Showing posts with label Remy Bumppo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Remy Bumppo. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Fugard Chicago, Cont'd
An answer to this question, from Stephanie Kulke of Remy Bumppo:
I still love this idea. After all the talk about season planning and collectivity after the Macbeth smorgasbord of last year, these companies and the League have actually made steps to do something about it that still grants them artistic autonomy. I can't wait to see how this develops.
We actually came up with FugardChicago2010.org after our companies announced our 09/10 seasons and we had all programmed Fugard in same season. This being a very cooperative theater community, in huge part to the League of Chicago Theaters, we quickly got together to brainstorm how to collectively market the productions and share our resources. The League kindly offered to sponsor design of our FugardChicago2010 website - so that it can be used by other theater companies in the future. Thanks for helping get the word out: Fugard and these 3 daring plays definitely merit the attention of theatergoers from Chicagoland and beyond.
I still love this idea. After all the talk about season planning and collectivity after the Macbeth smorgasbord of last year, these companies and the League have actually made steps to do something about it that still grants them artistic autonomy. I can't wait to see how this develops.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Fugard Chicago
This is a fantastically smart idea. Kudos to TimeLine, Remy Bumppo, and Court for this inspired collaboration. I wonder if this was the idea all along or, if upon realizing that all three companies were producing Fugard they decided to chip in and cooperate. Either way, I love it.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
'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.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
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.
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?
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