(gentle piano music)
- My name is Kayla.
I am a anti-racist facilitator and a creative producer.
I'm from New Jersey.
I also work in New York City.
I've done a lot of theater producing,
I work for the Broadway League,
the American Theatre Wing.
I've worked for Crossroads Theatre Company,
which is an African-American theater company
that won the Tony award, which is so exciting,
and I also work for Rutgers University.
I was born in Daejin, South Korea,
and I'm a Korean-American adoptee.
So growing up, I actually,
my family did a lot,
I was really raised more Italian,
so we did a lot of things, like, together.
We had a lot of big birthday parties,
there was a lot of gathering,
a lot of just being around, doing a lot of things.
When I grew up, my house was over, like, in this one area.
My dad worked right next door,
so they owned this apartment house,
and my aunt lived over there,
and then my grandmother lived behind,
so it was constant family, constant parties,
constantly going from one to the next,
constantly doing arts and crafts.
My aunt are going down to visit my grandmother
and having, like, big, like, dinners
and just Italian spaghetti
and just a lot of fun things.
So, like, for me,
growing up was all about family.
Growing up, I've always been interested in art.
So, like, I remember from a young age,
my Aunt Mary Lou, which is my dad's sister,
we would go next to,
we would go from our house next door where they worked,
and she would always have arts and crafts.
So it would be either coloring books,
it'd be making window designs,
it would be having popsicle sticks
and everything that you can think of
or science experiments that is artistic
or colorful, we had to do,
so my whole life was wrapped around creating.
I feel like I felt the most comfortable
in the art community,
'cause at the time, growing up,
I was very active in different things.
I did softball, I did acting, dancing,
like, a lot of different things,
and I felt the most free to express myself
when I was in the arts.
High school got a little bit more difficult for me,
because it was very clear that I am Asian
in a fully white, upper middle class town,
so I had a lot of racism that was happening
that I had to hide a lot of my identity,
where I would introduce myself and be like,
"Hi, I'm Kayla, but I'm not really Asian."
So for me, going to the arts
and being able to,
I love music, I love dancing, I love singing,
I love just being a part of any type of art,
even, like, visual arts,
so that allowed me to express myself in different ways
and feel free.
So I'm an anti-racist facilitator,
so that means that I'm more of a consultant.
So I will come in and work with individuals
who could be on a, like, a whole,
people sign up to do the work
on their own personal journey,
or with organizations.
I particularly focus more on the arts,
particularly because I believe
that the ideology of racism,
'cause there's different levels.
You have, like, the institution,
you have the levels of, like, lawmaking.
You have government, where people make,
they make laws and you have people
who have to enforce the laws,
so you have the judge in court.
And you have the arts,
which, I think, can uphold a lot of stereotypes,
or it can break down stereotypes.
So for me, I think arts are really important,
because people can change their points of view,
where you come in contact with one show,
and that one show can make a difference,
can make you think something different,
or plant a little seed to make you think differently.
So for me, having the arts be more anti-racist
is a really great way to make a different impact
on a lot of other people.
So that's kind of why
I focus more on the arts organizations.
And what I do with them
is a lot of looking at harm,
how harms happened, how to repair the harm,
how to reduce the harm, and repair relationships.
So when it comes to anti-racism work
that I focus on,
yes, part of it is education,
but I focus more on action steps
and acknowledging, like, part of this
is acknowledging feelings and emotions.
There's times where we have to learn
and grow from each other,
and a lot of it's sharing different experiences,
sharing things that hurt us,
share things that bring us joy, laughter, and all this,
so we get to understand, like,
each other in that way.
So a lot of it is talking, communication,
how do we just be with one another
and share stories and listen.
How do we work on this exercise
or build this muscle of not being afraid of conflict?
If conflict happens,
how can we have a true apology?
How do we acknowledge the harm?
How can we learn from it and grow from it?
From the people that I've met,
no one has actually been, like,
"Ha, I wanna be an anti-racist facilitator!"
We all kind of fell into it,
'cause there's no actual way,
'cause I have people ask me, like,
"How do you do this, I wanna do this."
And I'm, like, "I can't tell you (laughs)
exactly how I did it."
I can just tell you from my life experience
of constantly wanting to know more about people,
because I've always been unheard
or not really seen for who I am.
I always felt like code switching,
and not in a way that is, like,
oh, this is part of me,
because of white supremacy, I have to switch,
but because I wasn't fully able to show up
as my full self, 'cause I didn't know what that meant.
So if there's times where I'd be with white friends,
and be, like, okay, I'm gonna change
and be more American.
Or when with a lot of friends of color,
at the time, growing up,
was more Black students or Latinx,
where I had to be, like, okay,
I can feel a little more freer,
I can talk about culture,
I can ask questions,
questions I'm not able to ask around my white friends.
