The Rake Magazine

We read with disappointment the open letter from Marcie Rendon — "The Cost of Silence" — and several other online posts she has written attacking our work with her on our recent production, Border Crossing. In some of these communications she has gone to the unfortunate, and offensive, extreme of describing our process as "racist." As the artistic directors of Off-Leash Area, we feel a responsibility to address some of the concerns Marcie has raised.

We are a dance and movement theater company, and we work in a very open, collaborative way with all of the artists who work with us — the performers, the composer, designers, rehearsal directors, and a writer if we engage one. Some of our shows have text, some have very little, some have none. Marcie has worked with us twice before; she knows how we work. As Artistic Directors, it is our job to bring all of these elements together in the way we believe has the highest artistic merit.

Evidently stung by some of the editorial and artistic decisions that are an unavoidable part of any creative process, and that are also well within our contractual agreement, Marcie has chosen a regrettably public venue in which to air her grievances, some of which we find untruthful. Rather than exhaustively catalog our collective grievances here, however, we would like to address a few of the charges we feel are unwarranted.

1. Marcie commented that we removed the only Native American character in the show, and so removed a significant part of her voice as a Native American. What Marcie did not clarify is that the performer we hired for this part fell down his stairs and fractured his ribs four weeks before the show opened. Marcie helped us try to find a replacement, but we were unable to do so, and with just weeks left in rehearsals, we felt we had no choice but to remove this part.

2. Marcie stated that Off-Leash Area did not make any attempt to publicize this show to the Latino community. On the contrary: Rosita Balch, a Colombian human rights activist who worked with us in the development of the show, contacted many Latino and human rights organizations, personally emailing them, talking to them, and distributing postcards. One of the Latino cast members translated our press release into Spanish. Our marketing director sent press information to his entire list of press contacts, which included minority publications. A Latino cast member who works deeply in the Latino community as a performing artist contacted the Latino press and organizations he knows. We sent emails from the artistic directors to minority press contacts and Latino organizations. We made every effort we knew how to.

3. Marcie wrote that we took away the voice of the migrants by not having them speak. Since we first began creating this show a year ago, we decided to represent the migrants through the language of dance. This statement is included in grant narratives written last summer — of which Marcie was given copies. We are, after all, a dance and movement theater company; much of our most effective work is wordless. We believe the voice we gave to the migrants through dance is a visceral, powerful voice.

4. Marcie stated that we did not engage the community of color in the production. Our artistic and development team included a Colombian, a Mexican American, an Argentine, a Puerto Rican, an Algerian American, an African American, and two Jews. For our auditions we sent notices to Latino organizations and Latino performers to spread the word that we were especially looking for Latino performers. At the same time contradicting herself, Marcie has registered her disappointment that members of our multicultural cast were invited to comment upon all aspects of the work, including the script. Strangely, this amounts to claiming that the voices of minorities were suppressed by input from too many diverse voices, a charge we can't make enough sense of to address.

We are sorry that our creative process on Border Crossing did not satisfy Marcie's wishes, but it was nothing if not inclusive, and one would be hard pressed to read anything resembling racism into it. It may be that her dissatisfaction stems from a lack of clarity in our initial informal working agreement with her, and we resolve to better define the nature of our collaborations in the future. We ask only that our partners deal in truth, and not in allegation.