Latest / EST's "Truth Be Told" / “Anything You Can Do” by Akyiaa Wilson

Transcript

“Anything You Can Do” by Akyiaa Wilson · EST's "Truth Be Told"

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to season two of Truth Be Told, Love and Theater.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Fourteen new stories, each performed at Ensemble Studio Theater, as part of Truth Be Told.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: A night of amazing, weird, embarrassing, profound, and completely true stories created by Susan Kim and David Zelnik.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Season two draws from two sold-out nights: The Moment I Knew and The Theatre.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every Monday, tune in for stories of love and realization.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And every Thursday for stories of the joys and madness behind the curtain.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now in Anything You Can Do, Akia Wilson tells the story of a budding musical star who knows she slayed in her tryout as Annie Oakley.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so why don't her classmates agree?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sheep's Head Bay, Brooklyn.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: The late 1900s.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Elementary School PS 206 did exactly one play a year, and only one class in one grade got to perform in that play.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: My class.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mrs.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Kropitzky's fifth grade eagle class.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's gifted and talented for all of you non-New Yorkers.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's neurotic, anxious, underachieving adults afraid to fail at things they're not naturally instantly good at for all of us survivors.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: You test into these programs in kindergarten because you're like really good at shapes, colors, numbers.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can write a little already.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have advanced skills in communication or discernment.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: At four and a half, I was taken to a strange building at the board of Ed and asked, What's the difference between a dog and a bird?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: To which I famously answered, a bird can fly and a dog can't, you idiot.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, maybe I didn't say you idiot, but it was in my tone.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Being an eagle was great on one hand.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: We got all of the school's resources thrust upon us.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: French lessons, computer classes, Broadway shows.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: We were the school's pride.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, there was a lot of pressure.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: You had to keep your grades up to keep proving you belonged.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let them take you out of that class, my mother would say to me as a threat when assignments stopped coming easily and I found I had to study but didn't want to.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the fear that created in me.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the shame I felt would come to me if she did let them take me out.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: As if it would have been the worst thing in the world.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: You see, this was my fifth grade class.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Notice anything?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Can you guess which kid is doing her own thing?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Ding ding ding ding.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Fifth grade was my sixth year of being the only black child in my elementary school class.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Although I grew up in Flatbush, that ditmas park to all my gentrifiers.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Both sides of my street fell into what was known as the Frozen Zone.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a one-block stretch in Brooklyn where kids had no zoned school, and so they had to be bused to other elementary schools in the borough.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was about a 22-minute ride, but a whole world away from the Caribbean immigrant enclave that I called home.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: On this particular day, my class had taken off the last hour of school to hold auditions for the musical Annie Get Your Gun.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were gonna take turns reading from the script to see who would get one of the coveted lead roles.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was at a disadvantage.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Being a bus child, as we were often referred to by the administration, I would be dismissed 15 minutes early so I could line up and be sent back home.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was also at a distinct advantage.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I read aloud, better, faster, and with more nuance than anyone in my class.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was technically proficient and I did it with gusto.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: My teachers actually commented on report cards about the passion with which I recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which is questionable.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Back then I was very into America, which had a very different connotation than it does now.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I read better than Lori, the math genius, popping out 100s on quizzes like it was her job.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Better than Heather, the homeschooler and Jehovah's Witness who had transferred in the year before and spent her lunch times eating alone in the auditorium.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And better than any of the boys whose only concern seemed to be, I don't know, baseball cars, sweatpants, and bad jokes.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't paying attention, boys you.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: I waited my turn.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I am patient.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I am anxious.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I am focused.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I am cautiously optimistic.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: My turn comes and my scene partner hits me with my cue.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a pleasure to give you a lesson in marksmanship.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I look at him confidently and say, you couldn't give me a lesson in long distance spit.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Magic! Straight fire! I killed it.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: I looked at Mrs.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Kropitsky's face.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: She's not surprised, but even she is impressed.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: A single eyebrow raise and a smirk, and then she moves on to the next kid.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: When everyone has gone, she asks the class to help her make a list on the board of who they thought did a good job reading.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: My classmates raise their hand and call out names, and Mrs.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: K writes them on the board.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: We are five, six, seven, ten classmates deep, and still no one has mentioned me.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm confused, dismayed.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Were you all in the room for that?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Did you not hear how I made the word spittin' sound like I was actually spitting?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or like I had been dropping the G at the end of my verbs for my whole life?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: What the hell was going on?