Constantly doing this switch,
for me and my life experience
of dealing with racism,
led to wanting to do more theater work of that.
After I graduated Rutgers,
I wanted to do more work with Broadway,
'cause I thought, that's a goal,
everyone wants to Broadway.
And when I was there, I dealt with a lot of racism
on different mounds,
where being a female who's young
who wants to be a producer,
and also a person of color,
I had to fight.
So there was other people who were around me
who were also producers,
and they would be, like, okay,
we have to fight each other for this one role,
and I was, like, why do we have to fight?
Why is this one role?
Why can't we have more opportunities
that we take down the table
and allow all of us to producers?
What would that look like?
And being, like, well, that doesn't exist,
or you have to do something in order to get this
that is not even a part of the job description.
And I never wanted to do that,
I'm not type of person to wanna tear someone else down,
I feel like we can all build each other,
so I was, like, this is not for me.
So then I started exploring what theater was
in different capacities.
And because Marshall, who was my theater mentor
that I had at Rutgers,
and also, like, I consider closest person,
like, as a dad right now,
he guided me in many different ways
and introduced me to the nonprofit world of theater,
where I worked at Crossroads Theatre Company.
And Crossroads was the first company
that allowed me to be me
and explore and change my identity.
So while I was there,
I was working with so many different beautiful individuals
who were multifaceted and multilayered,
different backgrounds, and seeing them come together
and saying this is a space that they could just be;
where I've had artists, they were telling me, like,
"Oh, when I worked for this theater company,
I just put headphones in,
'cause I cannot listen to people, what they're speaking,
'cause what they say is usually harmful to me,
but I need the paycheck, I need this on my resume,
this is a great theater, I need this.
So I have to do whatever I can to protect myself."
When they come to Crossroads, they don't that.
It's like a family, you huddle,
you show up and you share.
And because of that,
it made me wanna do more art that is meaningful,
more art that's making a difference
as underrepresentative communities,
to have them be seen.
So when I had the opportunity
to go to London for my master's,
that's what I was looking at.
I was that one student in the class
who was, like, "I wanna do a festival about disabilities
and having access, what does that mean?
Or doing a festival for people of color,
having their voices be heard,
or exploring mental health."
So I was so interested in all these topics,
mostly because of my life story,
of what I've also dealt with growing up
and people I've met,
influenced my interest of how to make people
who aren't often seen or heard
and giving them a platform to do that.
And while I was there,
the president of the school
basically said racist remarks.
He said people of color aren't smart enough,
talented enough, and can't afford to go to an art school,
and that we're only quotas.
And in London, a lot of individuals were, like,
"I don't know what to do.
Let's go on Twitter, let's attack him."
Being American, being a person
who constantly knows about protesting and walkouts,
I was, like, "Let's create a walkout."
And also 'cause my producer was, like,
"Let's gather people,
but before we do this, let's talk."
So I talked to students of different backgrounds,
not just students who identify as people of color,
but also talked to students who were trans,
who had gender issue with sexual orientation,
disabilities, and talked about what is the school
not providing for them, how are they feeling,
and it was very clear that everyone didn't feel safe.
So because of all this,
I gathered a talk to deans, talked to staff,
staff felt the same way,
that it was more of the leadership as well as the board,
and the only thing that was needed
is having students and faculty come together
to have a voice.
So that's where we pushed forward with a walkout,
and we made it so everyone was able to have a platform
to speak about their truth.
We got other organizations to support us,
that eventually the principal ended up getting fired,
slash, he left two years later,
and it started this journey for them
to be more anti-racist.
And that started a whole other aspect
and opened a lot of other doors for me
of having these conversations.
So a lot of the way to get to anti-racism work
has been 'cause of my values, 'cause of my story,
who I met, and my passion for just wanting to share
and have people being seen and heard.
So things I've learned and discovered
and accepted about myself in Korea
have been being able to be okay
with being two spaces.
I would acknowledge, like, home for me is people,
and having to acknowledge, like, I have a home in London,
I have a home in Korea now,
I have a home in New York,
I have home in, like, California,
all these different locations 'cause of people.
So a lot of what I'm learning about identity,
it is so fluid and changes.
So, like, currently being okay
with not fully being comfortable
with what it means to be Korean;
being okay and having a support group of people
who accept me for who I am and how important that is.
So learning more about what I need
to be okay with accepting with that,
how to love myself, how to let others love me,
and learning and growing together,
and knowing that we're humans,
we're gonna change every day,
every minute, every second.
I'm where I'm at, and that is okay.
I have a lot to grow, I have a lot to heal,
I have a lot to learn.
Our identity does influence who we are
and how we move through the world,
but we're more than just that.
My name is Kayla Kim Votapek,
and this is my Korean-American story.
(gentle piano music)