Oral History Interview with Fernando Dito van Reigersberg

Title: Oral History Interview with Fernando Dito van Reigersberg
Interviewee: Fernando Dito van Reigersberg
Interviewer: Eli Bastiaansen
Description: Fernando “Dito” van Reigersberg of McLean, Virginia was interviewed by Eli Baastiansten, a Sewanee student, on November 25th, 2023 in person. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included race relations in the arts. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
Transcript: 00:00:01 Eli Bastiaansen: Hi, this is Eli Bastiaansen from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is Saturday the 25th of November, 2023, and the current time is 4:10 PM and I am with Dito van Reigersberg.

00:00:20 Dito van Reiger...: Hello, I'm Dito van Reigersberg here sitting in my childhood home in McLean, Virginia because that's what you do around Thanksgiving. So this is where I grew up and this is where I am right now.

00:00:39 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you so much, Dito van Reigersberg for being here. We're very grateful for your participation and involvement in this project. To begin, could you speak on where you are originally from and the community that you grew up in?

00:00:53 Dito van Reiger...: Oh, I grew up here in McLean. I went to schools all in this area, which is a relatively well-to-do area, a suburb of Washington DC I would say there was ethnic diversity in terms of there are lots of people from different countries maybe. So there were people who are from, I don't know, Japan or Indonesia or Egypt or there are lots of people from different lands in the globe, but I would not say there was a lot of diversity in terms of black Americans in my education growing up. It was white people and then people from all over the globe. And I would say it was pretty in terms of class, kind of a higher end class profile.

00:02:17 Eli Bastiaansen: And you currently live in Philadelphia, is that correct?

00:02:20 Dito van Reiger...: I do. I live in South Philly.

00:02:23 Eli Bastiaansen: And how is that different from where you grew up?

00:02:28 Dito van Reiger...: I would say because it's more urban. There's a lot more sort of culture that there are cultures that bump into each other. I live in what was a predominantly Italian neighborhood, although that's changing. I would say that Philadelphia is quite, there's a lot of people of different races, but I would say it's quite segregated in terms of where people live. So there's a street called Broad Street. I live basically on near 12th Street in Philadelphia. And then if you go over Broad Street, which then becomes 15th, 16, 17, it becomes much more of a black neighborhood. So it's not like these populations are very far away from each other, but there's some very strict delineation of where people feel comfortable living. And when, I don't know this, I mean, I heard this secondhand, but my neighbor, Marge, she had a twin. So she owned her house and my house, which is three doors down from her house.
00:04:01 And when her twin died, she was trying to sell her house. And when she first tried to sell it, there was a person who came to inquire about it, who was a person of color. It was a black family or a couple, and a bunch of people in the neighborhood pressured her not to sell to. And this is like 2000 ish.

00:04:28 Eli Bastiaansen: Wow.

00:04:30 Dito van Reiger...: Pressured her not to sell to anyone of color. And I think their quote-on-quote, non-racist way of justifying that is that they said, oh, it's not. That's so funny. It's not that I'm racist, it's that when it's time for me to resell my house, other people are racist. And so if I want to resell my home and people see that there's a black family on my block, the value of my home will go down and that hurts me. So isn't that interesting?
00:05:13 It's not directly like, oh, I hate those people. It's more like this weird roundabout way of saying, I don't want those people affecting future buyers of my house.

00:05:27 Eli Bastiaansen: Like a subtle racism.

00:05:29 Dito van Reiger...: It's a subtle racism, yeah. But I would say, and I think it's true in most major cities, that people do bump into each other of all different kind of ethnicities and skin colors. And that's good, I think in a lot of ways because there's more chance of real interaction. I sort of think of suburban life is very, you can go for months without interacting with if you don't want to interacting with anyone else. Everyone's sort of on their little island of where their house is. So I don't know. I feel like in the city there's more bumping up against other cultures.

00:06:20 Eli Bastiaansen: And what is your current occupation and what was your journey to this role?

00:06:26 Dito van Reiger...: Oh, I founded a theater company out of college called Pig, Iron Theater Company and Pig Iron. What's interesting, 'cause Pig Iron was founded by all white students coming out of Swarthmore College, and even just including casting people of color has been a journey for our company and hasn't been easy. But also I think there's a real sense in the theater that if there's only white people on stage, something is terribly wrong and this theater company doesn't make enough effort to include people of color. And it's sort of a sign of like, oh, this theater company is behind the times or, so there's a real pressure, I would say, in a good way to make sure that your entire cast is not Lily White.

