Download recasting race

Angela C. Pao
RECASTING RACE: CASTING PRACTICES AND
RACIAL FORMATIONS
Theatre Survey 41 no2 1-21 N 2000
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with
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He used to come to the house and ask me to hear him recite. Each time
he handed me a volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.... He wanted
me to sit in front of him, open the book, and follow him as he recited his lines. I did
willingly.... And as his love for Shakespeare's plays grew with the years he did not want
anything else in the world but to be a Shakespearean actor.(FN1)
Toshio
Mori
"Japanese Hamlet" (1939)
This fictional account of a young man's growing
ambition to become a Shakespearean actor would be unremarkable were it not for the fact
that the character in question is named Tom Fukunaga, a Japanese American born and
raised in California in the 1920s and '30s. As things turn out in this particular story, years
go by without Tom making any visible progress towards his goal of becoming a classical
actor, until finally the now not-so-young man's family and friends urge him to grow up,
forget his dream, and get a real job. Interestingly, however, it is never suggested that
Tom's ambitions are futile because of his race or ethnicity. In actual fact, of course, it
would be a good thirty to forty years after the writing of "Japanese Hamlet" before Asian
Americans, along with African American, Latino, and Native American performers,
could be considered at all seriously not only for Shakespearean roles, but for parts in
other plays constituting the European and American dramatic canons. And no sooner
would such opportunities be created than controversies would arise over the historical
implications and political consequences of having so-called "white roles" played by nonwhite actors.
These controversies form an integral part of post-World War II political
and social movements in the United States that have significantly altered the relations
between majority and minority racial and ethnic groups. The direct connections between
these movements and theatrical activity have been most thoroughly explored in various
historical studies of African American, Latino, and Asian American theatre.(FN2) These
studies attest to a new phase in often longstanding traditions of dramatic writing and
performance, and a concerted impetus for plays and companies that would participate in
defining new forms of collective identity for minority cultures. For the most part,
however, these historically focused studies have not been concerned with incorporating
contemporary critical perspectives on the construction of race and ethnicity, issues that
have come to the forefront of discussions in many spheres of social and intellectual
discourse. This task has been taken up primarily in critical analyses dealing with dramatic
representations rather than theatre institutions and practices, and in works concentrating
on a particular category of performance (e.g. political theatre or performance art), or else
a particular production or performance event.(FN3) Among this last group of works are
many that investigate the performer's body and the ways in which it can be manipulated
to foreground the relationships between physical characteristics and conceptions of
cultural identity. What has been missing from these rich and varied accounts is a
consideration of the array of what have come to be called non-traditional casting
practices in relation to concurrent discourses on race and ethnicity. The monitoring,
evaluation, and analysis of these practices have been left largely to the popular press and
non-scholarly theatre publications. Even here, however, the accounts and debates that
have emerged offer critical insights into the ways conceptions of race, ethnicity and
culture are constantly being created, perpetuated and transformed.
In the following
discussion I will be using the terminology developed by the Non-Traditional Casting
Project (NTCP) to describe different forms of casting. The NTCP was founded in 1986
by playwright Harry Newman, director Clinton Turner Davis, and actor/casting director
Joanna Merlin. The stated purpose of the national organization is "to increase the
participation of ethnic, female, and disabled artists in the performing arts in ways that are
not token or stereotypical."(FN4) To this end, the Project has produced national symposia
on non-traditional casting; created a videotape titled "Breaking Tradition," which, along
with a companion volume called "Beyond Tradition," examines the possibilities of
innovative casting through essays and performed scenes; and published a newsletter
"New Traditions" that reports on developments across the country, often featuring
interviews with playwrights, actors, directors, producers, and public and private funders.
From a practical point of view, one of NTCP's most valued services has been to maintain
files of ethnic minority, female, and disabled actors. The NTCP has identified four types
of non-traditional casting:
Colorblind casting -- actors are cast without regard to their
race or ethnicity; the best actor is cast in the role.
Societal casting -- ethnic and female
actors are cast in roles they perform in society as a whole.
Conceptual casting -- an
ethnic actor is cast in a role to give the play greater resonance.
Cross-cultural casting
-- the entire world of a play is translated to a different culture.(FN5)
Most recently,
the complexities of the relationship between casting practices and race relations in the
United States have been foregrounded in the popular press by the conversations and
attacks initiated by August Wilson's passionate keynote address at the eleventh biennial
National Conference of the Theatre Communications Group held in June 1996. The
positions articulated during the conference in the pages of American Theatre magazine
through the fall of that year, and finally during a live confrontation between August
Wilson and Robert Brustein in January 1997, reflect a wide range of assumptions
regarding the nature of racial and cultural identities and the role of theatre in defining and
redefining those identities. The larger significance of the discussions that have been
taking place in the world of theatre becomes evident when casting practices and policies
from the 1960s to the present are examined in relation to the major contemporary theories
of how racial meanings are constructed and altered in the United States.
