Theatre Survey 41 no2 1-21 N 2000
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. 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 non-white 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 middle-class African Americans. One black woman who was active in community affairs noted: