Damon Bradley Jang had just about put his professional theatrical aspirations to the side and was on the path to becoming a high school drama teacher.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and upended the world around him.
Fast-forward to 2022, and the Burnaby resident has just begun a two-year stint as the first male BIPOC director in the Stratford Festival’s Birmingham Conservatory.
The conservatory is a two-year intensive program that selects 10 emerging theatre professionals to become part of the renowned festival, giving them a paid opportunity to continue to hone their craft alongside some of the top names in the industry.
To have made the final cut from hundreds of hopefuls across Canada is an achievement Jang doesn’t underestimate. It’s obviously a huge professional opportunity – but, more than that, it’s a chance to play an active role in the festival’s efforts to decolonize its work and tackle systemic racism in the theatre world.
“I don’t take it lightly,” he says, on the phone from his new home in the southwestern Ontario community.
Jang notes that Stratford has done an “excellent job” navigating its work around diversity, inclusion and accessibility – a mission it has taken on with a major anti-racism effort over the past few years.
The festival’s 2022 season features casting that’s more representative of the real faces of Canada than the traditional whiter-than-white world of Shakespeare.
But what’s happening onstage is just part of changing the culture of theatre.
“Often times, people think diversity is just performative – literally,” Jang says. “When you have a white-centric company helming white productions, led by white-presenting directors, and then they put a bunch of diversity onstage, there’s still a lack of voice in power. There’s an imbalance of power when there’s no one on the creative team that is a person of colour.”
Jang now has a chance to serve as assistant director for All’s Well That Ends Well, which will open in June at the festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre. He’ll be working alongside director Scott Wentworth and associate director Julia Nish-Lapidus.
“Being on this side of the table, I can help shape and I can help curate and craft conversations in the room that deal directly with actors, just because a lot of these shows are still helmed by white directors,” Jang says. “It’s good that they have this inclusive voice on the team to be able to help facilitate the room … especially if there’s actors of colour and they feel like they don’t have agency.”
Jang, a graduate of Capilano University’s musical theatre program, is no stranger to feeling that lack of agency. In the decade or so that he’s been carving out a life in theatre, his career hasn’t followed a traditional trajectory.
His resumé includes a host of roles: performer, set decorator, theatre instructor, choreographer, publicist, director. He co-founded a company, Fabulist Theatre, with a mission to make space for all voices in all aspects of theatre production.
“I didn’t feel like I had opportunities, so I had to find other things,” Jang says, noting he was always left with the feeling of being an outsider in the established theatre world. “I didn’t feel like I belonged in those spaces.”
A change in Canada's cultural consciousness
Jang thought he had found a real chance to change that when he made the shortlist for the master’s degree program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He was all set to move to the U.K. with the hopes that the degree would finally convince people to take him seriously.
When he didn’t end up making the final cut, he decided that was that, and he was ready to pursue a career as a high school drama teacher instead. He’s quick to say that education is a meaningful and rewarding career, but in the end it wasn’t where he saw his future going.
Jang saw the ongoing shift in Canada’s collective cultural consciousness around racism, diversity and inclusion – a change he says was accelerated, in some ways, by the pandemic.
“COVID hit; everything paused. A lot of people left the industry, a lot of people made changes, and that allowed for new voices to start to come into the room,” he says.
“I always knew, even a couple of years ago, that this was something I really wanted to push for in my body of work. Diversity, accessibility and inclusion – those kinds of practices define all the types of work that I do, whether it’s on a small scale or a large scale.
“I decided I really wanted to try work in bigger spaces, because I would have a greater impact being a professional in these spaces than I would if I had gone and been a high school drama teacher. … I just feel that, at this particular time, especially because the world is shifting in terms of being more inclusive and accessible, I needed to grab the momentum while it was happening.”
When it comes to “bigger spaces,” it doesn’t get any bigger in Canada than the repertory theatre company at Stratford – and to find validation there goes a long way to helping Jang cope with his self-professed case of impostor syndrome.
Along with All’s Well That Ends Well, Jang will spend 2022 working, workshopping and training alongside the other members of his cohort, mentored and supported by festival professionals. The festival is also lining up a six-week summer placement for him with a different company, on a project still to be determined.
Whether Jang’s two-year term with the Birmingham Conservatory leads to future work with Stratford, or whether it helps to open other doors to work elsewhere in the country, he is grateful for the chance to now be in a place where he can help other emerging professionals from marginalized communities.
He wants to follow the lead of his own mentor, Esther Jun, an artistic associate at the festival and director of its Langham Directors Workshop, whom he credits for supporting him and being an advocate for change within the festival. Now, he knows, it's his turn to provide that support for others.
“I fully realize that I am setting a precedent here in the conservatory this year so that other people, other people of colour, young directors of colour, can feel good or safe about applying for these programs,” he said.
Plus, he noted, there’s the trickle-down effect to members of the audience. He’s hoping that theatregoers from a diverse range of backgrounds will see the bios and photos of Jang and other BIPOC professionals in the program and realize that, yes, the theatre world is open to them, too.
“Even if it only serves or affects one person, that’s all it takes,” Jang said. “Just to know that one audience member feels that they’re seen, or their voice is being heard.”
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
Email Julie, [email protected].