Given the
wide-ranging nature of the discussions subsequent to August Wilson's address, it would
be useful to recall the core of the original argument as it related to casting practices. In
calling for a renewed commitment to the support of black theatres, August Wilson
denounced what has come to be called colorblind casting not only for deflecting funding
from these institutions, but for perpetuating an assimilationist ideology that denied the
existence and worth of a unique black world view, values, style, linguistics, religion, and
aesthetics. Wilson stated unequivocally, "Colorblind casting is an aberrant idea that has
never had any validity other than as a tool of the Cultural Imperialists who view
American culture, rooted in the icons of European culture, as beyond reproach in its
perfection."(FN6) In his view,
To mount an all-black production of a Death of a Salesman or any other play conceived
for white actors as an investigation of the human condition through the specifics of white
culture is to deny us our own humanity, our own history, and the need to make our own
investigations from the cultural ground on which we stand as black Americans. It is an
assault on our presence, our difficult but honorable history in America; it is an insult to
our intelligence, our playwrights, and our many and varied contributions to the society
and the world at large.(FN7)
In effect, an actor of color performing a role written for a white character is seen to be
engaging in a form of passing on stage, which entails all the socio-psychological damage
associated with attempting to pass in society. As far as Wilson is concerned, an African
American actor who plays the role of a Shakespearean English king allows his body to be
used in "the celebration of a culture which has oppressed [black people]."(FN8) His
conclusion is "We do not need colorblind casting; we need some theatres to develop our
playwrights."(FN9)
Robert Brustein offered a diametrically opposed viewpoint.
Brustein had been drawn into this polemical engagement by Wilson's attack on views he
had expressed a few years earlier in an essay titled "Unity from Diversity."(FN10) In his
TCG keynote address, Wilson criticized Brustein for having suggested in this piece that
"'funding agencies have started substituting sociological criteria for aesthetic criteria in
their grant procedures'" in their funding of many minority artists, and for advocating the
return to "'a single value system'" in the arts.(FN11) In return, Brustein characterized
Wilson's "appeal for subsidized separatism" as "a reverse form of the old politics of
division, an appeal for socially approved and foundation-funded separatism."(FN12) He
contended that racially mixed companies and casts represent a major step forward in
American political and cultural history. Taking exception to Wilson's statement that
separate black theatres are necessary because black and white Americans "cannot meet
on the common ground of experience,"(FN13) Brustein argues instead for a transcendent
unifying theatre that will recognize that "the greatest art embraces a common
humanity."(FN14)
The above opinions and approaches are largely rearticulations of
views first advanced twenty to thirty years ago--views that were not formulated in
isolation from non-theatrical events, discourses, and practices. These positions can be
identified with the dominant currents of American racial theory of the past fifty years. In
their groundbreaking study Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the
1990s, Michael Omi and Howard Winant have outlined the main paradigms of racial
theory that have come to prominence since World War II. They point out that both
"mainstream" and "radical" theories have generally treated race as a subordinate and
derivative category, a "mere manifestation of other supposedly more fundamental social
and political relationships," such as ethnicity, class, or nation.(FN15) It is well
recognized that such theories have directly influenced areas such as political action,
public policy and social services. What has not been as widely acknowledged is the
impact the "ethnicity" and "cultural nationalist" paradigms identified by Omi and Winant
have had on theatre activity, notably on non-traditional casting practices and culturally
specific theatre.
"COLORBLIND" CASTING AND THE ETHNICITY PARADIGM
Among the
various types of non-traditional casting, colorblind casting--like the model of a colorblind
society it is supposed to exemplify--has been seen at once as the most idealistic and the
most pernicious form. In its evolution, the notion of colorblind casting has displayed key
characteristics of what Omi and Winant have designated as the "ethnicity paradigm."
According to racial theories that follow this model, race is "but one of a number of
determinants of ethnic group identity or ethnicity. Ethnicity itself [is] understood as the
result of a group formation process based on culture and descent."(FN16) Consequently,
it is believed that members of different racial groups, like members of any of the
European ethnic groups that have immigrated to the United States, can eventually be fully
incorporated into American life, sharing in all the rights and opportunities the country has
to offer. These were the conclusions of a landmark collaborative study of the race
situation in the United States funded by the Carnegie Commission and headed by Gunnar
Myrdal. The findings and recommendations of the study were published in 1944 under
the title An American Dilemma. The work discredited essentialist theories of race based
on biology and saw as increasingly untenable the fact that American ideals of
"democracy, equality and justice had entered into conflict with black inequality,
segregation, and racial prejudice in general." In the face of this dilemma, assimilation
was considered "the most logical and 'natural' response."(FN17)
Within the ethnic
group paradigm, Omi and Winant have identified two major subgroups: assimilationists
and cultural pluralists. In their words, the main point of disagreement between the two
groups concerns "the possibility of maintaining ethnic group identities over time, and
consequently the viability of ethnicity in a society characterized by what [has been]
labelled 'Anglo-conformity.'"(FN18) The assimilationist view supported the granting of
full rights to various ethnic groups and saw their complete absorption into the mainstream
of American life as desirable and inevitable. Cultural pluralists, on the other hand, see
immigrants and their descendants preserving group identity characteristics distinct from
those of the country of origin but also different from those associated with other
American communities.
In their evolution since the 1960s, casting policies that have
professed indifference to an actor's race and ethnicity have shared key assumptions with
racial theories modeled on the ethnicity paradigm. All such policies are predicated on the
assumption that actors of different races, like actors of different European ethnic groups,
can be brought together to create a unified and coherent whole. They differ, however, in
regard to the degree to which racial difference can or should be elided. The cultural
pluralist view is replicated in productions such as those of the New York Shakespeare
Festival, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, while the colorblind casting practices of the
1980s and 1990s most closely approximate assimilationist views. It is important to
recognize that the earliest instances of casting an actor in a role without considering race
or ethnicity could not properly be called "colorblind." While race might not have been a
factor in assigning a particular actor to a particular role, Joseph Papp wanted the
integration of the New York Shakespeare Festival to be highly visible. It was therefore
essential that audiences be very much aware of the racial diversity being presented on
stage. As Papp put it, "I was thinking of ways to eliminate color as a factor in casting, but
be on the other hand ... very aware of color on the stage."(FN19) In fact, given the
historical events that provided the context for the earliest innovations in casting, it would
have been extremely difficult not to be aware of race. In an era when desegregation was
being resisted with violence in many parts of the country, the promotion of color
awareness rather than colorblindness constituted public advocacy for
integration.
