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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back for part two of my conversation with Associate Intimacy Director for Strange Loop, Kaja Dunn.

[0:13] Kaja Dunn: We gotta say one drills we use. I think when we talk also about whiteness, this idea of white universality, and a white person said this. Dyer writes about this. And again, you said there's certain phrases you hate. I hate the phrase when people go this new moment. Because I'm like, nothing about what we're talking about is new. There have, but even with intimacy, there have always been people saying, I don't want to take my clothes off. Or this man is trying to get me to do something, not for a professional purpose, but for his own pleasure, right? Or my body is being disrespected in my identity. Or I'm being forced to play, you know, if we're talking about queer identities, I'm being forced to play a queer trope that I am not comfortable with.

This is a white straight man's lens of how I appear. Um, and the other thing I want to mention really quickly, because I'm afraid I'm gonna forget it, is when we talk about marginalizations outside of race, I make it very clear that one, all marginalizations are problematic, but white people like to talk about marginalizations in which they can center themselves. So I will say race, and people will say, well, what about disability or trans rights or the LGBTQIA community? And I'm like, great, let's talk about that. We can center black, brown, Asian, Middle Eastern, indigenous bodies in each of those identities. And let's have the conversation from that place because you can be of another marginalization and still be savage or supremacist or whatever term you're going to use.

But then we have intersectionality and you know, the double oppression or the triple oppression, depending on your identities. So all of that needs to be taken into consideration. But also this idea that whiteness is universal, that whiteness isn't a race. So Dyer in 1997 says the purpose of classifying them us. So he's talking as himself when he says us and for other people saying them. The purpose of naming whiteness is to allow for the seeing of culture, right? So we classify and label racialized people, which is the term we use for black, brown, Latinx, Asian, right? We are racialized and we are always seen through the lens of our racialized identity. So for example, everybody talked about all the black plays on Broadway this year.

We were talking about like what seven, right? But if we had started to name white plays, we have 49 white plays on Broadway. Suddenly seven doesn't look so big, right? One of the examples I use is when we think about even food. If I'm going to get tacos, I'm getting Mexican food. If I'm getting Lumpia, I'm getting Filipino food. I might be getting soul food, right? If I'm getting meatloaf and mashed potatoes, it's just called food. Somebody said we don't call that food, but right? Or when I think about, you know, I teach. So the dance curriculum, there's the fundamentals of dance, which includes ballet or white modern dance, right? And then there's the extracurricular or the things that you can add on, which usually include African or Latinx or our school has South Asian, but those aren't fundamental core or required.

In theater, we use the term canon. Whose canon? Well, and I have my own canon. My own canon includes Diamond and Moriso and Hall. I have my own canon that I can go Shangay, right? And I see work that reflects me. It doesn't mean that I am not educated in our standard and traditional. I say anybody that lives in a Western country that is outside of white identity is bicultural. Whether or not they speak another language, they are bicultural, right? Because we grow up, we are assimilated into the dominant culture from the time we're in pre-K. One of the things I talk about with my son is he took four years already. He's in, he's going into eighth grade. He's already had four to five years of Greek and Roman and European culture.

The country of origin that my mother's mother is from has never even been mentioned. And three-fourths of his teachers don't know that that country exists. Cape Verde, right? Meanwhile, my child is descended from freedom fighters in the 70s who helped set up the embassy. I didn't know that till I was in my 30s. My country of origin was never mentioned in my education. I have a graduate, I have a terminal degree. So when we talk about, but I know I can name all of Henry VIII's wives. Like I can tell you the legacy of the monarchy family. Why? Why can I do that? But I had to go to a special camp to learn at the time it was the 52 countries of Africa. Because my parents were like, you're gonna know at least a little bit, right?

I had to go to a special camp to learn Swahili and to learn step, which are tenants of, but I was taught, I was taught square dancing in and not accidentally, right? There was a campaign to make square dancing part of the physical education curriculum and to be seen as quintessentially American. I say the same thing about intimacy, right? So my argument for why intimacy done well is important is when you start to redefine the way people are seen in intimate moments, you start to change the narration around their culture. I don't use the word humanize people because I think if you're seeing me as dehumanized, if you have to see a movie for me to suddenly become human to you, that's a whole other discussion and problem, right?

So I don't say that this humanizes us because we were human from the beginning. But I do know that when you can retell the story, you change outcomes. One of the examples that I write about is there's this horrible statistic that came out in 2014. OkayCupid did the statistic that 82% of people outside of the black race did not find black women attractive or would self-select out of black women appearing in their dating app. And it was close to the same thing for Asian men. So basically the statistic was black women and Asian men were the least desirable dating group. A couple years later, Insecure comes out with this storyline with Molly, Issa's best friend, uh, or Issa, the character's best friend, Molly, and a character named Andrew, who is also known as Asian Bay.