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I had entered an alternate universe where for some reason everyone had decided before I even got there to conspire against me.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or one in which, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I was invisible.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody else?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Mrs.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: K called to the class who all sat dumbly staring at the board or at their desks.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: My heart was racing.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I wasn't as good as I thought I was.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Time stretched on in silence for a broken-hearted eternity.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't anyone say me?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Miss Kaprisky finally grabs the chalk.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Fine, she says.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: If no one else will say it, I thought Akiya did a good job.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And pops my name on the bottom of the list.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: My dismay turns to relief, but my confusion was spiraling.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: What what until it was cut off by the familiar PA announcement?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Bus lineup! It's now time for bus lineup.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Please send all bus children down to the auditorium for bus lineup.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I began to pack my things, still unsure of what had just happened.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm confounded by it even now.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't say for sure what was going on in their minds.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had learned with these kids.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I played with these kids, and here they were basically refusing to see me.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Betraying that, in their estimation, I wasn't worthy of competing.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was not unpopular.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was not an outcast.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I fit in.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was their compatriot, I thought.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: My elementary school years had been unremarkable.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there was that one time a kid who was new in third grade called me the N-word.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure I even registered what it meant, but I knew it was wrong, and I knew I needed to tell the teacher.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: He was forced to write me an apology letter, which I accepted, even though my eight-year-old brain could not grasp the magnitude of what he was apologizing for.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they just didn't think I was Annie Oakley material.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: After all, Annie was an outspoken person, navigating the world on her own terms in spaces that were not designed for her where she was never meant to be.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, even though ultimately she was respected for her undeniable talent, she faced prejudice, discrimination.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: She had to keep proving herself over and over.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Some would say she had to work twice as hard to get half as much.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Anti-blackness is a hell of a drug.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I've come to realize.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: It starts early and it shows up where you might not expect it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm feeling generous, I understand that those kids could not imagine a world in which a girl who looked like me could even hope to play a gun-toting cowgirl.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It did not compute with their sense of the world or what they had imagined in their heads.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm being more incisive, I see how whether or not I was right for the part wasn't the issue.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't even the question.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I had done well.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had been the best, actually.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that their prejudice did not allow them to acknowledge that in the moment altered reality.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It raised my humanity.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if we decide she simply couldn't play Andy Oakley, be a doctor, a CEO, a judge, the president, then we don't even have to wrestle with her competence.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is a non-issue.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: It might as well not even exist.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, for all intents and purposes, it doesn't.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because we decided.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Simple as that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get cast as Annie.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: It happens.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was so happy to be performing.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the role went to a girl named Amy, a tomboy type who I didn't really know very well, but I got to know better because after she was cast, she became deeply unpopular.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: No one else wanted to share lunch with her anymore or sit next to her because I guess jealousy is also a hell of a drug.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I did.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was her friend.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: People get so angry when someone they feel they are superior to get something to which they feel they are entitled.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's the kind of fragile ego narcissism that every day in some way threatens to destroy the world.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Tony Morrison once said the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps you from doing your work.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And although all these many years later, I proudly identify as a stage actress.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: On the days when it's dark and show business seems impossible and the poverty is humbling, and the rejections feel like body blows to my self-esteem.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if I became an actor because I wanted to be, or if I'm still trying to prove I was the best, that I was worthy of being on that talkboard.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then I remember that someone's dad made a recording of that show.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because that was all the rage at the time.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look closely at me in said recording, you can just about make out that every time I'm on stage, from wherever I am on stage, I am unconsciously but assuredly mouthing everyone else's mind.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's hilarious and embarrassing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And although the chalkboard incident sticks with me as a harsh lesson about the world I was going to mature into, that image of me immersed in the world that my class created on stage and loving it so much I wanted to play every role reminds me that I have always and will always be show people.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And well, there's no people like show people.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Cute baby picks at AkeaHyphenwilson.com.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svakar.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: More stories of the Moment I Knew will be released every Monday and about theater every Thursday.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Till next time, remember, truth wants to be known.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yours too.