In one of my acting classes, we always discuss the
department-produced shows the week after they have gone up. One of these days,
we discussed the play The Dining Room by
A.R. Gurney. The play follows eighteen different families (different family for
each scene) around a single dining room table, examining the dying upper
middle-class culture of tradition, and how the shift towards societal progress
has changed these types of families.
We always talk about moments that worked and moments
that didn’t work. When talking about moments that didn’t work, our professor
baited us with this:
“I didn’t get at all what the play was examining,
and that has largely to do with the casting. Can anybody tell me why?”
Though I had not seen the play myself, I had inkling
of what she was going for after sitting through our discussion of the play’s
main themes. It seemed like I was not alone as everyone fidgeted uncomfortably
in their seats, but said nothing.
“It may not be the most politically correct answer…”
she prodded.
“The cast was multi-racial,” someone finally chimed
in.
She slowly nodded and said “That’s it.”
Because The
Dining Room spans the late 19th into the late 20th
century, the upper middle-class culture being presented is better known as the
WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture.
We then launched into a discussion of the validity
of colorblind casting, and when it was appropriate and when typecasting was
completely necessary.
“Well, it’s not like you can have a white man play
Othello,” said one student.
“Olivier (referring to acclaimed English and very
white actor Laurence Olivier) did it,” someone else countered.
Though brief, it was a truly fascinating discussion
about artistic liberties, and the limits of an actor’s imagination.
“I personally believe that we’ve all felt what it’s
like to be oppressed, to feel less than, and that we would be able to draw upon
those feelings if a white guy had to play a character that was traditionally
black.”
“Here’s the thing,” said Jade, one of my fellow
African-American actresses “I think that by being a black man, you have an
innate sense of what being a slave means, and I just don’t think that anybody
else can know what that feels like.”
This back and forth went on for a while. I chimed in
that while I understood that some roles are meant to be played by a certain
race, roles that should be open to any race often go to white actors because of
old-founded stereotypes of the “average” American. Others noted that the fact
that our department has to have two “diversity” shows in order for actors of
color to get cast is absolutely ridiculous.
What I ultimately took from this discussion,
however, is how complex this issue is, and how there isn’t one right or wrong
answer. My scene work for this class had me playing a heavily persecuted Jew.
Part of my professor’s reasoning with this casting was that African-Americans
had an instinctive understanding of what it meant to be oppressed.
But, on the flip side, how could I, a 21 year old
girl, possibly understand the ramifications of years and years of cruelty put
upon a middle-aged Jewish man?
As we ended our discussion, my professor said
something that I hope will stick with me for years to come:
“I so admire your idealism and your purity in your
idealism. Don’t lose that. It’s too easy to lose that in this world, but don’t
think that just because the system says you can’t means you can’t talk about
these things. This is the important stuff we should be talking about.”