00:07:43 Eli Bastiaansen: What efforts has the theater company made to increase the diversity on stage?

00:07:49 Dito van Reiger...: I would say in terms of casting, in terms of, because now we're a company and a school, so including administrative people who are of color, including some more teacher we have, because the school, it's important to include teachers who are of color because also it can be, it's a very delicate process because if you start recruiting students of color, but everyone teaching is still white, then there's a lot of, there can still be some tension and some difficulty about like, oh, this company is still not diverse and is not really built to speak to me.
00:08:51 Yeah. So it's a slow process, I think, especially for a company that was founded by all white people. The school, which is in France, was founded by a white Parisian man, and for a long time was attended only by white people. So there's a lot of built-in whiteness in the history of even my company. And we started in 1995. So yeah, I think as you've probably heard many times, progress is slow, but I would say there's been many more people of color included in as performers, more as teachers, administrators. And we even brought in some people, some consultants who talked to former students, to everyone in the company about how to improve the situation.

00:10:08 Eli Bastiaansen: And you mentioned France. Have you been able to travel a lot throughout your lifetime and experience diverse cultures and ideas and languages?

00:10:16 Dito van Reiger...: Why yes I have, especially thanks to, so my parents, as you know, were both interpreters, language interpreters, mainly working in English, Spanish and French. So they traveled a lot for work, but they also insisted on having us travel as children. And I remember traveling to Portugal as a kid to Italy, to Holland. So I always got excited about meeting new cultures. And also I grew up speaking Spanish, not so much French, sadly, but I spoke English and Spanish. So it was easier for me to reach out to people who spoke Spanish, whether they were Latino or other people or people from Spain or so that kind of gives you other pathways to connect to other cultures, which has been really useful. And my dad would often insist that we speak Spanish or I would call my parents from college. And my dad would only have me speak in Spanish to him, which is good.
00:11:44 And then I went to Spain for a semester abroad my junior year, and I think that's when my Spanish really solidified. It was really useful. And it's when I really fell in love with Spain, which I still feel that love as you know, I've been a little bit ill, so it's been hard for me to travel recently, but that just makes me want to travel more. And the great thing about my theater company is that we started as a company. We had heard about this festival called the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. And we said, oh, everyone said it's the best and the largest arts festival in the world. It happens every August in Edinburgh, Scotland, which looks a lot like Hogwarts and it's beautiful. And there's performances everywhere in people's homes and in bars and in libraries, this whole city becomes little theaters. And so in 1995, we made a piece and we traveled to Edinburgh and then we started growing as a company.
00:12:56 And at first we weren't based anywhere. We all would just meet at Swarthmore actually in the summer times, and they would give us free housing and space there. And then the third year in 1997, we decided, okay, let's try living in Philly and see what it'd be like to be based in Philly. And that was really great. And that has been where we've been based ever since. Philadelphia had this fringe festival that was based on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that was just starting in 1997, which is a beautiful coincidence. And we had a big success there with a piece called "Cafeteria".
00:13:46 And we were crazy. We'd been to Edinburgh, so we were handing out postcards everywhere, and we were singing "Cafeteria", the word "Cafeteria". We were walking down the street and putting out posters, and we were marauding the streets of Philadelphia with Pig Iron Theater Company "Cafeteria". And then when it was time for us to perform this place called the Seaport Museum, we were about ready to begin the show. And the stage manager came backstage and said, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, we have to hold for at least 15 minutes. And we were like, we do. And she said, there's a line around the entire building to get into the show. So that was one of those times where you're like, oh, Philadelphia is welcoming us. And so we have been based in Philadelphia ever since then and slowly built up more. I mean, at first we just worked out of our apartments and I had the files of Pig Iron Theater Company in my bedroom. And eventually I said, don't we need an office? And we found an office that we could rent. And then we, well, yeah. Anyway, long story short, we grew and grew and became able to pay an administrative staff, and then we had the company, and then we opened up the school in, I guess 2011. Yes. So the school itself has been around for, what is that, 12 years? So we'd been a company and school for that time. And then, anyway, so we've been around, I think 28 years.

00:15:38 Eli Bastiaansen: Wow.

00:15:39 Dito van Reiger...: Yeah.

00:15:41 Eli Bastiaansen: Well, thank you for sharing. How do you receive the news, political news, either through newspapers or media, social media or TV Stations?

