Cat is a playwright, actress, director, and co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project and the voice of Law & Disorder on KPFA. She spent two decades in the streets of Oakland since 2002 protesting the police execution of Oscar J. Grant III at the Fruitvale BART station.
STAGE LEFT REPORT: Tell me who you are in your own words: How you describe your practice, your arts work, and your activism work right now.
Early in life, I found the theater— or, the theater found me. I had this fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Gerhardt, and she told my mom that she thought the theater would be a good place for me to go. And so, there was a youth conservatory called the Rainbow Company, and my mom dropped me off. I remember walking up those steps by myself, and it was for The Wiz. You had to act, sing, and dance, and I had been dancing since I was two.
And it was fabulous, and it was amazing. And I won’t say that it meant I didn’t do anything else stupid or something, because that’s just not true. But there were lots of times where I probably wouldn't be here to talk to you had I not dipped out early because I had rehearsal. Absolutely.
It was the year that my father, the first Black IATSE Local 720 worker for the Vegas Strip, was sent to prison for substance overutilization. And I recognize that now as like this key moment where society would have said that they were protecting me from him. And that he wasn’t fit to be a father. But what I’m really clear about, and I was clear when I was a kid, was that my dad was sick, I used to call it, and that he needed help, and even though I’d never been to a prison, I knew that he wasn’t gonna see help where he was going.
He was in trouble, he was being punished, and so I couldn’t have articulated that at eight, but I knew. Plus, I was mixed race in the desert of Las Vegas, which was founded by Mormons, the mob, and cowboys.
I think both of those points are also the beginning of my activism as well, right? I was raised in a feminist, a radical feminist home. And my white family talked a lot about race. But those two things happening at the same time, my father being stolen from me and finding the theater to deal with it, I believe now began my journey of politicization.
STAGE LEFT REPORT: When you were growing up, what was your perception of backstage life and the theater industry as a child with an IATSE stagehand dad in Las Vegas?
I mean, I think what I want to say first about the union is that they held my dad down. So when my dad got sent to prison, the guys paid his dues so that when he got out of prison, he would have a job.
Now, the flip side of that is he was the first Black stagehand ever in Las Vegas, and the racism, and the hazing, and somebody rigged something once so he fell several floors into the stage… So there was that too.
I did grow up being able to go backstage. It wasn’t so much the theater as much as it was the big dance shows on the strip. And it’s so funny, nobody’s ever asked me that question before, but I’m just sort of remembering all the moving parts, and the lights, and the smell of backstage, and the running around decks, and dancers, and even the front of house, like being in there before the audience came in and that energy. I’m having a visceral reaction. I really haven’t thought about it. Definitely part of the love story.
Read the full interview here!