Cliché Watch Up

Due to a small technological snafu, the Cliché Watch for this week just got posted. Check it out here. The comments in the past few weeks have been really fantastic. So whether agreeing or disagreeing be sure to join the conversation over there.

Color Blind Casting, Alive Again

A letter to the NYT about Phylicia Rashad's performance in August: Osage County has been circling around, and it's worth reading largely because it is such a startling example of unreflective thinking.

 

I am offended that Phylicia Rashad is playing a white woman’s role in “August: Osage County.” It doesn’t make sense that she would have white siblings and children.

Offended? Nonsense. Frustrated, surprised, confused, irritated, exhausted, outraged even: maybe. But what would the offense be?  Your objection, is that it "doesn't make sense."  So you're not offended, you're confused.  But, there are some other things that don't make sense: people on a tall thing pretending to be people they are not, saying things they don't mean, wearing clothes that aren't theirs, pretending that you're not watching (except for that guy in the first scene, who talks right to you).

What is it about this particular convention that is offensive?  I've written before a few times about color-blind casting, and I still think that as a convention it is perhaps too young to have become conventional, but I think that it will. When was the last time someone was offended by a convention of the theater? Christian moralists decried acting as dishonest until they exploited it to share their faith.  Elizabethan nobility used costumers' demand to sell their once-used clothing to keep money and save face, and so turned a blind eye on the dangerous blurring of class distinction that the theater represented.  Today race is a central issue in our culture and one to which both social conscience and social structure are bound.  The topic here is an aesthetic issue that happens to deal with race so understandably then, the stakes are high. "Not making sense" works as an analysis of color-blind casting if you stay in the realm of aesthetics: this is an arguable position.  But outside of aesthetics, a rejection of Ms. Rashad's performance will fall flat and hard.

Unfortunately, the letter's author describes Ms. Rashad as "playing a white woman's role" rather than "playing a white woman," which makes his argument seem like it's much more about taking jobs than about aesthetic possibility or so-called suspension of disbelief. So, this isn't an aesthetic argument and this person is a fool.

If this were an aesthetic argument I would raise this question: aside from whether or not we can "forget" Ms. Rashad's race, can we "forget" Ms. Rashad?  The most powerful alienating factor in modern performing arts - and the one which no one talks about - is fame.  As far as suspension of disbelief goes, who the hell on Broadway knew who Deanna Dunagan was before this play?  Wasn't she just Violet Westin?  But Ms. Rashad is instantly recognizable from her TV work with Bill Cosby and from her previous Broadway successes, including last year's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  At least as meaningful as whether we can accept her as playing a white character, is how it is that we accept her as anyone other than Phylicia Rashad.  I think the answer to both of them must be the same.

'Color-Blind' Casting, Cont'd

Thanks to James Bohnen for his response to my post on The Voysey Inheritance.  I think he states the crux of the matter quite precisely: 

If we wait and wait for the right time for Non-traditional casting (achieved by some intuitive feeling of the county's pulse on race perhaps?) it seems like a way of puting off what should be a natural expression of talent winning the job without other constraints.

The way to incorporate 'color-blind' casting as a fixture of theatrical conventions is to, well, make it conventional.  Almost certainly, what Mr. Bohnen is really arguing for is a kind of casting that has nothing at all to do with race, but is purely a matter of talent and appropriateness for a role.  This is an honorable tack and a valuable one, and I think only a very stupid person would argue for the categorical exclusion of persons of color from 'classical' European dramatic productions.  Finally, the more I think about this the more confidant I am that the rise of the conventionality of 'color-blind' casting will pose no immediate threat to deliberate and thematic/artistic/aesthetic impact of non-traditional casting.

Color-Blind Directing?

Terry Teachout weighs in on the controversy at Lincoln Center Theater.  I wrote on 'color-blind' casting a few weeks ago, here.  Interestingly, I'm currently at work on a production of a new play, Po Boy Tango by Kenneth Lin that features two Taiwanese characters.  In the Northlight Theater's production both Taiwanese characters are played by Japanese American actors, and the show is directed by Singaporean playwright and director Chay Yew.  This is profoundly unlikely to draw any kind of controversy, and though I know exactly what the difference is, I wonder what the difference is.  