00:15:54 Dito van Reiger...: I wish, I aspire to be someone who reads a newspaper, but I'm terrible. My phone is so much easier to access, so I often get my news from social media, or if I have access to my tv, I'll watch CNN. Yeah, I would say those are the two main ways I have subscription to New York Times and The New Yorker, and also something called the Week, which maybe you know, yeah, it's a magazine that sort of compiles in short bursts the major headlines of the week.

00:16:41 Eli Bastiaansen: How has social media shaped and influenced the way that you perceive the news and understand current events?

00:16:51 Dito van Reiger...: Well, one of the most dangerous things about social media is that we get very used to things that are headlines and we get bored very easily. And so we don't go in depth to learn the subtleties and the nuances of the information about, say, the Israeli Gaza conflict. We just sort of know what people have posted in inflammatory Instagram messages or postings. So I think the thing I wish the most for myself is that I took the time to read the newspaper and go deep into reading articles as opposed to just reading the headlines from the social media universe.

00:17:55 Eli Bastiaansen: Did you, as a member of Pig Iron, one of the founders use social media as a tool to share and post information about Pig Iron Theater?

00:18:07 Dito van Reiger...: Yeah. Yeah. I think Instagram is one of the biggest, and Facebook now to a lesser extent, but Facebook and Instagram are both owned by the same person. And the main ways that we get out information, I mean, we also have an email list, people who sign up for email updates, but I think mostly people, if they want the most up-to-date information, they go to the Instagram page.

00:18:42 Eli Bastiaansen: Now to transition a little bit more directly to the Black Lives Matter movement. How did you first encounter the movement, either through social media or with talks and discussions and communication with others?

00:19:01 Dito van Reiger...: I wish I remembered where I was. I feel like I remember watching on tv, it's funny, it's sort of like all fuzzy the way I remember the order of events, but I think even before George Floyd, there were a lot of examples of times when black people had been unfairly stopped by police, harassed by police, killed by police, all those things. But then the fact that someone, and I forget the time I remember, is something like eight minutes and 45 seconds that he's being held down by this one policeman and someone got the entire thing on. We can say bad things about social media, but we could also say good things about the fact that everyone has this video camera in their pocket. So it's not only in the olden days, it would've been that policeman's word against the witness, but now the witness can say, I have this. I didn't make up this video. I took this video, and it proves that this man was strangling this other man for eight minutes, which is, I think the length of it and the fact that other people are, there are other cops there standing around not,
00:20:49 It was almost as if the police were a cult, and they had all agreed that it was normal to choke someone for eight minutes. And that was shocking to witness. So I don't remember where I was, but I remember seeing, I mean, I don't think anyone showed the entire eight minutes, but they showed clips of the eight minutes and 45 seconds or whatever it was. And it was, yeah, it was eyeopening. And I think people who, I mean, a lot of people, reverse, I would say a lot of white people are trained and conditioned to think of the police as benevolent caretakers who are just there to do no harm and to enforce the law. And I think people of color have a totally different view of what their first impression of a, and you can't stereotype anyone because there are certainly people of color who are policemen, and there are certainly white people who don't trust the police at all. But I guess I would say I come from a culture where a microculture, where you're supposed to just be very respectful and trusting of the police. And I guess if something bad happens, you're going to call the police and you're going to ask them for help, which I think other people that would not be their first move or even their third or fourth move.
00:22:53 And I guess, yeah, and again, I don't remember the order of events, but that I remember Eric Garner being a person who also was choked for a very, and he died after a very long period of time. So a lot of Black Lives Matter coming out of an awareness of the different ways people are treated in this country. And I think white people, there's justice or a lot of white people thinking that there's justice and then sort of there being a wake up call around the injustice in this country and that it was time for a lot of people to organize around making the racial divide, closing the racial gap, and making the police a force either, well, some people are like, we've got to get rid of the police. No way to, there's sort of a broken

00:24:40 Eli Bastiaansen: System

00:24:40 Dito van Reiger...: A system, or fixing the police so that things like Eric Gardner and George Floyd don't happen again.

00:24:53 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think you could talk a little bit more about your immediate response to seeing the video and as well as just the overall community's response in Philadelphia.