Although Actors' Equity, the Dramatists' Guild and local groups had
begun to address the problem of desegregating theatre casts, crews, audiences, and staff
as early as the 1940s, such efforts did not meet with much recognition or success until the
mid- to late 1950s and 1960s. Of these ventures, Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival
gained the widest recognition and impact. Closely tied to political and social movements
of the time, the company's policies were described in terms of integration and
desegregation, never in terms of colorblindness. Documents from that period emphasize
that the NYSF was committed to integration at all levels: within the organization itself
(both on stage and behind the scenes) and in its audiences. A 1965 semi-annual report of
the organization's Department of Education lists two of the main objectives as:
* The
desegregation of career opportunities for Negro and Puerto Rican minorities in the City
of New York.
* More appropriate representation of minority groups at the
administrative level of the Festival operation and on its Board of Trustees.(FN20)
The
company's Mobile Theatre performed plays by Shakespeare in public parks in all five
boroughs of the City. The chosen sites included parks in predominantly black, Hispanic,
and working class neighborhoods. Photographs in the company's 1964 annual report
reflected the racial, ethnic and generational diversity of the audiences. Large families,
groups of teenagers and elderly couples were shown sitting side by side, watching white,
black and Hispanic actors performing on stage.(FN21) (Fig. 1)
The range of reactions
to these theatrical experiments paralleled the range of reactions to integration in other
public institutions. The racially mixed casts did not seem to disturb either critics and
reporters writing for New York City newspapers or audiences who watched the free
performances. In fact, reporters and critics rarely mentioned an actor's race in their
reviews or feature articles. Most commonly, only when there was an accompanying
photograph would this aspect of the performer's identity become evident. When the
casting policies of the NYSF were mentioned it was merely in passing. For instance, a
critic reviewing the August 1963 production of The Winter's Tale simply noted: "The
supporting cast is an integrated company, some Negro players assuming the roles of
Sicilian courtiers."(FN22) Richard Faust and Charles Kadushin's 1965 study of audience
reaction to the Mobile Theater's interracial production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
revealed a similar response among spectators for the most part. When asked what they
had liked best about the show (interviewees were never directly asked about their
reaction to the casting), most respondents who spoke of the acting did not emphasize the
casting. Rather they praised the acting in general terms or commented on the actors'
ability to concentrate in the distracting conditions of an outdoor theater or on the way
they "threw themselves into their parts."(FN23) According to Faust and Kadushin,
respondents who were most likely to focus on the racially mixed casting were middleclass African Americans. One black woman who was active in community affairs noted:
I think for one thing a lot of people didn't expect the cast to be interracial, and I thought
that was very nice. In fact, it was very helpful for the area, being that this is a
predominantly Negro neighborhood. I think everybody thought it would just be an
entirely white cast. You don't know that there are many colored--many Negro people-affiliated with Shakespeare. I told them [her neighbors] that there are. They don't come to
this neighborhood, and you just don't see it ... It made the people realize that this was not
only for white people, but it was general for everybody. At first it was a shock [the
integrated cast] because nobody expected it.(FN24)
If popular audiences and those writing for mass circulation publications did not find
the casting objectionable, this was not the case with some critics affiliated with
publications intended for a more educationally and culturally elite readership. John
Simon, writing for the Hudson Review and Commonweal at the time, deplored the very
notion of popularizing Shakespeare. In a 1965 piece entitled "Mugging the Bard in
Central Park," Simon said of the NYSF's casting practices: "Out of a laudable
integrationist zeal, Mr. Papp has seen fit to populate his Shakespeare with a high
percentage of Negro performers. But the sad fact is that, through no fault of their own,
Negro actors often lack even the rudiments of Standard American speech.... It is not only
aurally that Negro actors present a problem; they do not look right in parts that
historically demand white performers...."(FN25)
The production that made it
eminently clear that the NYSF productions of the 1960s were about color-awareness
rather than colorblindness was an integrated Antony and Cleopatra that was to go on a
six-week tour of twenty southern cities in 1964. The tour was seen by Papp as "the most
appropriate way to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth." On 11
April 1963, the New York Times headline read, "Integrated Cast Will Act in South" and
the project was described as "a graphic illustration of racial harmony."(FN26) The
company was to include ten black actors (about half the company) and this time, they
would not just appear in supporting roles: a black actress, Diana Sands, was to play the
part of Cleopatra opposite Michael Higgins, who was white. It was stressed that in any
theatre where the production was to be performed, the seating would also have to be
integrated. The significance of the project was to be emphasized by having the production
unveiled at a special performance in Washington D.C. for members of the Cabinet and
other high government officials before it opened to the public in the Howard University
auditorium. It was noted that the project had the "best wishes" of President and Mrs.
