HowlRound: I recently reread August Wilson's 1990 essay “I Want A Black Director!” and found myself compelled by his argument: “I declined a white director not on the basis of race but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of black Americans.” As an Asian American director who longs to direct more Asian American plays, I've found myself wishing someone within my community would make a similar argument. I recently realized: I guess that person has to be me.
3 comments:
This article really hits home for me in so many ways. Lavina (an alum of CMU actually) is absolutely correct about the "Asian invisibility" phenomenon in the theater world. Due to cultural and economic reasons, theater is rarely a career path that Asian Americans choose to take on in their lives. The low number of people entering leads to the lack of presence in the field. Occasionally a few successful directors, writers, and actors stand out, but there are too few of them to form a community. I agree when Lavina says, "I need space to be who I am, not explain who I am." Asian people in theater are relatively rare in number, but they -- and their culture, craft, and content -- should not be treated as a rarity or something "exotic." Their works should be given their own territory, instead of being squeezed and deformed in a predominantly white world. Their value should stand on its own, instead of being decided and manipulated by people of other cultures. In high school, we read M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang for a queer literature class. I was very happy that my teacher intentionally gave space and time for students of queer and/or Asian identities to provide input, because their background and knowledge could clarify certain cultural elements and help the class relate to the characters in a more truthful and thoughtful way. This discussion turned out to be instructive for everyone in the class, because the right people were given the voice and power. In entertainment, there are too many instances where a white director or producer makes a movie or a show where the original voice in the story is completely overwritten. People deserve to tell their own stories, and they should be given the room and agency to do so.
I definitely agree with the sentiment that sometimes when a director is directing a play about any minority group to which they do not belong, they can be missing a fundamental part of what it takes to truly understand the story and be able to effectively convey the message to a larger audience. I worry sometimes being a white audience member watching plays about racial minorities because while I am trying to gain empathy and a deeper understanding of what it is like to go through the world as those people, if the production was directed also by a white person they may be putting on stage what their privileged perception of being a person of color is and then my privileged perception is reinforced, even though they are both wrong. I had this concern last year when CMU produced a version of Antony and Cleopatra that focused largely on issues of black feminism and the image of the black female body. The director was a white woman and the design was not just mostly white, but mostly white men. The production was excellent, but I have wondered how it might have been different if the whole creative team had had the instinct understanding of the material that comes from not just learning about something, but actually living it.
This was very well-stated. Why not, when given the chance to give an Asian American the opportunity, just do it. It is hard, as Jadhwani states, to sometimes even realize that your status as a minority matters as an Asian American. That is, until you are denied opportunities in the entertainment industry. “Asian invisibility,” is a term I've never seen until this and it rings true across the entertainment world. Perhaps less Asian Americans go into the arts, as she says, because there are almost no famous role models who do so. It's a cycle that perpetuates itself. I agree that it's not always necessary that a director be the same ethnicity or gender as the playwright, but sometimes it can help. I'm sure that an Asian American, especially in the first production of a play written by and about Asian American people can shed some light and insight that another race couldn't. It's not necessary, but why not give it a chance. I think that there's this stigma that there's no one to hire, there's no one to cast, when it comes to Asian Americans in theater, film and tv. That's just not true, and to have more, you have to hire more, and once you hire more, it will encourage young people that it's okay to pursue it too.
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