Diversity — Page 2

If you're seeing ''Vietgone'' at MTC and ''Aubergine'' at Playwrights Horizons, let's face it: Those are overwhelmingly white subscription audiences, and most of the plays in their season are usually by Caucasians about the Caucasian experience. Kudos to those theaters for including playwrights of color, but that's not their focus. At the risk of overgeneralizing, theatergoing hasn't been a big part of the Asian culture (or that of others), so there's a learning curve that's involved. Audiences of color need to be cultivated and nurtured. But it takes time. As theater offerings become more diverse, I hope so, too, will the people who go to see them.

Updated On: 6/14/18 at 01:39 AM

How would you fix the Hamilton problem? This is what happens when we live in an economically free society, unfortunately.

The Hamilton problem is short term. It has nothing to do with the show being done from the perspective of people of color. The high ticket prices are just because it happens to be the show of the decade (like Rent and A Chorus Line) where demand outstrips supply for the first few years. It will calm down, eventually. It already has in Chicago - I've seen it there twice and tickets aren't hard to get a few weeks in advance and at normal prices. I'll also note that the audiences there had a good mix of non-white faces.

The vast majority of shows can only dream of having "the Hamilton problem". Most of them have the "white stories for white people" problem.

I remember coming back home on the train from New York the week the original A Color Purple opened. I was sitting across from a black family of about 7 or 8 people that had gone specifically to see Purple the opening week. They sometimes saw shows in DC, but this was a very special deal. Reading between the lines, I would say that this was their stories being told by their people that made it a must see event.

I can relate. It reminded me of the emotional earthquake of seeing the character of Paul in A Chorus Line in the 70s - a gay male character on stage that was not a joke and was up there in all his humanity. Looking back I realize that I had never seen that before.

So, yeah - more diverse stories and writers and performers will help. And it's happening. Shows like Scotsboro Boys, In the Heights, and Hamilton have helped launch a new set of bankable performers that have come back leading other shows and concerts like Joshua Henry, Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Jordan Donica, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, and Karen Olivo. People are now writing for these actors as well as putting them into roles that were previously cast as white.

But it's still the writers that I am most concerned about. We need more non-white and female writers and the stories that they can tell.

What entertains me most in these recurrent calls for "diversity," is that the loudest voices never offer a practicable, considered, specific plan of action to create reform. For them, what matters is caring about the problem; the solution can always be devised by someone else.

That this is also identical to the American corporate paradigm (executives have "ideas," underlings find solutions) is probably not coincidence.

I saw Allegience in Boston (SpeakeasyStage) last month and the audience was easily 25% Asian.
I've worked in theatre marketing for many, many years. One thing I notice is that theatres tend to ONLY market to non-white groups when they have a "non-white" show. For instance one theatre I worked for did enormous sales efforts to the black community for a production of Having Our Say (a play with a cast of two, both black women) but then ignored that community for the rest of their season. If you do that often enough, people start to feel used and condescended to and aren't likely to hand their money over to you.

Sondheimite said: "I often cite Hamilton as being the poster child that represents the diversity problem that producers have caused in audiences:

A show is written for people of color to take back history. The show is very good and is swooped up by white producers who set ticket prices so high that it prices out most working class people of color. The audience is then filled with white upper classliberals who pat themselves on the back for seeing a show on Broadway that "celebrates diversity" while the people the show was written to celebrate can't even dream of getting tickets to it.

Broadway seems to celebrate diversity just so it can pat itself on it's very white back. If Broadway really celebrated diversity, Broadway would celebrate accessibility.
"


Not brilliantly put- stop yer kvetching. We live in a capitalist society- what do you want ? Free tickets? Everyone who wants to see Hamilton will- eventually- one way or another- if they wait long enough. All Broadway shows are expensive- Hamilton more so because it is a mammoth hit. Would you rather live in North Korea?