Kennedy. Although Papp didn't expect "too much opposition," others apparently found
the project ill advised, and he was able to raise only $11,250 of the $50,000 needed to
finance the tour. Its cancellation was announced on 23 August, just five days before the
Civil Rights March on Washington.(FN27)
In a 1979 interview, Papp clarified his
position: "I believe in integration, but not assimilation.... I love the differences."(FN28)
Differences were not only to be visual but aural as well. Although speech coaches might
work with actors to change pronunciations that would make it hard for audiences to
comprehend what was being said, no attempt was made to erase accents or alter speech
patterns. Speaking about a Hispanic actor, Papp said, "The beat doesn't fall where you
expect--but it's not incorrect--it's a way of grabbing the words, and it makes you listen to
a familiar line in a new way."(FN29) When the NYSF announced a program to introduce
high school students and their families to performances of Shakespeare, Papp declared,
"Our company will include black, Hispanic and Asian actors, and they will articulate
Shakespeare in good American speech with their own particular cultural
sounds...."(FN30) Visible and audible differences were significant not only for their own
sake, but because they were associated with deeper cultural differences. Papp believed
that the way actors felt about the circumstances in a play, based on their own
backgrounds and experiences in life, would inevitably show in their performances and
prompt shifts of view among audience members. The different ethnic or racial
backgrounds of the actors in no way precluded their active participation in "mainstream
American culture," which was represented in this situation by the repertory of European
classics.(FN31)
In their rejection of assimilation combined with a desire to preserve
difference within the context of a functioning unified whole, these statements emphasize
the rapport between casting practices such as those of the NYSF and central assumptions
of the ethnicity paradigm in its cultural pluralist incarnation. It is perhaps not entirely
coincidental that the first work to articulate this position--Nathan Glazer and Daniel
Patrick Moynihan's Beyond the Melting Pot--was published in 1963 and so was
contemporaneous with the formative years of the NYSF. The authors moreover based
their study on the social and political situation in New York City, making their
conclusions highly compatible with Papp's own perceptions. Glazer and Moynihan
argued that immigrant groups formed communities that were not only different from each
other but also distinct from their communities of origin. They contended that these ethnic
groupings and distinctions persisted even as the original immigrants established
permanent residency, acquired citizenship, and produced native-born Americans. They
noted that "Ethnic groups ... even after distinctive language, customs, and culture are lost,
as they largely were in the second generation, and even more fully in the third generation,
are continually recreated by new experiences in America."(FN32) Among the factors
operating to maintain cultural distinctions, they singled out history, family and
"fellowfeeling," shared socio-economic interests, and formal community-based
organizations as being particularly important.(FN33)
As the work of desegregation
proceeded, it eventually became possible to carry the implications of assimilationist
theory to their full extent. In 1944, Myrdal had declared that if "America in actual
practice could show the world a progressive trend by which the Negro became finally
integrated into modern democracy, all mankind would be given faith again--it would
have reason to believe that peace, progress and order are feasible...."(FN34) By the mid1980s, the ideal of not merely an integrated but a colorblind society was being proposed.
The vision offered was one of "the contemporary U.S. as an egalitarian society" whose
recent history represented "a period of enlightened progress--an unfolding drama of the
social, political, and economic incorporation of minorities which will not be thwarted or
reversed. The 'colorblind' society ... [was to] be the end result of this
process."(FN35)
Concurrently, the notion of colorblind casting as it is understood and
practiced today gained in popularity. It became generally accepted that one of the
ultimate aims of colorblind casting should be to produce colorblind audiences who would
retain this perceptual incapacity when they left the theatre. The optimistic and visionary
spirit of advocates of integration and colorblindness resonate in the words of Harry
Newman, one of the founders and the first Executive Director of the Non-Traditional
Casting Project:
We speak of actors and then of ethnic actors, as though they were of different kinds. We
speak of writers and then black writers or Hispanic writers or Asian writers. If someone
said, "I saw a terrific white play last night," it would sound ludicrous. Why is it
acceptable the other way around? It is time to recognize all artists as individual artists
first, apart from categories that only serve to limit our imaginations.(FN36)
Newman answered those who objected to non-traditional casting in general and
colorblind casting in particular by reassuring them that
Non-traditional casting does not of necessity imply tokenism or loss of identity. It's about
having all artists considered as individuals with individual qualities, apart from belonging
to groups based on often arbitrary distinctions such as skin color or ethnic origin. To be
judged on individual ability is not "playing white" either. It is allowing each artist to
bring whatever she is to her work.(FN37)
His comments bring to the surface the underlying conceptual framework of colorblind
casting, which is aligned with theories that see racial structures and dynamics as
approximating those of white European ethnicity. Both are characterized as being
similarly arbitrary distinctions and both are seen as elective features, which, ideally, can
be made relevant or irrelevant, significant or insignificant at, will. As Newman puts it, "if
a person is very involved with his ethnic or cultural background and it influences his
choices, there is nothing wrong with that."(FN38) At the same time, all artists should be
free to be recognized purely as artists without any racial or ethnic identification. Race and
ethnicity are defined from the perspective of the individual rather than the group. It is
hoped that individuals will have the option of assuming or shedding group identities in
order for their unique personal qualities and abilities to be best appreciated.
The
guiding principles of the Non-Traditional Casting Project were put into practice with the
original arrangement of the organization's Artist Files. Initially, the actors' resumes and
photographs were placed in two parallel files. One was organized according to the four
categories currently used to classify "ethnic minorities": African American, Asian/Pacific
Islander, Latino, Native American. The second was organized by character type (e.g.
leading man or woman, older character actor, etc.) with actors of all races and ethnicities
mixed together. As Newman noted, this was "how we ultimately wanted people to
think."(FN39) The second file, however, remained unused and was eventually
discontinued. Meanwhile, actors themselves continued to find that they were rejected for
parts for looking too Asian or Hispanic, for instance, or not Asian or Hispanic enough. As
one actor noted, "because I'm perceived as a relatively light-skinned black actor, I just
don't get cast in black roles. (In other words, if they want someone 'black'--why cast me?)
