A Discussion in THTR 454

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 19^th into the late 20^th 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.”