Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Critic's Notebook: real world concerns about a fantasy 'Nightingale'
latimes.com: Are we really living in a post-racial world? It seems like we’re back in the 1990s, when all hell broke loose on Broadway after the British star Jonathan Pryce was cast as the Eurasian lead in “Miss Saigon.” The “multicultural” casting of “The Nightingale” at La Jolla Playhouse has provoked a similar backlash, with leaders of the Asian American theater community decrying the way a work set in ancient China has been cast with only two Asian American actors out of an ensemble of 12.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
"The Nightingale" its true is not naturalistic. It is not trying to capture how life actually is it is a symbolic representation of how the world is/was. But the real problem is that they tried to take a show that was clearly set in FEUDAL CHINA and make it reflect today's world. If the show had been actually set (meaning the costumes, props, choreography, and script) in a random ancient time with some Asian aspects then I don't think any of this flair up would have happened. Or if they were stuck on setting it specifically in Feudal China then they should have cast more Chinese actors. The reason this was not done is because Steven Sater the writer decided that he could not write the story of an entirely Asian cast (which is what a previous workshoped reading had been). And this brings up the most interesting question of all can a person of a different identity write and tell the story of people outside of who you are? I guess the answer is, depending on the identity you can? I don't think anyone can actually answer that question. But I just look at the work that is being produced today and who makes decisions and it seems as though if you are someone that is in the know then you are someone that won't be questioned. Also if the piece is abstract enough then no one will question your work.
I have to wonder how many other productions set in a more race-muddy setting have been over-looked or flat-out ignored recently. Yes, clearly a production [fantasy or not] set in China or tribal Africa is easier to pigeonhole in a racial fashion than something set in early Rome or in 16th century Europe [where races have already been mixing for centuries]. I'm not attempting to defend La Jolla Playhouse so much as I'm wondering what set off THIS PARTICULAR manhunt.
I think casting today IS a different monster than it used to be. All you have to do is look at television [particularly BBC television]: Dr Who can go back to Mount Vesuvius-era Pompeii and see races and creeds from all over and everywhere. I suspect that has less to do with a uptopian picture of the past and more to do with, "These are the actors we could find."
As to the WHY La Jolla made these casting decisions, my suspicion is that the actors in question are probably regulars of the playhouse and people this team is comfortable working with. Standard trouble-shooting [of which I tend to think writing new works for Broadway is looked at these days] often works best by reducing the number of unknowns. In this case, that's hiring actors the playhouse knows are talented and can work well in a developing piece. So, perhaps in this case, casting truly is colorblind: It had nothing at all to do with race.
I really enjoyed the way that this article explored both sides of the problem at hand. This issue is not exactly a new one. Periodically there are articles posted on the Green Page that address casting choices that seem to unfairly represent different minority groups. Whenever I see these articles, I am always inclined to not say that much. We don’t live in a colorblind society; we don’t live in a gender-blind society. We probably never will. So they casted some white actors to play Asian roles. There are a million potential reasons for this choice that do not involve intentional racism. Maybe these were the best actors for the roles, and race had literally nothing to do with it. Perhaps La Jolla has a predominantly white audience, and by casting white actors they were trying to help the audience identify more with the actors to make a statement about the similarity of western and eastern culture. But I’m just a white girl, what do I know about racism.
Post a Comment