Casting Demographics

I was just reading the article posted on BroadwayWorld about casting demographics.

"A recent study from Actors' Equity concluded: "Caucasians make up a majority of all onstage contracts - principal in a play (65 percent of contracts ) principal in a musical (66 percent of contracts ) and chorus (57 percent of contracts)."

And this is presented as an issue.

This is not about racially authentic casting, because different shows ask for different casting, but purely about the amount of contracts.

Here is a list of the percentage in US population:

White American223,553,265 72.4 %

Black American38,929,319 12.6 %

Asian American14,674,25 24.8 %

American Indian or Alaska Native2,932,2480. 9 %

Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander540,0130. 2 %

Some other race19,107,3686. 2 %

Two or more races9,009,0732. 9 %



Even if you would only count non-hispanic white, it's still 64% of the population so even that matches the contracts. In chorus contracts it's even much lower. Also, "Caucasian" covers all whites, including hispanic whites, so if you look at it that way, the work opportunities/amount of contracts for caucasians are about 10% too low.

So the real question here is; What is fair?

Updated On: 7/15/17 at 06:59 AM

That's what I thought too when I read the article.

and what about audience demographics?

Your chart gives a total of 131.8%.