Perhaps because of the phenomenon of "school plays" and the relative abundance of girls interested in theater at a young age, I feel like our eyes may be more accustomed to women playing men or boys--as audiences of an earlier time accepted the opposite.  What is instructive about this analog is how it was at once--one assumes--used purely as a generic necessity and as a signifier.  A boy played Juliet, ah well, we understand.  A man played the nurse--hilarious.  This is a bit like the program I tried to suggest in my earlier post.  "Color-blind" casting can also open avenues for what is really "post-racial" casting, and then the opposite: casting that draws attention to or exploits the significance of an actor's or a character's race.  What does it mean to have a black Ariel in a white Tempest, or the opposite?  I look forward to watching this worked through, and I'm sure I'll continue to chew it over.

Directing, because it is invisible, is very different from acting as far as race is concerned.  Because it is creative and we live in a diverse society the largest possible spectrum of talented voices should be heard at all times.  Interesting to me, is that with the rise of the dramaturg, it is insignificant for a Director to be an expert on the subject matter.  Research will be done, packets will be compiled, copies will by made.  Depending on the production and the ambition of the Director, his/her role can be remarkably malleable.  McClinton is right that he understands better the African-American experience better than Sher.  It's unclear to me whether that's a substantive claim to be a better director.  More to come, almost certainly.

Thinking about 'Color-Blind' Casting

About two weeks ago now I saw a remarkable production of The Voysey Inheritance at Remy Bumppo (see under 'Allies' at right). Much good has rightly been said about the production, though perhaps too much of this praise has focused on the 'timeliness' of a show about money managers, managing poorly, and I hope to put up a more complete review of this play shortly. However, I'd like to think first about an incidental aspect of this production and abstract it to its most useful. The play is about late 19th Century London aristocrats and the role of the youngest daughter of the large Voysey family was ebulliently played by Sharina Martin, a fine young actress who happens to be of African descent.

Now I think any educated theater-goer (and sadly all theater-goers are educated theater-goers) is familiar with this most fundamental convention of the stage—that those onstage are pretending to be persons they are not. So realizing that Ms. Martin’s character is white, though she herself is black, should not necessarily be anymore difficult. Quite the contrary, the reluctance I have about color-blind casting is that it may draw attention away from the play and toward the production, toward the recognition of the casting process at work—not as an irreconcilable obstacle to comprehension but as an overly instructive illustration of offstage work.

More importantly, there are so many things a ‘post-racial’ casting decision could ‘mean.’ Is it that this one character ought to stand out in our minds in some way? Are we to identify this person as incongruous, as privileged or oppressed as some snap-judgment reflection of our social system might allow? Or, are we to ignore it?

The deepest way in which ‘color-blind’ casting becomes problematic is in the following pair of observations. First, we are not color-blind (yet?): we will notice. Second, color-blind casting is not, like so many other incidental aspects and conventions of the theater, immediately interpretable. We know how to ‘read’ a stage-hand all in black walking on to move a chair—even in the middle of a scene—we ignore him. Conversely, if the tree onstage is green and leafy in Act One and brown and sparse in Act Two, we know how to read that—time has passed—even though this is not necessarily clear. Why should we ignore a person making some necessary action? We should time necessarily go forward and why would a tree signify that? But these conventions we accept.

Could it be then, that ‘color-blind’ casting is merely too young a convention to have become truly conventional? I suppose that is my argument. The trouble is, how will it be conventionalized and when, and what shall we do in the meantime?

My inclination is that it will be conventionalized as meaningless rather than as meaningful, and I think that has a few reasons. First, the largest group of theater-goers in this country right now would prefer to think of race as a non-issue, regardless of the truth of that claim. They would prefer to see race as a matter as superficial as the color of one’s hair, again despite the several stumbling blocks to such a belief—an actor for instance cannot walk out of a store-front salon forty-bucks later and be temporarily Asian. Furthermore, if ‘post-racial’ casting were to be meaningful the varieties of its possible meanings would probably be too complicated to control and may again bring out an unwelcome conversation.

It’s probably evident that I am not certain that this is the best use of resources. I am glad it will shake up casting departments enough that the classic plays by Dead White Men need not perpetuate necessarily an unfair distribution of roles along racial lines, and that it may allow the best actors—regardless of race—be given the proper roles.  

A lingering difficulty will be in dealing with those plays in which jagged racial relations are central to the actual theme. In a trivial example, in a future of truly color-blind casting will the opening scenes of Steve Martin’s The Jerk not be funny? I think there will be a danger in rendering race meaningless onstage. But, perhaps in doing so we will light extra fire to those times in which suddenly, sharply, race is meaningful. Like a stage-hand who comes on to fix a prop, then turns to the audience and screams. Conventions are not (obviously) made to be broken, and will not be, but when made they might be, and what happens then?