The industry wants its identifiable types...."(FN40)
The situation at the NTCP and the
experiences of non-white actors reflect both the arbitrariness and the persistence of racial
categories. At the same time, they offer a telling illustration of the shortcomings of social
theories that seek to understand non-white race in terms of European ethnicity. Far from
race being subsumed under ethnic categories, ethnicity is subordinated, indeed is
dissolved into what can only be described as race, in its reliance on biologically-based
physical characteristics. Whether an actor is of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent,
ethnically Mexican, Cuban, or Peruvian, or a member of the Algonquin, Cherokee, or
Nez Perce tribe is irrelevant in the vast majority of cases of theatrical casting. It is the
appearances that count. As Oakland-based director Benny Sato Ambush has noted, "The
term 'colorblind' casting is a problem. Acting has to do with being
seen."(FN41)
Apart from doubts about the very possibility of achieving
colorblindness and getting beyond race, the desirability of these goals has been
challenged with renewed energy as outside the theatre the ideal of "colorblindness" and
an attendant belief in universal themes and values have been appropriated to serve both
conservative and liberal political interests in the 1980s and 1990s. Beginning under the
Reagan administration, the principle of colorblindness has been evoked to contest
legislation and institutional practices that were put in place to counter past and to prevent
continued discrimination. The 1992 Clinton campaign introduced the theme of "racial
universalism" as part of a strategy to acknowledge their minority group constituents
while at the same time avoiding racially specific issues that risked alienating white
voters. The demonstrated malleability of the concepts of universalism and colorblindness,
the ease with which they can simultaneously be employed to advance, to suppress, or to
act against the interests of racial minorities, offers substantiation for the concerns of those
who have always regarded these concepts with suspicion and even hostility.
CULTURALLY SPECIFIC THEATRES AND CULTURAL
NATIONALISM
Unlike the connections between variations on the ethnicity
paradigm of racial theory and the different stages of "colorblind" casting, which have
been implicit rather than explicit, the links between calls for culturally specific American
theatres and nation-based theories of race have always been overtly made. Nowhere is
this more evident than in Wilson's keynote address, where he firmly identifies himself
with the Black Nationalist movement of the mid-1960s--"the kiln in which I was fired"-and its antecedents extending back to the nineteenth century. Not only does he invoke the
names of Martin Delaney and Marcus Garvey, leading thinkers of mid-nineteenth and
early twentieth-century Pan-Africanist movements, but the very line of his argument
parallels those of nation-based analyses of race.
The common ground discerned by
Omi and Winant between approaches as diverse as Pan-Africanism, cultural nationalism,
internal colonialism, and Marxist-influenced theories of race is the grounding of these
movements in the dynamics of colonialism. In their words, "In the nation-based
paradigm, racial dynamics are understood as products of colonialism and, therefore, as
outcomes of relationships which are global and epochal in character"(FN42)
Consequently, these approaches are multifaceted (i.e. they consider different elements of
racial oppression such as social inequality, political disenfranchisement, territorial and
institutional segregation, and cultural domination) and rely on a historical rather than a
taxonomic conception of race. Present-day racial oppression is seen as a continuation of
the national oppression that prevailed during the era of European colonialism, beginning
with the expeditions of the fifteenth century and culminating in the colonial empires of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to this model, the situation
can be remedied only by the formation of "organizations and movements uniformly
composed of the 'colonized' (i.e. victims of racial oppression)" and the promotion of
"'cultural autonomy' to permit the development of those unique characteristics which the
colonized group has developed or preserved through the ordeal of
subjugation...."(FN43)
Of the often divergent nation-based perspectives, cultural
nationalist theories like those of Harold Cruse are particularly relevant for discussions of
theatre. Cruse saw cultural programs as an essential complement to economic, social, and
political programs working to radically alter American society and to permanently
dislodge the centuries-old racial order. The object of a cultural program would be to
recognize "both the unique characteristics of black cultural traditions, and the essential
part that these cultural elements--for example in music, art, or language--played in the
cultural life of the U.S."(FN44) Cruse's model is notable for attaching equal importance
to the means of production and distribution of cultural works, calling for the eventual
placing of "the entire apparatus of cultural communication" under public
ownership.(FN45) This cultural program along with its counterparts in other arenas
would put an end to conditions associated with what has been characterized as "internal
colonialism." The elements of internal colonialism pertinent to the situation in theatre
include:
* A dynamic of cultural domination and resistance, in which racial categories
are utilized to distinguish between antagonistic colonizing and colonized groups, and
conversely, to emphasize the essential cultural unity and autonomy of each;
*
Institutionalization of externally based control, such that the racially identified colonized
group is organized in essential political and administrative aspects by the colonizers or
their agents.(FN46)
The general correspondence between the above views and the
call for all-black or other culturally specific theatres should be self-evident. Those who
advocate separate theatres believe they are the only way to assure both a repertory and an
administrative and artistic organizational structure that can effectively resist and attempt
to dissipate the residue of former colonization. The close, even inseparable, links between
the themes and forms of performances and the economic structure supporting those
performances can be seen in Jorge A. Huerta's description of Chicano teatros:
Chicano theater is political, for it is a declaration of certain conditions that cry out for
solutions in order to improve the Mechicano's situation in this country. As political
theater, the creations of the many playwrights and teatros are decidedly non-commercial,
more concerned with social justice than financial remuneration. Barrio performances are
usually free or very modestly priced, with the traditional "passing of the hat" following
each presentation. Teatros are certainly not adverse to economic independence, but they
purposely remain apart from commodity theater in an effort to reach working-class
