Wednesday, December 07, 2016
In wake of controversial shows, theater artists gather to discuss equitable casting
News | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: This past July, Little Lake Theatre Company staged a production of Anna in the Tropics, Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer-winning 2003 play about Cuban immigrants, and cast all the roles with white actors. That casting provoked a response on Facebook from Sol Crespo, a Puerto Rico-born, New York-based theater artist who often works in Pittsburgh. Seeing white actors in roles written for people of color “makes me feel like I don’t matter, like I’m invisible, like my voice doesn’t need to be heard,” she later said.
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This article does a great job of not just focusing on one aspect of the problem of white washing. In its many forms, theatres can be struggling with available actors, dropouts, and their own artistic image they are trying to convey to the audiences. While many theatres try really hard to cast appropriately and create seasons with casts that they can appropriately fill, there is always still an issue with the representation of other races and disabilities, especially if there are no actors of those persuasions available to the theatres. August Wilson does what I really find interesting by casting black actors in roles originally intended for white characters. I have heard many times of people complaining about black actors in white persons’ roles when, in reality, race may not even be a huge factor in the message the character is sending to the audience. However, there is always the argument that race is integral to the portrayal of a character.
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