Now, first of all, some of the hottest sex scenes you've ever seen, and I say hot because they were playful, they were funny, they were creative, they had good narrative structure, they were outside. But what it also did is the choreography in those scenes up-ended a ton of stereotypes. So Asian Bay, Andrew was sexually dominant in some of the scenes. He was aggressive, he was sexy, right? And so there's this narrative that's existed in story Long Duck Dung is sort of the worst example, but of desexualizing Asian men. And you can look after this storyline aired for two seasons, and you see an uptick in the combination of black women, Asian men combinations. And so when I sat down with the I got to talk to the producer because she's on another project I'm working on, and she said, No, we discussed this in the this was definitely an awareness and something we discussed in the writer's room.

And what I said to her is do you realize there are literally babies walking around now that exist because of the story you told? Because when people see things, the way it works in the negative, right? So when I go to Taiwan or to China or to Germany, the negative stereotypes that people have about me because of some of the crap that Hollywood has put out exist. But we can also change that around, right? So I'm working on a project right now that's showing black women who are mothers in their 50s having sex. Oh my gosh, who knew that happened, right? Like to be able to celebrate stories of older women, of mothers, of women who are not white being sexy and sexual and finding pleasure and taking ownership of their sexuality, to me, that is exciting because it starts to tell the culture how to think and it changes the narrative about what is desirable.

And that's the power of this field, potentially. Well, I just watched the movie Good Luck to You, Leo Grand, and wow, I can't tell you how incredibly empowering it is. I've made some decisions about some things I'm going to try. And it's really got me thinking about how if XX chromosome identity, XX chromosome, that's not even an identification. If people with XX chromosomes felt more empowered to seek pleasure from other people with XX chromosomes or to go and buy pleasure, we would solve a good deal of the abortion issues because we would just be getting our pleasure. And there are ways to be pleasured without um involving risk of impregnation and being imprisoned for life because you um you know are being forced to have a child.

So I'm all for pleasure and showing people how to have pleasure in the safest possible ways. I think that it is the empowerment for the future. So let me build on that then. When I work well and I can go in a room and collaborate with directors and actors, and we can say these are the boundaries, right? Tanya does not want her glasses touched in the scene because she has XX issue, right? Like people always think about the chest area or the groin area is the way we don't touch. But I always say, like, because young actors are always like, oh, I'm okay being touched everywhere, which is why we do a boundary practice. Um but I say, like, oh, are you okay if I stick my finger up your nose? No, you're not, right?

So show me with your hands where you are okay being touched. And I did this recently in a rehearsal, and we found some really sensual movements that we could put into the show, right? And so for me, I'm like, this is a faster way of getting to what we want to get to, which is safe intimate practice. Because once you know that you're not gonna grab my breasts um in a way that hurts me, or um, and when I say hurt, I literally mean physically being hurt. My breasts were grabbed when I was pregnant without my consent or permission, it hurt. So I'm talking about people being physically injured. Once I know that, I feel safe to play. And when I tell you that I've been on sets where there were like orgy scenes and multiple people are naked, but you know they know that they are, and and I use the word taken care of, not in a coddling sense, but literally, I know I'm gonna be safe here.

I know that I can trust people, it gives actors freedom. I would think that for some people, they don't want to have their hair touched, particularly for black women. Hair might be like, nope, don't touch my hair. Or I mean, and what we talk about in intimacy, right? And this I do give credit to Chelsea Pace and Laura Ricard for because they they created these terms, but like they talk about fences and gates, right? So I don't want you to touch my hair most of the time, but in this one scene where we are doing this act of love, I will open the gate to you to touch my hair in these ways, right? Um, because this is appropriate for the scene. So what we're talking about is not you touch my shoulder, don't do that.

What we're talking about is helping people define how they want to play so that we can get further. And what I've actually seen is people doing stuff that I'm like, wow. I mean, I literally just worked with a choreographer who was like, I can't believe they were so open to that. But I was like, but it takes five minutes to set up some of these things. I mean, it's not, I'm not talking about, you know, I usually ask for an hour or two, depending on the level of like if we're engaging nudity or if we're engaging intimacy. But when I worked on Choir Boy, you know, nine of those boys were supposed to appear naked on stage, and there were two or three of them that were not sure. And I had a great director in Janeille Jude, who was like, okay, if they say no, what are our options, right?

So we talked about prosthetics, we talked about, and because they were not being forced to do it, they actually became, and because we set up good, and when I say safe, again, that's a word like trauma that sometimes gets overused, but it literally was a safe practice of who's gonna be in the room and who's not. How are we gonna use fog so that this doesn't become an issue of exploitation? Because these are black bodies in a white space performing nudity. There is harm that can happen there. Like, let's just be clear there's harm that has happened in most of these spaces. So when people are feeling restrained, some of this is corrective, right? Anytime we get corrective, sometimes it is more restrictive until we get to a place where we can have a shorthand about this is the way we're all going to agree to work.

