Color-blind casting

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 2/22/04 at 5:01pm

I have the general concept down, but can someone flesh out the topic a little more for me? Realistically, how literal is color-blind casting in practical application? Are we talking about the freedom to alter demographics of characters, or a total dissonence between how the character is written and how they look?

[WindyCityActor]

Posted: 2/23/04 at 12:24pm

Lord, this can be a complex topic!

I remember during grad school there was quite an ongoing dialogue regarding this topic. In my opinion, color blind casting can work provided that the audience is aware of the director's intent. And the director is mindful of how an audience may interpret was they see onstage.

During my final year at DePaul, the school mounted a production of "Streetcar Named Desire" in which Mitch was cast with a black actor. Interestingly enough the evening audiences immediately accepted the casting, while the performances for high school students almost errupted in near riots...all triggered by Blanche's line to Mitch (when we presents her with the flowers) -"Good Boy."

My theory was the the older audiences were familiar with the script, and surmised that Mitch was a white CHARACTER played by a black ACTOR. While, the younger audience, unfamiliar to the script, saw Mitch as a black CHARACTER and interpreted Blanche's line as being racist.

That same month, I directed a production of "Suddenly Last Summer" with a black woman as Katherine. I though it helped stress that Katherine was an outsider. The fact that her mother and brother were played by white actors didn't present much confusion.

As far as the script is concerned, I'm a bit of a purist. I would never significantly alter a script in order to justify color blind casting. To do so would greatly alter the playright's intent.

[Alex the Cat]

Posted: 2/23/04 at 7:04pm

Some interesting thoughts here... 'Henry IV' at Lincoln Center had African-American actors, such as the wonderful Audra Macdonald... also some characters spoke with an English accent and others with American accents... although of course in the time it was written it would have been acted entirely by Englishmen. This didn't distract me or change the character of the play at all, at least for me.

I think the key here is- is the race/ethnicity of the characters central to the story and theme of the play? Someone in another thread mentioned 'Master Harold and the Boys', which dealt with apartheid-era South Africa. Of course you would never cast a white man in the lead role- the entire point of the play would be lost. For me personally, 'Fiddler' falls in this category because it's a story about Jewish life in the shtetls of Russia and Eastern Europe, and everything that happens in the play actually happened to my family and thousands of others... the Christians of Anatevka were not forced to leave- only the Jews.