Tidwell Productions LLC supports Black Lives Matter

We at Tidwell Productions stand against racial injustice and police brutality.

My wife and I have been lucky to have been surrounded from the beginning, and today, with influential and insightful human beings of all races, ethnicities, and philosophies. My wife and Break-A-Leg game originator, Jody, teaches at a traditionally white university while I teach in a historically black university, both located here in North Carolina. One of our goals, as educators and game creators, is to respect and visually represent all ethnicities, sexual orientations, and types of peoples that might engage in our educational learning games. Therefore, we support and practice daily in the classroom and with all acquaintances and colleagues, the Black Lives Matter philosophy.

Personally, in the early 1970s (during what I have been known to refer to as my “Wonder Bread” years), educational theatre allowed me to experience the changing dynamics and demographics of my surrounding predominately white world. My high school drama teacher, Mr Robert Meyers, proved to be a window and catalyst of what should be. A quiet small stature teacher with a bold individual spirit (after all, he drove a 1968 brown Thunderbird with a huge T-Bird logo emblazed across the hood), it was no surprise to us when, in 1972, he decided to cast our school main-stage production of “The Princess and the Pea” (a subtle, administration-demanded renaming of the popular “Once Upon a Mattress”) with color-blind casting. Our theatre teacher created a life “Teaching Moment” by casting a black student as King and a white student as his Queen … and as students we saw no big deal, after all, the most talented actors got the leads. We supported, worked together, and produced, with student set designers, front of house personnel, run crew, and actors, a cohesive, respectful, and successful production.

That was almost 50 years ago, and Jody and my philosophy, thanks to our educational theatre experiences, and teaching daily in the discipline, remain to this day unchanged: Black Lives Matter and we all need to be respected, treated fairly, and valued equally for who we are and what we contribute (be it in a classroom, during a card game, or in real life), and not because of the color of our skin, our intellect, or our upbringing. Our actions define who we are and how we expect to be treated: be it interactions in life , on the street, or in the games we choose to play together.

In the end, it is our responsibility (especially as educators) to improve our society, our country, and the gaming community we care deeply about. Hopefully, we will never stop changing and continually evolving for the betterment and equality, and fair treatment of all.