You probably all know by now how much I loved words and word choice.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Words are magic. With words you can create and you can harm. You can build and destroy. You can make beauty and you can strip it away.

That’s powerful.

Right now there is a word that has become a hot topic (for obvious reasons), which seems to be quite misunderstood. And that word is Privilege.

But before you roll your eyes and decide to close this post, I ask you to consider whether or not you are fully aware of what that word means - in large part because I thought I had a full understanding and it turns out that I did not! My understanding was partial and narrowly applied.

In her book So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo says:

“Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not.”

But there’s more to this definition and concept - which she does go into - and it seems important to dive in and understand.

To bring this conversation back to the arts, the Theatre Community is being asked to take a good hard look at its structural issues, but we are all also being asked to check our own personal privileges (of which there are many types).

So how do we begin?