Thursday, July 18, 2013
Diversity in American Theater: The Mythology of Color Blind/Conscience Casting
HowlRound: I heard about a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where the woman cast as the mother was African American and the only person of color in the cast. Close your eyes and picture this for a moment…got it? Now I don’t know about you, but this image bothered me—and it happens every season. Every season, someone in some theater decides that it would be cool to do stuff like adapt the tragic myth of Phaedra, with the story set during the Boxer Rebellion or to produce Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but cast it with two African Americans, a Latino, and another actor of ambiguous race. Let us not forget that no theater season in America is complete without an adaptation of a Shakespeare play (pick one—it doesn’t matter) with an all white cast except for the one black girl who I like to call the “third black girl from the right,” set in New York during the roaring twenties. This has always bothered me.
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4 comments:
I completely agree that people ought to inspect the historical nature of a piece before casting occurs, but in our culture it is a fine, fine line between equality and inequality. I find though that what people tend to forget is how many races there really are. There are many shows that call for black and white actors, but not many written for people of Hispanic and Asian origin classically. Finding a way to allow for diversity is an impressive and now necessary for a director to have.
I've got to say, color-blind casting has occasionally bothered me as well. When my high school did a production of Harvey several years ago, the mother and daughter were cast as two extremely talented Caucasian girls, and the lead (the son of the family) was cast as an equally talented African-American actor. The cast did the show to perfection, with a great deal of professionalism, but I always wondered about the race mismatch. However, I also saw an update of Ajax that took place during Desert Storm, which included a largely minority cast, which was a fabulous show in which the casting made perfect sense. What I'm saying is that if color-blind casting works for your show, then go right ahead. But if it takes the audience out of the experience while they ponder the question of a character's casting, then perhaps it isn't a good idea.
I agree with this article to an extent. Directors should not feel the need to check metaphorical diversity boxes when casting roles because it is completely unnecessary. Some shows call for actors of a certain race, and if the director would like to maintain that aspect of the piece, they should cast accordingly. I disagree with the author here because I think that if a director wants to change the production a little and ignore race as a factor when casting they should be able to do so. Its fine if race is a factor in casting if the role requires and was written for someone of a certain race, but it should not be an obligation to hire a diverse cast.
To me, a theatre should think about their actors' ethnicities when performing a race-specific piece in its traditional sense. I find that it should be well thought about especially when dealing with families. When there is one African-American character in a family of Caucasians (and vise versa), I get distracted and confused. The show just looses its sense of reality when there's a character like this. But then there are the shows that are made to make you think and some of it doesn't make sense, and in those I see no issue because it's not trying to be realistic. This can even add to the show's ultimate goal. However, this is theatre and it's a harsh business that will put you down regardless of what your race is.
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