[12:26] Kaja Dunn: But because we have person A, B, and C over here being an ass and they were doing things that were deeply harmful and inappropriate, we all need to get to the place where we can talk, right? And so again, there's messiness in some of that. But I'll also still point out that like when we hear stories, because this discussion started with us originally about some very powerful people. But I would say those powerful people have always had, or since they became powerful, have had boundaries around what they will and won't tolerate. And everybody else had to follow that because they controlled money and power. And so one of the things that the field at its best is trying to do is bring an equality to who gets to come to set and be in control of their own body in a way that is, and not in a way that's I'm not gonna do this, but in a way that's I'm going to respect you, Tanya, that I'm not gonna walk up and meet you and be like, oh, she doesn't have as much power.

I'm gonna put my hands in her pants, right? Like, and yes, we can have let's have another discussion about female sexual pleasure and the way most of us were parented to not have it or to seek it, and how if we can make that more egalitarian. But if we do that, people also start to feel empowered in other ways, and there are people in power who don't want that. So but I also think just that the ability to have intergenerational conversations with people who know history and actuality, not just people who are coming into this, but who know the history and can help sort of navigate these conversations that are, well, we had to do this, or are we training a generation of actors who won't know how to fight and stand up and unify, or these kids are all gonna burn out because they're fighting X, Y, and Z. And how do they get strategic, right?

The more we can start to have intergenerational conversations and people can hear each other, you're really good at that. I think being able to navigate that rather than saying, I don't understand this, or this is a different way of working, that's how we make progress because people are going to learn things from. And I've seen you say it to people, right? Like, yes, you're going to be seen as difficult. Just accept it. And now how do we move forward, right? But for people to be strengthened, that has to build. That's how armies are built. That's how communities are built. That's how movements are built, right? Everybody has something to bring to this to the pot. But we also need sort of the brash fearlessness of a younger generation.

And when I say younger generation, I mean people 20 years younger than me. Because there are things that they have been free to do that I literally had beaten out of me, right? With scholarships taken away, or and so, and for them, I think part of the way to empower is to say, but also recognize who came before you. Recognize the fights that were fought before you. When you see somebody not fighting in the same way, try to understand why, especially if they are people who are fighting the same cause as you. When we can get that to happen, and again, that's dismantling supremacy or savagery, that's dismantling a hierarchical structure and going everybody has something to bring to the table. How do we make sure that this all works?

[15:26] Kaja Dunn: Agreed, agreed. There was this quote that I wanted to read from this article about decolonization is not a myth. And it is settler colonialism is a structure and not an event. In the process of settler colonialism, land is remade into property. Human relationships are restricted to the relationship of the owner to his property, epistemological, ontological, cosmological relationships are interred, made premodern, backward, made savage. So the global majority was made savage by the settler colonialism. I'm just giving it back to them. I'm giving their definition that they projected onto the rest of the world back to them. Yeah, and I think you can look at behaviors. When we talk about dismantling, we're talking about look at the structure on which this is set, where we commodify bodies, where we figure out what rate of death is acceptable, right? For economic purposes. Yeah, I just, but I think again, there is a way in which intimacy, when done with care and cultural competency and correctly actually moves this forward.

[16:45] Tonya Pinkins: It sounds like what you do does move things forward. It would certainly make me feel safer. I mean, I remember I just worked with Ryan Stokes Mitchell for the first time on Run the World. And I was a little uncomfortable about it because, you know, we run into each other at events, but the only time we had ever had an extended conversation was 30 years ago when he was going to replace Gregory Hines in Jelly's Last Jam. And I remember it was one of the most painful and awkward conversations for me. And I ultimately left the show before performing with him. That, you know, he may have thought I didn't like him or something like that. And what he said is he thought, oh, you were just tired of doing the show.

What he didn't know at that time, and what I shared with him was that when I was working on the show with Gregory Hines, everyone used to joke around and say, Gregory's gonna do the Kama Sutra, and you know, Gregory, God rest his soul, and Suzanne Douglas, God rest his soul. That's who he wanted to do the show. And they had this whole plan of what they were going to do on stage in Jelly's Last Jam. And as we've discussed, Gregory wanted to do anal sex and oral sex. And um, I remember the rehearsal where he was saying that, and it was the first time I experienced disassociation with awareness. My body, I could watch myself, you know, above the four poster bed, watching myself laugh as Gregory put me into all these sexual positions.

