Des McAnuff: It's not non-traditional casting - it's just casting

Interesting piece by Des McAnuff concering his new production of Macbeth at Stratford. Set in Africa, with a white Macbeth (Colm Feore) and a black Lady Macbeth (Yanna McIntosh), and both black and white actors in the various other roles.

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Tonight's production employs what is often called "non-traditional casting" -- a term that means, among other things, that "ethnically diverse" actors get to play Shakespearean roles other than Othello.

This to me is a fundamental requirement for any theatre that presumes to call itself a leader in the Canada of the 21st century. The term "non-traditional" does raise the question of what we mean by "traditional".

I think that when some use the term "traditional" they really mean "Victorian" for tradition unfortunately is often limited to the outer reaches of human memory.

The Victorians were greatly concerned with "historic detail". Our traditions here go much further back, to Shakespeare and beyond. And Shakespeare was an "eclecticist" when it comes to questions of historic setting and for that matter, casting. Shakespeare's Company was composed entirely of men and so I suppose one could argue that casting women in female roles is non-traditional casting.

Ours is a multi-racial society -- in fact, our closest metropolis, Toronto, is one of the most diverse cities in the world. If our audiences can't find their own reflections on our stages, as Shakespeare's audiences did on his, we cannot possibly claim to be speaking to Canadians today. The complexion of Canada has changed and continues to change, and we must change with it in order to stay at the forefront of our art.

Think about it. Even the most literal-minded of audiences are
willing to accept a painted backdrop as an indication of a mountain landscape, or a flat wooden floor as representative of the rocks and shoals of Prospero's island. And yet to many of those same audiences, the idea of a black or Asian Hamlet or Henry V violates all credibility. I find that very limiting, and somewhat sad.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/theatre/des-mcanuff-its-not-non-traditional-casting---its-just-casting/article1171143/

Full text of McAnuff's commentary:
http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/about/pdf/NR222009.pdf

http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/macbeth.cfm

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Updated On: 6/5/09 at 09:40 PM

I can't take anything he says seriously after he cast
GUYS AND DOLLS.
If he can mess up that show he can certainly screw up the Scotish play set in Africa.

R&J seems like an obvious spot to try a multi-racial casting that would actually enhance the show- one family white, one black.

If that's how it was done, it would have made more sense. Instead, my friends and I spent the entire show trying to figure out why the heck he purposely cast black and white members in the same family. It completely eliminated the issue of race and made the whole point moot.

I agree with him DESPITE his mangling of Guys and Dolls.

Why can't actors just be evaluated by their interpretations of the parts?

Why do they have to be evaluated by their complexions?

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While it's lovely to think that talent should be the frontrunner when it comes to casting a show, it's rarely the case - people are always typed out for their looks. I fully support colour-blind casting, but when a main subject of a play is feuding families and you introduce race into the picture, that's what your audience is going to focus on. This was a much-debated topic among the Toronto theatre community last season - it's not only my thoughts.

To say this is a non-issue is unfair to the legions of actors of color who routinely do not get cast in roles they could otherwise play successfully, were it not for the color of their skin. Yes, there are productions/companies that do not take the actors' races into consideration when casting them, but unfortunately, there are many more productions/companies that do. As long as this exists, it IS still an issue.

Romeo and Juliet was marketing for months prior to the opening with an image of a (seemingly nude?) white Romeo with his arms clasped around his black Juliet. That plants a firm idea of a main theme of the piece, and you can't deny that. So after being fed this picture before walking into the theatre, the audience was expecting one thing, and I, personally, was baffled as to why it would be illustrated that way then strangely handled onstage, ignoring the suggestion that was made with the program's cover. If the goal was to prove that love knows no race, there were clearer ways to go about that.

Certainly, another message of McAnuff's piece was the timlessness of the star-crossed lovers, and the piece jumped from present-day to the Romantic period, then back to present day without any rhyme or reason.

I'm being long-winded and disorganized, but what I'm getting at was that McAnuff's production was sloppy and strangely directed when it seemed as though he was hoping to be awe-inspiring and deep. It was stunning to look at a lovely idea, but was mishandled.

That being said, I have tickets to see Macbeth in three weeks and am quite excited to see it.

Sometimes the ethnic casting works sometimes it's ridiculous. I saw a college production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" with a black Nick and it made little sense. Martha and George probably would have brought the racial issue up.

When you have an interracial couple in a play about their families not wanting them to be together, your audience is going to make assumptions at first glance. Obviously it's not right and it's not what we'd hope for in our perfectly PC society, but that insinuation is still there. Just because you don't think this way doesn't mean that I'm a crazy person.

Also, I NEVER said that "white is the 'norm'" and that anything else is a "deviation." I said it before - I completely support colour blind casting. I just believe that in some roles this carries more weight than in others. Nobody is begging explanation with why some of lovers in this season's Midsummer are black and others are white or why Julius Caesar is "colour blind cast." It's brought up with Romeo and Juliet because of the subject matter.

I'm saying that McAnuff's treatment of Romeo and Juliet was baffling and sloppy - not that he should have an all-white cast or that it needed to be about race. Merely that he tried to make a weak point and shoved it in his audiences' faces without ever really explaining what he was doing.