Above : UPLIFT team photo after BIPOC affinity show talkback (from left to right: Will Carter ‘23, Isabella Keily ‘24, Arielle Lam ‘24, Annalise Sawit ‘21, Dare Wedgeworth ‘23, Sarita Padukone ‘23, Isha Smith-Ramakrishnan ‘22, Silas Mitchell ‘21, Jacob Smith ‘24, and Dr. Eunice Ferreira).
Image credits to Will Carter, Wynn Lee, and Coltrane Cho.
Skidmore students are constantly working to make campus spaces and communities both more accessible and safer for students of color. Too often does the administration prioritize certain individuals financially and through the access it gives to resources on campus. It is not hard to point out who is privileged in these cases or to untangle the roots of the problem.
Recently, folks across departments have been fighting to increase the access that different groups of marginalized students have to vital spaces on campus, like meeting spots for clubs, financial resources, and other means of support. UPLIFT is a Black, Indigenous Persons of Color (BIPOC) affinity space for theater students at Skidmore. The group was organized and is run by Will Carter (he/they), Anne-Sophie Vandenberk (she/her), and Dare Wedgeworth (they/them), all members of the Class of 2023. I had the pleasure of sitting down with all three, with whom I discussed UPLIFT’s founding, goals, and ideas for the year.
For the leaders of UPLIFT, Skidmore’s Theater Department was to be a focus in the fight for campus-wide change. SpringFest was a production series put on by the department in April 2021, with shows written, produced, and performed by Skidmore students. Carter and Wedgeworth, who had been in a Skidmore “Black Theater” course together the previous semester, had the idea of organizing a show created and performed by BIPOC students. Vandenberk, who was also in the class, was added to the production, for, in her words, “a little bit more experience in the Theater Department.” And thus UPLIFT was born, a to-be safe creative space by and for BIPOC theater students.
Raising Spirits: UPLIFT at SpringFest
The SpringFest show was created with the explicit intention of being a BIPOC affinity space for students in and out of the department. The desire and the need for such a special space at Skidmore stems from an overall lack of safe spaces for BIPOC students, specifically in the Theater community.
Wedgeworth described a SpringFest show which they attended with Carter, Bamboo Box by Wynn Lee ‘21, where they were “surrounded by white people,” which felt “isolating.” Wedgeworth observed, “It was different to see our experience… paralleled with theirs and just see how differently they perceived the show… what we were left with and what they weren't left with is very different.”
Carter recalled that as the show was getting ready to start, the two saw President Conner and his wife, who “stared at Dare and I as if we were the first Black people they had ever seen.” The encounter left them feeling “weird,” only increasing the desire to have a show without white people in the audience. Carter and Wedgeworth later secured a BIPOC affinity night for UPLIFT, a show solely for BIPOC folks, for the comfort of both performers and audience members. “We don’t want to be educators,” Carter stated. “We want to be heard.”
For Carter, Wedgeworth, and the community of UPLIFT, the BIPOC affinity space had a tremendous effect on both performers and audience members. The first show felt “almost like minstrelsy,” a “lecture” to the white audience, recounted Carter, whereas they described the second show as “a conversation.” There was a commonality amongst the audience and the performers that Wedgeworth labeled as a simple “non-whiteness,” which allowed for a mutual understanding and a “sense of community.” They compared it to the previous night, which functioned more as a “call to action.” The difference was felt by the BIPOC-only audience, as well, who Carter remembered as being significantly more engaged throughout the performance.
The BIPOC affinity night for UPLIFT at SpringFest was impactful because it created a more comfortable space for performers and audience members. After a show for an audience that “came there to be entertained,” the affinity night “raised [performers’] spirits,” noted Carter. To the BIPOC-only audience, UPLIFT was more of an “experience” than a “play.” “It became storytelling,” Carter said. “It became getting vulnerable with our close friends.”
Anesu Mukombiwa ‘23 prepares for her performance during UPLIFT’s tech rehearsal.
UPLIFT in Fall 2021
Carter, Wedgeworth, and Vandenberk knew from the success of SpringFest that the work of UPLIFT had to be continued. The work then became about the transformation of UPLIFT into an ongoing club at Skidmore. I asked the three leaders what their plans were for this academic year, and what they hoped the UPLIFT space would provide. All three acknowledge how crucial a space on campus is for BIPOC students to “be able to create really without the presence of white people.” Carter stated, “I want [UPLIFT] to become a staple of the Theater Department.” They added, “hopefully it’ll be a safe space for BIPOC students [in and outside of] the Theater Department to feel comfortable expressing themselves.”