And then when the break came, I ran out of the room, called my agent and said, Get me out of this show. Um, thereafter, my refusal to do it, I guess was what was given to Gregory as the reason he couldn't do the show that he the star wanted to do. And I was treated as a non-entity when I was not on stage with him. Playing with him on stage was a delight. As soon as we crossed that stage line, I didn't exist. He treated me as if I was invisible, and it was a very painful thing to do. When it was told that Brian was gonna replace Gregory, I was like, This is another television star. I can't emotionally go through that again. You know, he didn't know that, and I'm thinking he probably thinks, you know, I'm some bitch or something like that.

But as I said to you, when I saw Strange Loop, I felt traumatized with Inwood Daddy Sucking Cock on Saturday morning because it was like, oh my god, you know, I didn't want to see anal sex in a musical 30 years ago, and now we've reached a point where that is celebrated and that's the norm. I still feel traumatized about it.

[19:24] Kaja Dunn: Yeah, and I mean, the care that had to be taken with those two actors about how we were going to do this and where this was done. And I will say in that I don't think that's supposed to be a celebration. Um, there may be some people who read it that way. Strange Loop is one of those plays that Michael says mirrors and windows, right? And so the windows certain people are looking through, people bring different views to that. But in general, I mean, I had not with the same power dynamics, but I think students have experienced a lot of similar power dynamics with teachers, especially when they go to conservatories that are noted. But my first class, I was told to take my clothes off and do a sex scene from Beirut, which is a play about, you know, HIV.

And all my white classmates were doing laughter on the 23rd floor in the Heidi Chronicles, right? Like these very lighthearted, and I'm this girl from North Carolina, like super naive in terms of actual experience. And this is how I got into the field, right? I had all of these kids coming up because of the internet because of we're having more kids than ever in college or even their first professional roles who've never been kissed. And I was like, You're you, I'm not gonna force you to have your first kiss. Am I acting like that's stupid? But how we talk about this, I've had LGBTQIA students who are uncomfortable with certain types of physical contact or being defined in certain ways. This gives us a framework and a structure just like we have in everything else.

Nobody goes, hey, we have to take a lunch break for actors. I mean, I'm sure they did when the lunch break thing started and when equity started, they were like, Well, actors are just they're supposed to be happy to be here, right? Which is the same attitude that actually comes out with a lot of protests against safety around intimacy is you should just be glad you have a job. It's the same attitude that exists whenever black women walk into any space and are mistreated. You should just be happy you're here. And we're saying no. The same way you wouldn't tell these jokes at your workplace, this is your workplace. So even if we're doing a sexual scene, there are boundaries around that. So that Tanya does not have to enact anal sex without any discussion of how this goes.

How do we do this? How is this staged? Your groin is not going to come anywhere near me. I'm gonna put, you know, we put barriers and padding around people. So there's no chance before that happened, equity has stories of people who have contact with body fluids because people become unintentionally aroused and body, like then it becomes an OSHA issue. Like, I don't need your body fluids on me, right? So some people feel like they're being made to be a eunuch when they have to wear, you know, it's the size of what you put on your bathing suit, right? It's that thin, but it's a barrier that prevents actual stimulation. That is a good thing, right? Like, I don't generally make big sweeping statements, but that's a good thing.

It's a good thing we don't go to work and get somebody else's sexual body fluids on us, right? Like that's not what, unless you signed up for that, right? That is not what I signed up for when I took X, Y, and Z contract. So at the end of the day, like that's why it's important. That's why it's here. Again, when it is done well and in a good collaborative environment, it also leads to better storytelling. It leads to possibility, because also my thing with being a coordinator, and I know we're at the end of time, but like I never want to see another man put his hand on a woman's cheek, kiss her, lay her down on the bed, and then we pan up to the curtain flickering in the window with the moonlight.

We've seen that 1500 times. What are better ways we can tell fun stories of intimacy, right? Like part of this is a whole creative field about storytelling. And how can I help you tell the story that you want to tell in a way that the audience hasn't seen, that is playful, that disempowers tropes that have existed for a long time. So if I'm doing a love scene with queer black boys, we're gonna bring their childhood into it. We're gonna bring the playfulness into it. We're gonna bring the awkwardness into it because teens are, yeah.

[23:08] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you, Kaja Dunn, for coming and having this conversation with me. Thank you. You know, I always like to play devil's advocate and take the point of view that is not acceptable or that you know people would be quiet about. So I'm glad we got to have this conversation. I think it's gonna be enlightening for a lot of people. Um, my name is Tonya Pinkins. Uh, you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[24:05] Tonya Pinkins: How come you don't say no? How come you don't say no when you mean no? When you mean no. How come you say you will? How come you say you will when you will. Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show where you can. I'm Tonya Pinkins, and You Can't SAY THAT is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales with music by Cat Dail. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast highly wherever you stream. Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Tonya Pinkins. And to learn more, visit BPN.fm forward slash YCST. Stay safe.