Mechicano audiences.... Several teatros receive state and federal subsidies, yet manage to
retain their autonomy by not becoming wholly dependent on this kind of funding. No
teatros are financially independent, unaligned with some sort of institution or federal
program. Still, all of the teatros remain political, intent on promoting important changes
in their communities.(FN47)
Wilson's keynote speech is exemplary in its application of these ideas to the debates
over casting. His repeated characterization of colorblind casting as a form of cultural
imperialism immediately situates it within the dynamics of colonialism, and his extended
justification for independent cultural institutions deepens the correlation between
sociological theory and theatre practice. After establishing his theoretical affiliations,
Wilson goes on to recall:
Growing up in my mother's house... I learned the language, the eating habits, the religious
beliefs, the gestures, the notions of common sense, attitudes towards sex, concepts of
beauty and justice, and the responses to pleasure and pain, that my mother had learned
from her mother, and which you could trace back to the first African who set foot on the
continent. It is this culture that stands solidly on these shores today as a testament to the
resiliency of the African-American spirit.(FN48)
He specifies that the "term black or African-American not only denotes race, it denotes
condition, and carries with it the vestige of slavery and the social segregation and abuse
of opportunity so vivid in our memory."(FN49) The origins of black theatre are traced to
the cultural activity of the slave quarters where the African sought "to invest his spirit
with the strength of his ancestors by conceiving in his art ... a world in which he was the
spiritual center" and to "create art that was functional and furnished him with a spiritual
temperament necessary for his survival as property and the dehumanizing status that was
attendant to that."(FN50) Wilson decries the constant failure to recognize the deep impact
black art has had on American culture as a whole and ends with a summons to African
Americans not to "allow others to have authority over our cultural and spiritual products"
and instead "to become the cultural custodians of our art, our literature, and our
lives."(FN51)
CONCEPTUAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL CASTING AND RACIAL
FORMATIONS
Although the four types of non-traditional casting are generally
presented as being of the same order of theatrical practice, this is not the case. Each type
assumes a different relationship between representation and reality. Societal casting, in
choosing actors of different racial backgrounds to play roles they would in society,
preserves the traditional mimetic relationship between the world of social realities and the
realm of dramatic representation. It in no way upsets the illusion of an unproblematic
one-to-one correspondence between the fictional and the actual. Implicitly, it is expected
that the increasing inclusion of actors of color will simply be a corollary and a reflection
of socio-political activity and changes in hiring practices that alter the public complexion
of American society itself. It is therefore not surprising that this is the only form of "nontraditional" casting--which is in fact entirely traditional in its fundamental principles--that
has had a significant impact on casting for commercial film and television. Colorblind
casting on the other hand asserts a radical split between the theatrical and the actual,
claiming a certain autonomy for the representational space of the stage. The audience is
asked to accept situations and relationships that rarely if ever correspond to actual
experience and that invariably contradict or disregard both history and biology.
The
situation with conceptual and cross-cultural casting is more complex. As with colorblind
casting, there is an insistence upon the status of theatrical performance as a unique
semiotic process, engaging rather than being parasitical upon the world of lived
experience. When their full potential for producing meaning is realized, however,
conceptual and cross-cultural casting practices belong to a different order of signification:
they move a production from the field of artistic representation to that of cultural
criticism. This shift is indicated in the response of Libby Appel, Artistic Director of the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, to the issues raised by August Wilson. She
stated, "There is no such thing as colorblindness. When people look at the stage, they see
the colors of the actors. When I cross-cast, I'm looking to punch the audience's
sensibilities in some way."(FN52) Extending this principle to the scale of an entire
production, Mia Katigbak, artistic director and co-founder of the National Asian
American Theatre Company (NATCO), practices all-Asian casting of American and
European classics, without any transposition of the setting or action to Asian or Asian
American contexts, seeing this, in effect, as conceptual rather than colorblind casting.
(Fig. 2) Rather than seeing this practice as promoting the assimilation of Asian
Americans into a dominant white American culture, she envisions all-Asian American
casting as a strategy that can elicit fresh readings of the plays and in so doing update
conceptions of what American culture is. In Katigbak's words:
The presentation of western classics by non-Western actors in straightforward western
settings immediately poses a challenge to audience expectations. To see Asian Americans
in turn-of-the-century Russia, or 18th-century France, or in an English Edwardian
drawing room, or a New England small town, may perplex at first--this is a frequent
reaction to our choices and interpretations. But just as frequent is the eventual, or
sometimes immediate, adjustment: the values of the text shine through, what is perceived
as particular to one culture or ethnicity is appreciated as interpretable by another in the
original. The particular distinction of these cross-overs is that they define contemporary
America.(FN53)
The desired impact can only be achieved if spectators not only notice the color of the
actors but simultaneously activate their consciousness of the social, historical, political,
and cultural implications of racial difference. Conceptual casting seeks to accomplish this
on an individual basis through the casting of particular roles, while cross-cultural casting
operates on the level of the collective with its wholesale transposition of the action of a
play into another cultural milieu. Cornerstone Theatre's 1989 adaptation of Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet stands as one of the most aggressive combined uses of conceptual and
cross-cultural casting to have been attempted.(FN54) It demonstrated that in situations
where racial difference continues to be foregrounded by de facto segregation in everyday
life and active racial tensions are present, a performer's race is easily activated as an
element of theatrical discourse.
Cornerstone Theatre is a group whose primary
mission has been to bring classical plays to small towns and rural communities.