UPLIFT is providing that safe, collective creative space this semester. The group meets in Studio B of the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater from seven to ten p.m. each Friday, where folks have resources and comrades with whom to dance, to listen to music, and to have a “cool place” to work. “This is going to be a space where everyone’s going to be creating,” said Carter, recognizing the importance of UPLIFT’s presence, “and this is what we need.” Carter and Wedgeworth also mentioned hopeful collaborations with other Office of Student Diversity Programs (OSDP) clubs on campus, such as an inter-club fashion show and dance workshops. There will also be monthly BIPOC-only open mic nights hosted by UPLIFT beginning at the end of October.
UPLIFT is more than just a safe space for BIPOC Skidmore students, something that “there was nothing like” before, noted Carter. At a predominantly white institution (PWI), academic and extracurricular spaces are co-opted by white students. These spaces, regardless of their intention, then continue to uphold white supremacy. UPLIFT changes this entirely, being a space run by BIPOC students, for BIPOC students. Carter stated that spaces like these are “always needed” at Skidmore, and are “always possible” with enough student voices and administrative assistance.
Wedgeworth feels that “for BIPOC students, we have kind of created a safe space where [we] can feel comfortable speaking up about injustices not only within the Theater Department.” Further, many of the newer members of UPLIFT are not previous participants in the Department, so for them, it is a space where they can “feel empowered to speak up and to share their experiences… about institutional racism happening at Skidmore.” Wedgeworth continued that UPLIFT provides a place to “feel more comfortable speaking up for themselves and knowing they have a community to lean on.”
Vandenberk added, “I think that white people, specifically, have a problem with not being able to be in every single space. So I think it’s really impactful that there’s a space that is not for white people.” It saves members of the club, especially Carter and Wedgeworth, from the arduous labor of turning white folks away from the space and taking on the onus of educator. This special space, Vandenberk believes, has been “one kind of positive in the Theater Department.”
Character Red, played by Analise Sawit '21, sits with her punch dummy.
Impact and Inspiration
Wedgeworth emphasized the important community that UPLIFT cultivates for BIPOC folks on campus. “The Theater Department historically has not been a welcoming space for BIPOC students,” Wedgeworth asserted, so it’s an “encouraging” transformation to see the creation of one now. Carter added that the demand for UPLIFT was a “wake-up call” for the Theater Department. On a campus-wide scale, Wedgeworth hopes that UPLIFT makes Skidmore a more “welcoming and safe space for students of color.” They describe UPLIFT as their “weekly dose of BIPOC joy,” and hope that others feel the same.
In fact, more BIPOC folks have gotten involved in the Theater Department because of the space UPLIFT provides. Wedgeworth spoke about the experience of having classical actress Debra Ann Byrd come to Skidmore in October to perform her play Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey and meet with Skidmore Theater classes. They observed that more people attended Byrd’s play because of UPLIFT’s group chat, where folks became excited about “a cool Black lady coming to perform a play.” If they have a good time, they become excited about future events. Had the group not existed, noted Wedgeworth, such engagement would not have happened.
UPLIFT allows comfortable creativity for BIPOC Theater students at Skidmore, and at the same time highlights a larger community need for these safe spaces. Vandenberk, Carter, and Wedgeworth all mentioned that there are few, if any, such spaces at Skidmore. UPLIFT changed this. For Carter, “we’re [now] taking up space that was before either empty or occupied by white people, taking [up] space and showing that we are here… and leaving the rest up to the other students of color.”
Students feel the College has been notoriously inefficient at providing such affinity spaces, which only demands more student advocacy. Carter advises “[students] to voice our need for these environments because… someone with more power in the administration is able to pick it up.” He emphasizes that students must work so that the departments will put money into “actual permanent change,” which is always unpromised. They continued, “It has to be by and for the community, because if it’s not, it’s disingenuous.”
Carter, Wedgeworth and Vandenberk truly believe that UPLIFT can serve as an inspiration for students across campus and can be an impetus for impactful change. “Even if a student of color doesn’t even come to one UPLIFT thing,” Carter commented, “to know that it’s there... that there are students of color doing work… that means I can make something in my own little world that is like that, right?”
Director Will Carter '23 posing for a quick photo during UPLIFT’s tech rehearsal.