Post 11 on Performances of Race

We'll start with Thomas's great prompt:

Juicy Question:
Greyeyes's piece stood out to me as a reflection on how even in the empathetic and progressive sector of theatre, it is still white-washed in what is considered "canon" (i.e. Shakespeare and ballet.)  They also spoke on diversity and representation in a university setting, and how there is still plenty of areas of growth.
How is race discussed in different contexts of academia? For example, how is the conversation of race through the lens of sociology versus how we are approaching it from a theatrical standpoint? How does the conversation change if the professor is white versus a person of color?
\Artifact:
https://www.lsu.edu/diversity/use2019campusclimatesurvey.pdf
I'm posting LSU's Campus Climate Survey from last year. It's pretty interesting to see how different groups of people view how helpful different campus departments are, how people are affected by their faculty vs. student interactions, and the overall takeaways of the survey. 

I confess I'd not seen the Campus Climate Survey. Take a skim through it. Fascinating stuff.

From Monday's forum posts, I'd like to signal boost a couple of ideas about colorblind casting. This is one of those things that, when you first hear about it, you think, Oh, that sounds fair and cool! If you have a problem with the representation of people of color on stage, just start casting them in the shows you're already doing! Take racial considerations off the table completely; just cast on talent! Isn't the point of fighting racism to get to a place where we don't take race into account at all?

As Harvey Young points out, though, humans in 2020 USA can't turn off the social programming that makes us see race (and sex, gender, sexuality, class, disability, etc.). Or, as Lou Bellamy (founder of the Penumbra Theatre) once said, "The thing about color-blind casting is, we're not." We aren't color-blind. Nor should we be. Human difference and cultural specificity are things to celebrate, not eradicate. As Audrey Lourde said (as Kendall quotes from this famous essay), "Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic." 

Neither is history or social context color-blind. As we have seen, history, context, and even spaces (as Alexandra's extra report notes) are marked not just by seeing race but by racism: systemically valuing one race above others. Be very careful of ideas or arguments that seem great but rely on everyone involved blocking out a whole lot of history and context. You often hear arguments against affirmative action for race (and sex) making an appeal to equality. Isn't the most racist thing to take race into account when making decisions about hiring, awards, opportunities, etc.? Again, that appeal sounds logical, right? Sometimes anti-racist messages we get in school can seem to boil down to "Try not to notice race at all."

But when racism has been and continues to be part of the structure of society, it's irresponsible not to take that into account. President Lyndon B. Johnson (who was not exactly the most progressive president ever), put it well in his 1965 Commencement Address to Howard University, where he was explaining the rationale for measures that became affirmative action:

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

 Well-intentioned as it may be, colorblind casting often ends up leaving unjust aspects of the present system unchanged. It can also prevent us from asking deeper questions: not just what race are the actors on stage but whose stories get to be told, and by which artists, and for what audiences? As we will see in Friday's readings, sometimes a color-conscious casting or "coalitional casting" is the better response.

A quick "for instance." Some of you may be familiar with the musical Miss Saigon. It was the big follow-up musical in the 80s from the guys who got famous for writing Les Misérables. The show started in London on the West End and then transferred to Broadway. When it came time to cast one of the big parts, a half-Vietnamese villain called The Engineer, the producers went with Jonathan Pryce, a well-known Welsh actor who originated the role in the UK. The producers' defense: he was the best actor. We tried to find an equally good actor of Asian descent but failed. Asian American actors collectively went WTF?! Given how hard it was for Asian-American actors to find work at all in the US, the casting was a slap in the face.

To add insult to injury, the production used yellowface. (Think blackface, but applied to caricature people of Asian descent.) That is, Pryce wore bronze makeup and prosthetic eyes to make him seem more Vietnamese. Here is Pryce in the late 80s describing his makeup:

 Yellowface has a long and awful history in US theatre and beyond. Yet, whereas theatre artists usually (thankfully) recognize and revile blackface as racist, yellowface continues to be practiced on US stages and screens (see here and here for examples). To be clear, yellowface (like blackface, brownface, and redface) is not color-blind casting. No attempt was made in the original Miss Saigon production to suggest that Pryce's character was actually white. Rather, Pryce was pretending to be Asian, which could not help but be a kind of screw you from the producers to Asian performers.

It should be mentioned, also, that Miss Saigon, based loosely on Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, isn't exactly a wonderful, realistic portrayal of Vietnamese personhood. (For a great takedown of the white-Western savior complex that Madama Butterfly and Miss Saigon both play into, see David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. Hwang also wrote a superb comedy about colorblind casting, Yellowface. For a better representation of Vietnamese culture--well, there's lots, but see Vietgone by Qui Nguyen. Ask Dr. Fletcher for the scripts for either of these shows.)

The Miss Saigon story has a bit of a happier coda. In the recent revival, The Engineer was played by Filipino actor Jon Jon Briones, who was in the ensemble for the Pryce production. He reflects on his casting and on the controversy here:

Here's Briones and Pryce sharing the stage (and somewhat poking fun at the controversy) in the 25th anniversary gala for the show:

As pleasant as it is to see these two actors getting along so well on stage, questions about who gets to represent whose story remain with us. This in fact is the heart of Herrera's article that you're reading for Friday, so I'll hold off on that for now.

For Wednesday, you're reading two things: a performance piece by Michael Greyeyes and a description of a performance by Catherine Ming T'ien Duffly, Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments. Here's a YouTube of a reading of the piece she focuses on (I've cued it up), "How I Feel," by La'Tevin Alexander:

Watch it. It's, like, 10 minutes. If you feel like it (no one will know #pandemicprivacy), do as Alexander asks and keep your hands up through his monologue. See if you can identify with what Duffly discusses.

We'll talk on Wednesday!

JF