Samantha Rose Williams on 'American Patriots'
Creating a song cycle that examines the American condition began with the humility to listen, and ended with the bravery to speak up when nobody would.
By Betsy Podsiadlo | 6/1/24
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Samantha Rose Williams is the arts activist, performer, and creative producer behind American Patriots, a theatrical song cycle written from source material derived from over 50 interviews with Americans from across the United States. American Patriots asks viewers to actively examine the way they “think about race, class, and who this country is for; and to gain perspective into the lives of other Americans we may not have previously identified with,” according to the American Patriots website. We caught up with Samantha Rose Williams to learn more about the journey of creating American Patriots, the processes she adopted and created along the way, and the advice she has for those wishing to raise their artistic voices against injustice.
2020 was a year of so many monumental events in US history. The COVID-19 Pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests, a contentious election, and so much more. As Williams finished up her Master’s degree at the University of Michigan during this unprecedented time she found herself frustrated as her pursuit of an opera career often had her working on pieces that felt irrelevant to the realities of today. She found herself asking “What do I want to be singing about?”
After returning to her home in Alexandria, VA, Williams attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington D.C. and found that a place that once felt so comfortable to her in childhood had transformed.
“It felt like it was this dream or hellscape where there were tanks all over the street, military personnel, people in militia gear, and protestors everywhere,” Williams said.
She began to think deeply about the many different kinds of people present in the street that day.
“I realized that everybody there could be there because they thought they were a patriot,” she said. “Whether it was to protect law and order, to stand up for rights being ignored, or to share in your democratic duty to protest. That could all be construed as patriotic.”
Williams felt compelled to further explore what it means to be patriotic within the divisions represented that day and in the face of the current hyper-polarized political culture.
“How do I capture that through music?” Williams asked herself.
As the work on American Patriots began to take shape, Williams became more interested in the controversies behind who is and isn’t allowed to tell the stories of people different from themselves. As the work on American Patriots began to take shape, Williams became more interested in conversations about race-conscious and race-blind casting and who is and isn’t allowed to tell the stories of people different from themselves.
Taking inspiration from Anna Deveare Smith’s work in “documentary theatre” in the form of the “verbatim theatre”, Williams decided that interviews were the best way to generate authentic text and first-hand storytelling from people representing all of the different patriot perspectives featured in the piece. So, she began devising a structure in which to honor her interviewees’ unique perspectives and identities, creating a system called Intentional Storytelling.
“The whole concept of Intentional Storytelling is to collaborate with communities and let them speak in their own words, in ways that feel authentic to them,” Williams said.
Using the verbatim text transcribed from the interviews, Williams made it a priority that the interviewees would be able to deny, edit, and approve the final text used in the piece. She also began to build a creative team for the project that included artists with some shared cultural identities, such as race or socioeconomic class, with the interviewees. Williams wanted to make sure there were opportunities to give power to people who identified with these stories throughout the process of creating the show, thus empowering everyone involved to have a say in how the story was to be told.
Creating a project with such intense subject matter comes with its own set of challenges, and American Patriots is no exception. As Williams began to workshop her idea of intentional storytelling, she often found herself experimenting with processes she’d thought up only to find that there were elements in need of further consideration. She found that the best way to navigate through the rough spots of figuring out this system was to realize that her intentions and impact may be different, and walk through the process with humility.
“I’ve done all of this work to try to make sure that I am reducing harm, but I’m also going to acknowledge that I am trying to do something with sensitive issues. Sometimes I’m going to put my foot in my mouth or step where I didn’t mean to step,” Williams said.
Some artists shy away from delving into sensitive topics or divisive issues because of the fear that comes from making mistakes or the susceptibility to criticism on topics they’re less familiar with. But as Williams emphasizes, “We can’t let that fear stop us from making connections.”
Williams noted that through this process she faced failure many times, but was also often met with grace. She also recognized that vulnerability is a significant skill in this kind of work, but it must go both ways. Working with people with different views and experiences is not easy, but it is at the core of American Patriots.
“If I had a mission for the show, it’s to encourage people to create relationships with people who think differently from them. This, I think, is the fundamental fear or anxiety that stops a lot of us: the fear of not knowing, the fear of making a mistake, the fear of being misunderstood,” Williams said.
As another generation emerges onto today’s activism scene, Williams recalled the difficulties of finding her voice as a young artist. Engaging with art through an activist mission often feels diametrically oppositional to renowned institutions. As we know from Audre Lorde: “..the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.”
“Coming from classical music it was very important for me to stop trying to be a people pleaser and to stop trying to work within the system that I knew,” Williams said.
As she began to explore and expand on her curiosity toward arts activism, Williams struggled to assert the intentionality behind her deviation from a typical classical vocalist’s path to her professors and colleagues. She struggled to find the words to describe what she wanted to do that fit within the vernacular of academic music and an industry that is largely sustained by the ruling class. Eventually, she decided to take courage and share her plans and ideas, even with people who she knew wouldn’t necessarily understand.
“The more I talked about it, the more I started finding the people who could give me the next bit of the puzzle,” Williams said.
Samantha Rose Williams’ dedicated arts activism through the creation of American Patriots reminds us that bravery and humility are not at odds with one another in this work. Her thoughtful and empathetic approach to engaging with difficult topics comes from a fortitude she cultivated through experience and practice in using her voice even when people weren’t listening.
To learn more about American Patriots, visit the website. Or, watch a highlight reel from the workshop of American Patriots
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