00:25:07 Dito van Reiger...: I mean, think because it was so visceral because it was like this person's being executed in the street for no reason. I think it was very incendiary. And people, I mean, I think a lot of people, including my friends in Philadelphia and fellow artists, took to the streets and there were protests and there was a lot of outrage and a lot of, yeah, it's sort of embarrassing for me to say I didn't think America was like this. So again, I think the technology is an important aspect to people having proof that injustice. It's not just like, some people say that the system works like this, and other people say it's like this and we'll never know, but this is really a moment of proof that it really is both injust and crazy and cruel. And so I think for a lot of reasons, people have been wanting America to rise up to the kind of promise that it seems to make, and it wants America to be a place that's not hypocritical.
00:27:19 I think a lot of people in other countries around the world look at the United States and they're like, wow, that place thinks it's the land of equality, but it's not; it might be the land of opportunity and there might be a lot of money there, but it doesn't mean that there's justice there. And it would be sad to think of America as a rich place, just a rich place, and not a just place. I think the idea, I don't know, was that America was going to be a just place, a place where opportunity was extended to everyone. And that definition has changed also over time between who do we mean when we say all men are created equal? And do we mean people of color? Do we mean women? Yeah. And it's only been, what is it, 400 years? No, however long it's been.

00:28:29 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah. Do you think that the pandemic also contributed to just that widespread almost support and recognition of either the video or the rise of Black Lives Matter movement? Do you think that the fact that so many people were in one place allowed the video of George Floyd and another media to really almost explode during that time, whereas previous cases like Eric Garner were maybe less widespread around the nation?

00:29:04 Dito van Reiger...: That's interesting. So you're saying maybe that the pandemic and us sort of being faced with a big challenge of coming together and trying to fix this problem as a society, and then this sort of obvious example of us being very sick as a society or messed up

00:29:39 Eli Bastiaansen: And even just having the time to see social media and have this video where everyone's on their phones or computers anyways, so everyone's seeing this almost at the same time.

00:29:50 Dito van Reiger...: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think that there's, it called a perfect storm of conditions that make people, that everyone's, maybe people are already glued to their TVs because they're like, what's happening? How do I keep myself safe? Do I have to wipe down every one of my groceries that I bring home? How I does this get past? Are we all going to die? This is a zombie apocalypse. And also the medical establishment not having enough information to know, so people are waiting for clarity around covid. And then there's this other thing that rears its ugly head and it's like, wow, everyone, there's no excuse to not be at home watching this.

00:30:51 Eli Bastiaansen: Also, you mentioned a little bit the strict, almost racialized lines in the Philadelphia neighborhoods. Do you think you could speak a little bit about either redlining or the legacy of housing discrimination in Philadelphia?

00:31:12 Dito van Reiger...: Well, certainly it's a place like many places in this country where, where political foul play means that certain people don't have the same amount of access. It does seem to all come back to this example I gave you of don't let that black person don't sell your house to that black person, because then people will say, there goes the neighborhood, and they won't buy my house because I'm the neighbor. Yeah. I would say that Philadelphia is a place that has a history of almost like there's some mob presence, some Italian mob presence in Philadelphia, and there's different ways that people get intimidated or had been. And I think there is a new, I feel like there's still a little bit of a kind of mob mafia group that's connected to politics, and then there's a real progressive, I mean, Philadelphia almost always goes to the democratic candidate for president, mayor, governor. So I think more and more we are, we're going to have our first black female mayor, I guess she takes her seat in January, I think, anyway, yeah. So I feel like there's definitely a progressive part of Philadelphia, and then there's always more conservative or, you know, more we want to protect our own kind of impulse in Philadelphia.

00:33:41 Eli Bastiaansen: Would you say that there's also an intersection between the struggle and fight for increased black rights as well as women's rights as well as L-G-B-T-Q rights?

00:33:57 Dito van Reiger...: What's the question?

00:33:58 Eli Bastiaansen: Is there an intersection between all of these struggle for rights?

