Racism in The Hartt School Theatre Division

For those of you who don’t know my name is Julian. It’s been Julian and not Julián ever since Ms. Becker in the third grade refused to learn how to say it correctly when I moved here from Colombia. At Hartt, most people called me Julian or Jules. If you were our dance teacher you called me Maria Taco Bell. If you were one of our acting teachers you told me there should be no need to have a Hispanic sounding name since you didn’t look like a gangbanger. This is the same teacher who, when trying to call me back for a role in Big River, told me in the room he just didn’t see me as a role because I just wasn’t white enough. I was the first person in my family to be able to attend college in this country and this is merely a taste of that legacy and that experience.

To these Hartt teachers who still have their jobs and their control over young people’s lives: I don’t care what time you think it is, you’re late.

You were late when you complimented my English skills in my freshman evals when I had been living in this country for over half of my life. You were late when you thought to give me a Puerto Rican freshman buddy my senior year because according to you he “didn’t speak any English”. You were too late when, after seeing a student production I helped put together, you had no other words of encouragement but “Do you know Evita?”. You were late when you all felt the best way for me to showcase myself was to sing a song entirely in Spanish for the showcase. You were late when I would go to these showcases year after year to see more of this similar direction given to other actors of color. I don’t know how long you have to be an acting teacher to find out that singing Piragua Guy and Aldolpho does not make a career.

As a faculty paid by actors of color to teach them, you are late and you do not know what you’re doing. So far, all I’m seeing from a bunch of acting teachers is a lack of action. I want to thank those faculty members who never pointed out my race in any fashion but who saw me as a smart person with lots of knowledge and obscure theater references, which really is the kid I was before I became Maria Taco Bell to the rest of the faculty. To the others, please DO KNOW that you, for me, were part of the problem.

Every other day now since this conversation has started I’ve been reached out to or brought into this conversation by more and more of my peers who feel they’ve gone thru this or had seen it done. Every day these scars that I had joked into a box in the corner of my mind rear their ugly head and I don’t know what to do with them now but to share in hopes that they help someone else. I’m not here to run a smear campaign, I simply want to tell my story.

July 20th is Colombian Independence Day and this year, I’m freeing myself from the deep shame and trouble that this institution has given me to carry. It is no longer mine. It is yours. I hope that if you’ll help me carry it you’ll see the pain and will recommit yourselves to real change.

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