Cornerstone productions have included an adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, staged in
an Oregon logging community, and, in a departure from their usual preference for nonurban performance venues, a new version of A Christmas Carol performed at the Arena
Stage in Washington, D.C. Using their characteristic approach of (sometimes radically)
adapting canonical plays to reflect the concerns and experiences of the community they
are performing in, they made racial conflict an integral part of the theatrical experience in
the Romeo and Juliet staged for Port Gibson, Mississippi, under the title Verona,
Mississippi. Port Gibson had been the site of an historic black boycott of white-owned
and operated businesses just twenty years earlier. The boycott, an event occurring within
the living memory of many, even most, of the area's residents, lasted two years until
1971. During this period, many of the white-owned businesses went bankrupt. Local
merchants filed a suit against the NAACP and black property owners and were awarded
one million dollars in damages by a local court. The NAACP and labor groups appealed
and continued litigation until 1982 when the Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold
the right of citizens to stage non-violent political boycotts and to spend their money
where they pleased. The action of Romeo and Juliet was updated to twentieth-century
Mississippi with specific references to Port Gibson's history and institutions. As Bill
Rauch, the director of the production, stated very clearly, "We wanted to create a world
in which race was the major factor."(FN55) In their version, the black Montagues were
former leaders of a civic boycott, and this was the source of their bitter feud with the
white Capulets. Mercutio's dying curse was "A plague on both your races."(FN56)
Romeo was played by an African American high school student, and a professional
member of the company, a white actress, took the part of Juliet. The focus remained on
the younger generation, with specific references to the district's highly-segregated school
system. In the opening street brawl, now between black and white teenagers, the white
teenagers were wearing the uniforms of a local private academy that had only one black
student enrolled. This move established the links between fiction and reality for the rest
of the performance. The goal of the company was to "throw[...] a gauntlet into a
community as symbolically divided as fair Verona."(FN57)
All twelve performances
of Verona, Mississippi were sold out, with the racial make-up of the audience reflecting
that of the community--African Americans outnumbering Euroamericans two or three to
one. Coe reports that in responses to questionnaires, the former would consistently cite
the racial themes as the best part of the play, while for the latter they were the
worst.(FN58) The reactions to the Port Gibson Romeo and Juliet reflect the particular
interaction of history, the law, patterns of socialization, and everyday practices that takes
place during a performance event organized in terms of racial difference. In aggressively
foregrounding a familiar, often unpleasant, social reality--rather than using the mix-andmatch approach to race, history and culture practiced in colorblind casting--the
Cornerstone Theatre Company used racial presence as an instrument of active agency,
creating at least temporarily, a period of heightened social awareness.
The implicit or
explicit examinations of racial constructions and relations that make cross-cultural and
conceptual casting effective practices share the underlying assumptions of Michael Omi
and Howard Winant's own perspective, which understands the concept of race to be "an
unstable and 'decentered' complex of social meanings."(FN59) Rather than seeking to
understand race in terms of the dynamics of other categories or concepts, they posit race
as a fundamental structuring and representational element of society. Instead of
approaching race as a "problem" that should eventually and ideally be done away with,
they suggest it should be seen as "an element of social structure rather than as an
irregularity within it ... as a dimension of human representation rather than an
illusion."(FN60) Their account is particularly apt for understanding the manipulations of
race unique to theatrical institutions in the context of social conditions and historical
events because of their concept of racial formation. As they describe it,
Racial formation ... is a kind of synthesis, an outcome, of the interaction of racial projects
on a society-wide level. These projects are, of course vastly different in scope and effect.
They include large-scale public action, state activities, and interpretations of racial
conditions in artistic, journalistic, or academic fora, as well as the seemingly infinite
number of racial judgments and practices we carry out at the level of individual
experience.(FN61)
Theatre then is one of the many institutions taking part in the generation of racial
meanings at the same time that they draw on conceptions already in circulation.
At
the heart of Omi and Winant's model is a definition of race that restores the human body
as a critical factor in understanding how social meanings become attached to race. Their
definition states that "race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts
and interests by referring to different types of human bodies."(FN62) At the same time,
they stress that "although the concept of race invokes biologically based human
characteristics (so-called 'phenotypes'), selection of these particular human features for
purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process....
[T]here is no biological basis for distinguishing among human groups along the lines of
race" and that "the categories employed to differentiate among human groups along racial
lines reveal themselves ... to be imprecise, and at worst completely arbitrary."(FN63) It
must be recognized that nowhere have these precepts been more visibly and
provocatively demonstrated than in the innovations in casting that have been introduced
since the 1960s.
ADDED MATERIAL
Angela Pao is Associate Professor of
Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. She recently received a
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on a book-length
work on non-traditional casting practices.
Figure 1. A portion of the audience at a
performance of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Photo courtesy of George
Joseph.
Figure 2. Jodi Lin (left) and Mia Katigbak in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's
Journey Into Night at the National Asian American Theatre Company, November, 1997
FOOTNOTES
1. Toshio Mori, "Japanese Hamlet" in The Chauvinist and Other Stories
(Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, 1979), 39.
2. These include Jorge A.
Huerta's Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti: Bilingual Press, 1982);
Geneviève Fabre's Le Théâtre noir aux États-Unis (Paris: Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, 1982), translated as Drumbeats, Masks and Metaphors:
Contemporary Afro-American Theatre (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1983); The Theatre of Black Americans (New York: Applause, 1987), ed. Errol
Hill; a number of works written or edited by Nicolás Kanellos including Hispanic Theatre
in the United States (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1984) and Mexican American Theatre
Then and Now (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1989); Samuel A. Hay's African American
Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994); and Yuko Kurahashi's Asian American Culture on Stage: the History of the East
West Players (New York: Garland, 1999).
3. Book-length works falling into this
category include James S. Moy's Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America (Iowa
City: University of Iowa Press, 1993); Coco Fusco's English Is Broken Here (New York:
New Press, 1995); Harry J. Elam, Jr.'s Taking It to the Streets (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997); Josephine Lee's Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity
on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Dorinne
Kondo's About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater (New York: Routledge,
1997); Timothy Murray's Drama Trauma: Specters of race and sexuality in performance,
video, and art (New York: Routledge, 1997), Alicia Arrizón's Latina Performance:
Traversing the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), and José Esteban
Muñoz's Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). In the past decade, theoretically
informed treatments of racial, ethnic, and national identity and theatre appear in critical
anthologies focusing on cultural pluralism, diversity, or social change including Staging
Diversity: Plays and Practice in American Theater (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing
Co., 1992), ed. John R. Wolcott and Michael L. Quinn; Crucibles of Crisis: Performing
Social Change (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), ed. Janelle Reinelt;
Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama (New York: P.