00:34:02 Dito van Reiger...: Definitely. Definitely. And I do feel like there are affinity groups that talk to each other in Philadelphia. I have some friends in the L-G-B-T-Q political community, and those people I think, try to stay in contact with other affinity groups that have to do with racial justice or gender equality. Yeah, we just had an election in which this black female candidate was elected, and I was just going to vote in around the corner from my house in my neighborhood polling place. And there was a small group of white men who were kind of intimidating people as they were coming in to vote.
00:35:24 And then there were other people from more progressive groups that were trying to protect people from being intimidated by those people. And I was very surprised that that kind of thing is still happening in this day and age, and we live in a democracy. And why are you, how can you think that, how can you justify intimidating people at the polling place? And yeah, I don't know. That was kind of shocking to me. So it always feels like, oh, the work of democracy, you don't like finish it. It just keeps demanding more demanding more work, demanding more calls to justice, demanding more clarity around who we are and who we want, how we want to live our lives, how we want to set the ground rules. It almost feels like a ball that you're keeping up in the air. And sometimes I despair because how a person he who shall not be named could have gotten all the way to the presidency is shocking to me. And how that he's still being considered, he's almost in jail, and people are like, well, there's no rule that you can't be a president rule from jail, and I can't believe what I'm hearing.

00:37:11 Eli Bastiaansen: No, it's especially interesting when you mention of people trying to prevent others from voting, which many people struggled for in the sixties especially, and how many of these trends are cycling. Do you think you could talk a little bit about how race relations has evolved either through your lifetime and even with the evolution of media as well?

00:37:44 Dito van Reiger...: Ooh, that's a big question. There's always been tension about race and also big fear of talking about race or saying the wrong thing about race. There's a real tension, I think, in our country because we like to think of ourselves as a meritocracy. So it's like, oh, if you're a brilliant black man, you're going to get to where you need to go. 'Cause you're brilliant. And if you're a brilliant white man, you're also going to get to where you need to go because you're brilliant and it has nothing to do with the color of your skin. But unfortunately, we know all too well that it's not as simple as that. And it would be nice if it were as simple as that. But a lot of people get to place positions of power or positions of leadership because they've gone to an amazing school, or they've been exposed to certain kinds of education, or they have access to funds. I don't know how much it costs to run a political campaign, but it's not cheap. So the economic, social, racial inequities, they all are compounded on top of each other. And so I don't know, I guess it would be beautiful to think one day that the United States will have figured itself out enough that we are a meritocracy, but that seems like a fantasy right now. But it's hard to know
00:39:54 How to address that issue while avoiding tokenism or other kinds of, well, I'll give you an example. There was my friend Sam, who's a white man, was doing a workshop of a new piece, and he involved my company Pig Iron, but he also said, oh, I want to bring on this woman Nikki. And Nikki is a woman of color, is a black woman who also has a lot of experience with choreography and movement. So it made sense for him to bring her on. And she said, do you want me to assist you or do you want me to be a co-author of this piece with you? And he answered that question, oh, I want you to be a co-author of a piece with me, I think. She said, are you sure? And he said, yes. And then
00:41:23 She texted him, I don't know if it was, I think it's when she got on the plane in New York, this was in California where the workshop took place. And she texted him and said, are you sure you're not bringing me in just because I'm black? And he of course was like, no, no, no, of course not. But as I said earlier, there's a real sense of, wow, that theater company or that project or that cast is all white, can't for optic's sake. We can't let that happen. So I think for a person of color who gets brought into a project, there's suddenly a little bit of a sense of confusion about how much I can rely, I can be sure that this, I'm being brought on because of my talents in the meritocracy of my merits. I'm being brought on because of my merits and not because I look good on the brochure. So they're going to take a picture of me with the other leaders of the project, and they're going to be like, look how enlightened we are, but without it being meaningful.
00:42:55 And then there's a whole story I don't need to tell you about. They started working on the project together, and she was not at all into what he wanted to make. And then it felt like everything felt racially tinged. And then he was like, I feel like she's saying that I'm racist because I'm interested in this stuff. And then we came in later, we came into the rehearsal room later to start rehearsing as a full group. And it was one of those rooms where you walk in, you're like, what happened? Why does everyone look so glum and sad? And there's such tension here. And I had met Nikki before. I was like, hooray, I'm so glad to be here. And I saw her the night before in the hotel, and I was like, this will be a lot of fun. And she was like, yeah. But in the end, there was a lot of tension around her feeling like she could lead this project with Sam or feeling like she was again, that she was being tokenized.
00:44:10 So as we move forward in the culture, I feel like the real threading of the needle that's so difficult is how do you involve more people of color than before? But you also, but you also make sure that it's meaningful and feels appropriate, and equitable, yeah, almost the idea of how do you, I think in a way, because we come from this meritocracy ideal in some ways, or I do, I think I imagined that, oh, people of color will rise to the top. And then as I started to think more about it and like realize what obstacles are in the way of people of color accessing education, accessing wealth, accessing certain kinds of stability that allow you to get to a certain place, I'm like, oh, that doesn't happen overnight. And that doesn't happen. That may not happen unless they're given certain opportunities that may even feel artificial at first. It's like, oh, this white candidate is a 4.0 and this black candidate is a 3.85, but this black candidate is an exciting addition to our student population and also has had less access than,

00:46:43 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think Black Lives Matter helped you to see and learn about much more of these systemic inequities that you maybe did not know or did not truly understand or appreciate before?

