Deadline: More than 25 Los Angeles area theater companies, including the Geffen Playhouse, the Pasadena Playhouse and the Deaf West Theatre, have revoked their memberships in the L.A. Stage Alliance after the nonprofit organization misidentified and mispronounced the name of Asian actress Jully Lee at an awards show earlier this week.
5 comments:
As sad as it is I am not surprised something like this occurred at the LA Stage Alliance. I have grown up with people mispronouncing my name or calling me the names of other students. A large portion of my Carnegie Mellon professors say my name incorrectly even after other students have corrected them multiple times. It is quite upsetting that the LA Stage Alliance failed to do any sort of basic research to verify the pronunciation of the actor's name as well as to find the correct photograph. I wonder how many people had to sign off on the photograph being presented. I think that it is good so many theaters have left the LA stage Alliance because it clearly does not care about its actors, especially those who are people of color. I hope that this can be used as a lesson for the LA Stage Alliance and other theater alliances and award shows in the future.
OOF that is bad. I personally get very frustrated when people do not try to say names correctly or even put in the effort. I mean this was somebodies job and these nominations come out so early in advance that there is more than enough time for these things to be researched and frankly it could be as simple as asking her manager how her name should be pronounced. I am even more shocked that the wrong picture went up because that means either someone was really bad at their job when putting up the picture or really bad at their job when approving the picture. It is just insane to me that hollywood will take the time to pronounce Schwazenager correctly but wont even try to pronounce asian names correctly. I think names are an important way to show that you respect someone and frankly all you have to do is ask, I know personally I have never been frustrated by anyone who has asked me how to pronounce my name. I think it is time that hollywood learns that the world is a little bit more diverse than they think it is.
This is really upsetting to read. You have to wonder how many people went in to this presentation and none of them realized the mistake of either the name, or the photograph. I am glad that there are companies showing solidarity and support for Jully Lee. It would have been interesting to hear from her in this article and hear what she has to say about the disrespect she faced. These people work so hard to earn these awards, the BARE minimum is to have your name read correctly when you finally win. Names are a huge part of everybody's identity.
This is so upsetting, but like many others I am not surprised this happened. This event was meant to celebrate and recognize these talented artists, yet they messed up two most basic parts of a person's identity: their name and face. That’s awful that on top of mispronouncing Jully they showed a different asian woman on camera. How do you make a careless mistake like that? Sadly, it feeds into the racist idea that all Asians look the same. I think it was the right call for other LA theatres to stand with the East West Players to leave the L.A. Stage Alliance. Also, while that one event is definitely enough for people to leave, it’s important to mention that there have been many other missteps taken by the Alliance up to this point. It’s time for them to put their words into action and actually make a change.
When I read this article, my facial expression did not change a single bit. It's more of an "oh of course this happened". Being Asian in any community in America, you know that you are viewed as one of the same, identical to every other Asian (especially East Asians) no matter what country you are actually from. I think that it was definitely beneficial to the Asian solidarity movement as this is occurring during this uprise of Asian hate. More solidarity is being shown from other organizations and the absurdity of this even happening is being properly given attention to. It is great that so many members and organizations that have an alliance with the LA Stage Alliance are breaking their ties in solidarity. It makes me wonder if any of this was purposeful; like how ignorant must you be to even put the wrong picture. In another article I read that I did not comment on, I saw that the LA Stage Alliance is actually shutting down due to all of their lost members. I am glad that such action and movement is happening over this as it brings to light this issue that has often been swept under the carpet.
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