Lang, 1995), ed. Marc Maufort; and most recently Performing America: Cultural
Nationalism In American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), ed.
Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor.
4. Andrea Wolper, "What is the Non-Traditional
Casting Project?" Back Stage, 23 February 1990, 27A.
5. Andrea Wolper, "NonTraditional Casting: Definitions and Guidelines," Back Stage, 23 February 1990, 29A.
These definitions are taken from the Non-Traditional Casting Project's pamphlet, "What
is Non-Traditional Casting."
6. August Wilson, "The Ground on Which I Stand,"
American Theatre 13,7 (1996); 72.
7. Wilson, 72.
8. "Inside the Tent -- Casting:
Colorblind or Conscious?" American Theatre 13,7 (1996): 20.
9. Wilson, 72.
10.
Robert Brustein, "Unity from Diversity," The New Republic, 209:3/4 (1993), 29-30.
11.
Wilson, 71.
12. Robert Brustein, "Subsidized Separatism," American Theatre 13,8
(1996): 100.
13. Wilson, 71.
14. Brustein, "Subsidized Separatism," 27.
15. Michael
Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the
1990s, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 2-3.
16. Omi and Winant,
15.
17. Omi and Winant, 17.
18. Omi and Winant, 16.
19. John Patterson, "Joe Papp
Responds to Charges That a Black-Hispanic Shakespeare Company Doesn't Scan," The
Villager, 9 April 1979, 11.
20. New York Shakespeare Festival, "Semi-annual Report of
the Director of Education," 13 September 1965, 3.
21. On one of the rare occasions
when the harmonious (if sometimes noisy) community atmosphere that pervaded most of
these early performances was disrupted, the disturbances were apparently caused by local
gangs who considered the public park where the NYSF play was being performed their
territory. Richard Faust and Charles Kadushin's detailed report on the 1964 Mobile
Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream noted: "Several shows had to be
stopped because of rock throwing. These incidents were triggered by resentful teen-age
gangs who claimed the playground as their private 'territory' and felt that it had been
unjustly usurped by the Mobile Theatre." Richard Faust and Charles Kadushin,
Shakespeare in the Neighborhood: Audience Reactions to "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" as produced by Joseph Papp for the Delacorte Mobile Theater" (New York: The
Twentieth Century Fund, 1965), 5-6.
22. Whitney Bolton, review of The Winter's Tale,
New York Morning Telegraph, 16 August 1963.
23. Faust and Kadushin, 28.
24. Faust
and Kadushin, 37.
25. Cited in Helen Epstein, Joe Papp: An American Life, (Boston:
Little, Brown and Co., 1994), 291.
26. Arthur Gelb, "Integrated Cast Will Act in South,"
New York Times, 11 April 1963, 28:5.
27. "Integrated Antony Won't Tour South," New
York Times, 24 August 1963, 10:6.
28. Eleanor Blau, "Papp Starts a Shakespearean
Repertory Troupe Made Up Entirely of Black and Hispanic Actors," New York Times,
21 January 1979, 55.
29. Blau, 55.
30. "Shakespeare for City Students," Newsday, 8
October 1986, 21.
31. By 1979, Papp was seeking alternatives to an integrated
company. In his 9 April interview with The Villager, he stated: "... the festival has a
whole tradition of trying to create some sort of an integrated company, which after awhile
I got to dislike. I didn't like integration as a way of doing it because integration meant
tokenism" (p. 11).
32. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting
Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City.
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1963), 17.
33. Glazer and Moynihan, 19.
34.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), 1021-22.
35. Omi and Winant, 1-2.
36. Harry
Newman, "Holding Back: The Theatre's Resistance to Non-Traditional Casting," The
Drama Review 33,3 (1989): 26-27.
37. Newman, 35.
38. Newman, 35.
39. Newman,
31.
40. Geoffrey Owens, et al, "Actors and Non-Traditional Casting: What Do They
Think?" New Traditions: The NTCP Newsletter 1,3 (1992): 3.
41. "Inside the Tent,"
20.
42. Omi and Winant, 37.
43. Omi and Winant, 38.
44. Omi and Winant, 40.
45.
Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution? (New York: William Morrow, 1968), 112.
46.
Omi and Winant, 45.
47. Jorge A. Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms
(Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1982), 215-16.
48. Wilson,
16.
49. Wilson, 16.
50. Wilson, 16.
51. Wilson, 72.
52. "Inside the Tent," 20.
53.
Mia Katigbak, "The National Asian American Theatre Company, Inc. (NATCO) -Positioning Statement," August 1996, 3.
54. Robert Coe presents a detailed chronicle of
this production in his article "Verona, Mississippi," American Theatre 6:2 (1989) 14-21,
52-57. The article includes several photographs. Edret Brinson, the amateur actor who
played Romeo, is one of three actors featured in a 1999 HBO documentary film titled
Cornerstone. Produced and directed by Michael Kantor and Steven Ives, the film follows
the company on the 1991 national tour of its updated musical version of The Winter's
Tale. Brinson was one of the Cornerstone "alumni" reunited for this project.
55. Coe,
20.
56. Coe, 53.
57. Coe, 20.
58. Coe, 56-57.
59. Omi and Winant, 55.
60. Omi and
Winant, 55.
61. Omi and Winant, 60-61.
62. Omi and Winant, 55.
63. Omi and
Winant, 55.