00:46:56 Dito van Reiger...: Yeah, I think I started to understand, I think the word systemic is right. It's like, oh, there's even home ownership. And how for a black person to get a loan has been historically very difficult. And therefore, and that's one of the main ways that white people have gathered wealth over the years is that they're like, well, I bought this house and this house, the property value got higher, and then I gave that to my kids, and then they had this house and they bought another house. And that's a more common experience for white people by far than it has been for black people.

00:47:54 Eli Bastiaansen: So I guess it has helped you to sort of, I guess, open your eyes to that reality. Do you think that Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter movement has overall succeeded in its goals or not?

00:48:17 Dito van Reiger...: Well, it doesn't feel like we've even started. Well, we've started, but it doesn't feel like it's gotten to the place where we know things have, I mean, I think there's much more awareness. I kind of think of, weirdly, I think of Will and Grace, and there was a moment before Will and Grace where I think people really could say, I don't know gay people. There's no one gay in my social circle, so I don't know what you're talking about. And then something like Will and Grace came on tv and there was much more of an awareness of like, oh, these gay people are real people. And even if you live in, I don't know, rural Kansas, your TV still gives you Will and Grace, and you still, there's a cultural reference point for that. So I think Black Lives Matter has succeeded in terms of giving people access to more education information and clarity around the issues of race. Yeah. So I think that in that way, it succeeded. But every journey begins with a single step. It's like it's in the first steps of something that will hopefully improve the social fabric in general.

00:50:09 Eli Bastiaansen: Well, thank you so much, Dito van Reigersberg.

00:50:11 Dito van Reiger...: We did it

00:50:12 Eli Bastiaansen: for taking this time to speak with me. Is there anything else that you would like to add either about Black Lives Matter movement and its influence on you and the interactions that you've had with others?

00:50:38 Dito van Reiger...: I want to say one more thing about the theater.

00:50:40 Eli Bastiaansen: Yes.

00:50:41 Dito van Reiger...: So there's a famous debate between August Wilson who was a black playwright, and Robert Brustein, who was a white theater scholar. And August Wilson, they were debating uhm, what is called colorblind casting which became a big thing in the nineties. So the idea is that you could have two white actors playing parents and then a black actor playing their child,
00:51:33 And nobody was going to blink about that. That's just, we're going to have the actors that are the best for the roles in each role. And Robert Brustein is like, this is great. And it's good for all sorts of access to more diverse theaters. And interestingly, August Wilson said, I don't like the idea, he's the black playwright. He's like, I don't like the idea of non-traditional or colorblind casting, because we're never going to be colorblind anyway. It almost makes race not matter at all, which is weird because race does matter, and we do read it as people who move around in the world. And he also said, and this I thought was really interesting. He was like, there were black theater groups. They were all black, and there were several of them, say maybe they were in big cities, there were like three, and in a small city, there's like one that's like a black theater.
00:52:54 And he said, the worst thing that could happen is that with colorblind casting, all the best black actors are going to be taken and cast in white regional theaters, and then these traditional black ensembles will get destroyed and everything will get like watered down. Which I had never thought of it like that. I was like, oh, but I understand that argument, and I understand how, anyway, I think it's such an interesting debate about whether affinity groups need to keep a kind of border around themselves and protect themselves and talk amongst themselves and how much they need to join and be part of the wider culture, which sometimes means that their individual culture or their more specific culture gets watered down because there's an idea that we're all the same. Even when the gay marriage debate was happening, there was some idea that like if gay people start getting married, then gay people are just like straight people. And then there's this bad idea of assimilation where gay people are the same as straight people. It's a mystery that I don't know the answer to.

00:54:43 Eli Bastiaansen: Well, thank you so much Dito van Reigersberg for taking the time and for providing such unique insight and for helping this comprehensive project.

00:54:51 Dito van Reiger...: Thank you, Eli Bastiaansen.

Part of Fernando Dito van Reigersberg