Color Blind Kowalski?- Page 3
Color Blind Kowalski?
#50Color Blind Kowalski?
Posted: 6/20/11 at 8:44pm
But unless it's a fantasy, all plays can be viewed through when they were written and by whom.
Which means, by the logic of Idiot et al. that you can't have color-blind casting in Shakespeare either. We all know that Henry V wasn't black, so Andre Braugher can't have been believable. And surely Denzel Washington didn't play Richard III. And surely that wasn't Angela Bassett as Lady Macbeth. Show me a black 12th-century aristocrat--or even a 16th-century one.
Yes, there are plays that are to some extent (or a great extent) about race: "Othello" (though white actors have played him for centuries), "King and I" (I think he was eventually played by an Asian actor, after decades of white actors--and one, of course, in particular--dominating the role.)
Just because the 1950s in the U.S. are of more recent vintage doesn't mean that we need to hold on to 1950s notion of race. Yes, in STREETCAR there's the loss of a family home. Does it require our filling in the back story of a white slave-owning family? I don't see that it does.
It's no accident that the greatest resistance to color-blind casting exists here (as opposed to, say, the UK); we've held on to our black-white divide tenaciously. And I don't think it's that we're all devotees of history.
Updated On: 6/21/11 at 08:44 PM
#51Color Blind Kowalski?
Posted: 6/20/11 at 8:48pm
That's the point I was trying (and failing?) to make, Phyllis!
Julia would indeed be a magnificent Blanche I must concur.
#52Julia Roberts Needs To Be Blanche!
Posted: 6/20/11 at 8:48pm
*sigh*
Updated On: 6/20/11 at 08:48 PM
#53Julia Roberts Needs To Be Blanche!
Posted: 6/20/11 at 8:52pmThe color blind casting in the TV Cinderella with Bernadette didn't seem to bother anybody...
#55Julia Roberts Needs To Be Blanche!
Posted: 6/20/11 at 8:57pmTrue enough. 'Cept for BP.
#56Julia Roberts Needs To Be Blanche!
Posted: 6/20/11 at 10:49pmI have to confess that when I saw this post from a distance, I thought it said "Color Blind Krakowski". A "Chicago" fan in Austin, Texas
Moneyspider
Stand-by Joined: 12/16/10
#57Julia Roberts Needs To Be Blanche!
Posted: 6/20/11 at 11:37pm
I think you could get an interesting subtext, with Kowalski being a "slave name". But I would expect the performances to reflect this, since it's not in the text.
But mainly, I think of this in terms of international performances. From
a Japanese production of Miss Saigon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmckuOtjSRE
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