It's our last week of readings (and therefore of postings).
So here's the thing: I could have chosen a final week of "fun" readings--articles and videos about lighthearted topics or just fluff pieces. But instead I'm throwing some race at ya, even though we already have several classes in the curriculum that take longer, deeper looks at this topic that I'm giving but three days to. Why?
Well, in part it's because race, in the USA at least, is one of the primary lenses through which we view the world. It's like gender. We can't not see it. We can't not have it be part of how we interpret our immediate social contexts.
And, in this country and beyond, race isn't merely about an individual's appearance. It's "haunted" by elements bigger than any one individual: histories, contexts, larger realities and institutions.
When we represent worlds on stage, then, race is inevitably, undeniably part of what we're staging and presenting. It's inevitably, undeniably part of what our audiences see and hear. You cannot "approach the stage" to watch or produce without having some notion of racial representation in your mind.
Another reason I'm including race has to do with the consistent feedback I get from graduating seniors in 4010 (the capstone/touchstone class for people about to graduate) about this department. So many people (of all backgrounds) note that the representation of people of color on our stages and in our classrooms is lacking. (We're not just talking about Black people. When's the last time you saw a play with a Native American character fairly represented? When's the last time you read a play of, by, or about Native American people?)
Baton Rouge and LSU are especially haunted by the legacies of race and racism in the US. It's not an accident that the city is over 50% African American, but the 100+-year-old state school at the heart of Baton Rouge is only 13% African American. Baton Rouge's (and Louisiana's, and the USA's) racial history is built into the landscape. Such history is in no one individual's power to change with a snap of their fingers; neither is it credible to dismiss that history as irrelevant or "just in the past."
This history and its present effects are especially relevant now. As experts note, COVID-19 is hitting African Americans especially hard. This NPR story tracks the likely reasons why. Being African American correlates with poverty and higher stress, factors which correlate in turn to obesity and diabetes, which in yet another turn correlate to higher risk of complications from COVD-19. And, since poor people have a much rougher time finding quality medical care, you can see how this pandemic can create a vicious circle for African Americans and other people of color.
Now, no single play or season is going to undue centuries of racism and settler colonialism. But I do believe that part of being a well-rounded theatre artist involves an awareness of how performance and race interact.
SO: some challenging material for Monday. For the Harvey Young selection, pay particular attention to the three elements Young suggests combine to make for a performed embodiment of race (they're on pages 10-17 especially). For the Bethany Hughes reading, pull out what it is that makes the Native American's performance of Plimoth's history more responsible (can you think of similar such performances of history here in Louisiana about race and/or Native American culture)? For the W. Kamau Bell piece--what does he learn from his thinking about what happened at the restaurant?
Quinn starts us off with this prompt:
Do you think colorblind casting is more important than being historically accurate (in regards to race) with theater/ film shows that are based on history?
When reading Harvey Young’s selections from Race and Theater, the thing that stuck out to me the most was Harvey’s description of the production of The Voysey Inheritance. While the play is a work of fiction and not a historical retelling of an event, David Mamet’s adaption of the play that Harvey witnessed stays as historically accurate to 1905, when the play was originally published, as possible. Harvey even describes it as “what a person might have seen if he or she had peered though the window and into the home of a Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, or Carnegie at a certain moment in history.” So, Harvey was caught off guard when the African American actor that he had mistaken as the maid turned out to be the daughter of Mr. Voysey. This led Harvey to ask himself many questions wondering why the daughter was black in this play that was creating a historically accurate 1905. This immediately made me think of Hamilton. In the show, Hamilton, all of the characters that were historically white were instead played by people of color. However, despite this historical inaccuracy, in regards to the race of the characters, the show was a major success and very popular, even winning many awards. I guess what I’m trying to ask is this. How important is race in casting for a historical theater or film piece?
For my artifact, I have a video of Lin-Manuel Miranda talking about race and its role in theater. This video was made before Miranda had finished making Hamilton and focuses more his show In the Heights but I think the points he makes in the video are relevant to this question.
In addition to some great sparks (which you should definitely read on Moodle), Azha poses the following question and artifact:
Question: What are the benefits and disadvantages of colorblind/color conscious casting? Does the good outway the bad? How is this an issue for audiences versus producers?
Artifact -- Article
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-authenticity-in-casting-20170713-htmlstory.html
This is an article written for LA Times by Jessical Gelt. In the article Gelt responds to the controversy of Edward Albee’s estate denying permission for a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because the director had cast a black actor to play a character Albee had specified as white.
We'll have two examples of performance pieces by people of color on Wednesday and then some great pieces about casting and appropriation on Friday. We'll Zoom, as usual, on Wednesday and Friday.
Until then, have some fun with this trailer from A Strange Loop, recently at Playwright's Horizons. Look up the soundtrack on YouTube or the music-providing app of your choice:
Dr. Fletcher loves ya--
JF
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