Look, it's not right to pick on Midtown Gym regarding this sometimes very complicated issue that isn't black and white (no pun intended) and where it simply isn't possible to come up with one general standard, one rule that fits every production, every play, every role and every actor. Theatre is about suspension of disbelief and we who love it and see a lot of it are used to being asked to accept all manner of stage conventions, artificial affects and creative casting choices in furtherance of the overall artistic vision of a given production -- and not all of them work all of the time and in every case. In theatre, playwrights, directors, actors and designers are seeking to promote an illusion of truth/an alternative form of reality, and any element on the stage that interferes with that illusion can break the spell and undercut the "story" being told.
Given the proper context by the writing and the direction etc... audience members can accept the notion that in such an alternative reality, people can suddenly break into song and dance at the drop of a hat (with a full orchestra supporting them), that a well-arranged set of Xmas lights can be the night sky, that a well-lit circle of cardboard can be the moon, that a hunk of styrofoam with plastic grass can be a mountain, that two lone chairs on a bare stage can be a car or a ferris wheel or a covered wagon or a spaceship -- theatre truly is magical thing.
Audiences can seemingly accept and go along with almost any theatrical convention you throw at them. The only exception seems to be -- in some cases -- certain forms of nontraditional casting in certain shows. If the actor cast in the role of stunningly beautiful person isn't (subjectively to a certain audience member) stunningly beautiful, or the young femme fatale character is played by someone clearly over 50 or if a man plays a female character (I know people who couldn't/wouldn't understand why Harvey Fierstein was cast as Edna in "Hairspray" and refused to see it), or, yes, if a black actor plays a role traditionally played by a white actor, for certain audience members it destroys the basic illusion presented by the play, it's too distracting or too unrealistic that they find it impossible to "go along with" the story being told.
The case of Audra McDonald is an interesting one. She came to fame and won her first Tony playing Carrie Pipperidge opposite a white Mr. Snow in Maine of the 1870s. I can remember John Simon and other critics noting at the time that such an interracial couple would simply never have existed at that time and that (I wish I could remember Simon's exact words), it was a breach of the piece's versimilitude and a ridiculous case of nontraditional casting. Well, Simon was certainly quite right historically that there probably weren't a whole heck of a lot of interracial couples in a small 19th century New England fishing village -- in fact, there were probably none. I suppose for Mr. Simon, McDonald's very presence on the stage ruined the entire show for him -- that he was totally fine with the styrofoam rocks and the cardboard trees and the 28 piece orchestra, but as soon as a black woman wandered out singing "When I Marry Mr. Snow" it spoiled the entire experience for him. I guess someone should have told Nicholas Hyner that "Carousel" was supposed to be a documentary on 19th century New England life and not a musical comedy. Amazingly (!), the vast majority of the audience quickly forgot about such matters as soon as McDonald opened her mouth and began to sing (if any of them had even thought about such things to begin with) and willingly and gleefully suspended their disbelief, warmly embracing what everyone could see was the emergence of a major new star in their midsts. For most of the audience other than Simon, McDonald and the great black opera star Shirley Verrett as Nettie were not only "accepted" as the characters they were portraying, they were two of the main highlights of the entire production.
McDonald playing Dot is apparently also problematic for some. It's fine apparently that all of these fictional 19th century French people wander about speaking and singing in American-accented English or that paintings come to life and sing or that cardboard cut-outs of soldiers have affairs or that cardoard dogs have their own musical numbers -- but Dot couldn't have been black because the women in the painting were apparently white (though George had no problem making green hats red and didn't spend any time depicting any of faces in the painting with any level of detail -- the color and the characteristics of all of the faces in that painting are very generic .... none of them look like Bernadette Peters or anybody else for that matter and the real Seurat clearly had no interest in depicting them with any accuracy).
We know nothing whatsoever about the real Seurat or how his color pallette reflected real life and it's silly to even speculate on such matters. Artists clearly see light and color and composition in their own unique ways. To take another example, we do know that much of Picasso's cubist experiments with painting portraits and faces were based on and heavily influenced by the shapes and linear contours of African masks, all of which were originally the color dark brown or ebony. In his paintings, however those faces appeared to be white, yellow, red, blue, brown and every color of the rainbow.
Can be we so sure that a visionary such as Seurat didn't use some non-white models for "La Grande Jatte"? Especially considering that that island was mostly frequented by working class individuals, some of whom (in terms of actual history) would have been in the 1880s in Paris, domestics of African descent? Without overplaying this particular speculation, there truly is no reason that the fictional character of Georges Seurat couldn't have had a black artist model (or two) during that period in Paris (artists models typically came from the lower classes, a small but significant portion of which would have been of African descent in that period). And given that both the real and the fictional Seurat had little interest in accurately depicting faces and played extensively with the color pallette for skin tones, fabric tones, water and grass tones ....... who's to say that he didn't have a black girlriend or mistress that ended up depicted in the same amorphous pink-ish hue as the rest of the people in the painting?
One last thing -- I remember seeing the play "Kit Marlowe" at the Public a few years back which dealt with the playwright Christopher Marlowe. It was partially based on the historical record -- what little is known of Marlowe -- and included a few well-known historical figures as characters. One such character was Sir Walter Raleigh, a friend, patron and confidant of Marlowe's and in this production, Raleigh was played by the fine African-American actor Keith David. Now, most of us know that the real life Raleigh was an English nobleman and as white as they come. David, a great stage actor, played the role with such charisma and power and panache that his color became utterly irrelevant. At intermission, I remember having a conversation about the issue of David's casting with several of the friends I attended the show with (about 6 of us). When I raised the question, I got several blank looks, and then sudden jolts of recognition. I discovered during the conversation that all of us had had the same initial reaction of "Hmmmmm, "interesting" choice...." upon David's first entrance when we realized that the character Sir Walter Raleigh (whom we, of course, all knew was a white man) was being played by a black actor. But, David was so utterly brilliant in the role and so dominated every scene he had been in that by the time of intermission when I raised the question, each of my very smart and very critical friends had completely forgotten whatever their initial trepidations might have been and by the end of the play's first scene completely accepted David as Raleigh and thought it was a wonderful casting choice.
Great actors can do that. They make you forget color and race and age and aesthetics and even gender ...... if they're REALLY good. They make audiences forget the limitations of the body and focus on the qualities of the soul. Great actors can so inhabit a character that it fools the eye and alters the mind.
Not every actor can play every role in every production -- that's why nontraditional casting has to be done with care and intelligence and common sense. And when race somehow plays a role in the story being told, one has to be especially careful. But, I think that in many many instances, great performers have the ability to overcome most people's perceptions and pre-conceived notions and transcend any boundaries that age, gender and ethnicity might place upon them in order to give life to and sustain a theatrical illusion.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 8/19/04 at 02:44 AM
