OnStage Blog: Last month, furor erupted within the theatre department at Bowling Green State University in OH over the casting of its production of “Little Shop of Horrors”. The controversy arose when the director of the production cast three white actresses as understudies for the roles of Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon, known as the “urchins”.
3 comments:
As someone who not-so-affectionately refers to my high school as "White washed bullsh*t" I can understand both sides here. Almost every year, including this year, my high school has done a show that doesn't fit into it's racial demographic. My freshman year we did Anything Goes. While that show did have a predominately white cast, the racial stereotypes of eastern asian people was so offensive that it an opinion piece written by one of my asian american friends actually made it into the local news paper. After that followed a slew of inappropriate shows for our departments demographic, between Aida, Bring It On, and now Sister Act. I can understand why my high school would want to do these shows, but by staging these shows it tells other people that it's ok to white wash shows, and perpetuates this thought. There are thousands of shows that are written for all white casts, so taking one that is intentionally meant to be diverse is simply not okay. This article really hits home because I have seen student outcry, and I have seen promises like this to fix things when nothing changes. I really hope that they'll be able to implement these changes, because they not only should have the diversity, but they should be actually casting their shows to represent what the school looks like, and how it was intended to be cast.
Whitewashing within theater, especially educational theater, is a really problematic issue that I see a lot of. Like the comment above said, I understand both sides and it is a really difficult issue with no clear-cut answer. On one hand I understand why schools don't want to just rule out shows due to not being able to cast the proper roles of diversity, yet at the same time you end up with white washing. In my years in high school, we did RENT and Once on This Island, both white-washed. This year they whitewashed A Chorus Line. A Chorus Line and RENT were both favorite shows from the administrative artistic and directive team, yet the output settled wrong with a lot of people. Representation is extremely important, especially in the eyes of a Person of Color, and sometimes, I don't think white people can fully grasp the importance of proper racial casting.
If you really want to do shows with diverse casts, maybe accept a more diverse group of students. There really is no excuse for this. Many actors of color have a hard time getting cast because there are no roles written specifically for them, so how could it be that these schools feel like they don’t have enough all-white musicals to choose from? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that those shows are antiquated in other ways and would sell fewer tickets than the more diverse shows, but if you’re going to only accept white students, only do all-white shows. It is possible that the faculty in the theater department are not getting to make admission decisions, but they could at least put pressure on the admissions department by releasing a statement explaining the position they are being put in. That is the only way this could be a situation in which I understand both sides.
Post a Comment