By MT Cozzola

The following essay was originally written and performed for BUGHOUSE! in Chicago on November 4, 2019. The topic of debate was Are the Woke the New Puritans? MT Cozzola went up against Sheri Reda. Reda won the debate but Cozzola’s argument below was chosen as the evening’s audience favorite.

I was recently terrified by the question, “Are the Woke are the new Puritans?” How do I answer that? I mean, as a white, middle-aged woman—

…No wait, I’m not sure I should say that. I don't mean to use age as a value judgment or attempt to apologetically contextualize myself or her. Let me rephrase.

…As a white woman—No. Not “woman.” I don’t want to reinforce the gendered markering of females into some lesser category of humanness than men. Plus, there’s the whole question of whether I’d even call myself female if the term hadn’t been drilled into me since babyhood and Suzy Homemaker ovens. Try again.

…As a—Nope. Wait. The term “white” is a political construct that exists primarily to unify European-born groups in the U.S. against non-European-born groups in order to oppress them. And I don’t want to do that.

…Although, for me to not use the term “white” is almost worse because it flaunts a kind of naïveté that is the exclusive province of the privileged oppressor class. Try again.

—What I mean is, as a person alive right now in this body, it would be cultural suicide for me to make any claims about a term that I have no right even using. 

Woke culture is a term of African-American origin that describes a consciousness of racial discrimination, so I don’t believe I have the right even to say the words. Doing so appropriates the term for my own use, no matter what my intentions, as blithely as the Puritans appropriated native lands for planting crops and building their white Protestant churches.

So I don’t have the authority to talk about woke culture. But I do know a little bit about puritanism, because when I was a Freshman in college, I auditioned for a production of The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. 

And yes, I did google Arthur Miller to make sure he hasn’t been canceled. For anyone that wants to point out that his play masquerades as an expose of mob mentality, but is actually a thinly disguised kind of hero worship built on the back of a woman who just didn’t feel pretty enough, let me just say, I’ll get to that.

I auditioned for the role of Abigail. She's the servant girl who has a fling with the married but lonely John Proctor, and when he discards her she gets revenge by accusing his wife of witchcraft.

So I made it to callbacks. And for my callback scene I read against an older student who was auditioning for John Proctor. His parents were famous actors, and he himself had an aura of great acting about him, maybe because he was born into it or maybe just because he was good at what he did. 

I read with him and acted my heart out. 

The next day, the casting is announced and there's a sheet posted at the theatre. I go check it and learn that the other student got John Proctor, but I didn’t get Abigail. I didn’t even get a walk-on as one of her friends. However, there is a note at the bottom of the sheet that says “Mary-Terese Cozzola, come see me.” Signed, the director. 

I go down the hall to the office of the director of this play, Fred Gaines. And he tells me I did a great audition.

Okay.   

It was so good that he has decided to offer me an opportunity better than playing one of those small roles. He's offering me the chance to be his assistant director.

But this is my first chance to position myself as an actor of some substance in this university, so I scoff, “No thanks.” 

“Your choice,” he says mildly. “But it’s not an opportunity I usually offer a freshman.”

I sit up tall. “I am already an experienced director, I did it in high school. So if I'm not good enough to be on stage I don't see the point of being your gopher.”  

“Oh, you’re experienced!” says he. “Director to director, then, you'll understand that it’s not that you weren't good enough. It’s just a chemistry thing. You and Campbell should never appear on a stage together.”

Chemistry thing? What does this mean? Am I so good that I make the child of two famous actors look false? Or is he so good he makes me look false?

But I don’t ask, because doing would reveal that when I said I was an experienced director, what I meant was that I had directed one after-school production of The Bad Seed. Revealing this would prove that I am false and John Proctor is the better actor, and I’d rather think of him as just being lucky enough to have famous parents.

So instead I nod and say, “Chemistry, right.”  And I never mention it again. And I don't get to be involved in that production. And I don’t get to learn more about directing and acting in the process.

And that is my fear about the term I cannot say. The way I removed myself from that production because I didn't get Abigail is the way I fear people may cut themselves off from open discussion about racial and social injustice with anyone whom they perceive to either not understand it or to have committed some offense against it, whether that offense is large or small.

You can argue that there are no small offenses, that even an unintentional microaggression does violence. The Puritans argued that you are either a Goodly Christian or in League with the Devil. There are no in-betweens.

I promised to get back to Arthur Miller. And yes, I do think Miller cheapened his play by creating a version of history where every sexually active woman is a little unhinged. But in an introduction to The Crucible, written by Christopher Bigsby, is this notion.

"It is the essence of power that it accrues to those with the ability to determine the nature of the real. They authorize the language, the grammar, the vocabulary within which others must live their lives.”

“Woke culture is the new Puritanism” is a dangerous thing for me to say. And for that reason, I submit that it’s probably true.