zoom call watching people who are going to probably hire you or not hire you. These are theater owners who have the keys to the kingdom. Everybody watching this got to witness and listen to the stories of black people in this industry. And we got our Tony Award. I believe that it was because we were able to take that fire and that anger and place it in a space where people could process.

This is why people are mad. And then because we're awesome and because we actually care about this work, We're going to pay our team, and you're going to help us pay our team to make you better. As Broadway reopened, BAC embedded with show after show after show, nearly 10 Broadway shows to lead workshops on how to improve working conditions. The night at the Tony Awards, in many ways, recognized all that work. Describe that room and that night. The Tony's is it's the community of,

of Broadway. It's like the Crim de la Crem, right? I think there are like four nominees per category, maybe five per category. So it's mainly producers and theater owners and which there are, I think, five theater owners. It's something like four or five who own all of the real estate of Broadway,

which means everybody in that space can only be there if those four or five people say their show can be there. Because you can't get an award unless you are a part of a production. So these people are like the kings. So Britain gets on stage to accept the award and makes a speech. My biggest worry is that when we come back to the machine, when Broadway comes back, that opening will close and push out empathy and push out challenge. I've been thinking about power and change and where it lives and where it comes from,

and it's in this room right here. It's in this room right here. Oh man. And with this room decides to move beyond design and say, we want this room to look different. Let's design this room for next year and the year after. That's when we'll earn the phrase Black Lives Matter. That's when we'll earn the phrase Black Lives Matter.

That's when we'll earn the phrase Black Lives Matter. Thank you, Industry, for letting us vision with you. and guide you to redesign this room in our community. When Broadway theaters reopened after the shutdown and after the protests of 2020, they announced a slate of seven plays by seven black playwrights. All new plays, including Clydes by Lynn Notting, not revivals of August Wilson. It was historic, and it got a lot of press. where are we now?

The fire was loud and the reckoning was very visible to everyone. The fire crumbled into ashes and now the ashes are kind of starting to settle and it kind of is what it is now. It's just like, oh, you made a choice to keep your office all white. That's weird, man.

And then you have to go through a process of just peace that like some people are horrible and some people want to learn, some people don't. Some people want to keep their power. Some people don't. What if we had the chance to break down Broadway and start it all over again? What would we do?

Oh my God, that's amazing. The possibilities are endless, right? I think I get kind of cynical of like, we have to break it down. How? Now, I do believe there are ways of chipping away at a building. And over time, it gets weak. And over time after that, it breaks, right? But who's hand is in that hammer?

And how long are they hitting that? And then can we not make people feel like they gave up if they decide to not have that hammer in their hand and go to a space where they're just going to be treated fairly and well and paid like they should be? And is seven Broadway shows, is that what we wanted? That moment was very special and very harmful and very rushed and very unfair. and very lucrative for some of them. You know, that moment is layered, and it's still, even in understanding it's layered, something to celebrate.

Things are changing, but at a speed that is not yet met my standard, but I do think across the board, I would say, motherfuckers are looking in the mirror. Or, at least when they talk to me, they sound more, able to admit and see and question and unpacked before they'll be like, what do you mean? Absolutely not.

Now they're like, huh, okay, I never thought about that. I can't really talk about it right now because I'm confused and maybe a little offended, but I'm going to come back to this. Like, there is a capacity built to listen. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Everybody now, yeah. Hey, man. No. Amen. Amen. Eman.

Yeah. Yeah. Eman. Hey manna. Hey manna. Britain Smith. He's the president of Broadway advocacy coalition. And he performs in the band, Britain and the Sting.

In the next episode of our podcast, I'll talk with two artists who reimagined a nearly 200-year-old ballet in a way that's not typically allowed. They didn't just change the sets or the costumes. The plot, the choreography, even the music, which is the motor of an entire dance piece, it was all up for grabs. And the result is dazzling. That's next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiard.

Original music this week was by Gauphin and Putubuele. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Breda Green, Calilea, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, and Gauphin and Putabwele. Along with Adam Howard, Jenny Lawton, Jeffrey Masters, and Max Bolton. And we had assistance from Mike Cutchman, Meher Batia, and James Napoli. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.