"And yet when roles are whitewashed we are somehow supposed to suspend our disbelief that the white actor with makeup looks Chinese, Persian, Argentinian, etc."
I think this is a bit of a red herring really - it is almost unheard of to whitewash a role that was written to be of Asian decent on Broadway in 2020 and I don't think audiences would accept it. I agree they could have cast non-POC in the roles, but equally given they are based on real people, they also could not. I would hope they didn't turn down a POC in one of the roles because they are 'not white'. Because no one is 'in the room when it happened', it's hard to know for sure - but I just trust and assume in 2020 with how racially conscious we are especially in our community of all communities this would not happen. Is anyone here going to say explicitly they are accusing James Lapine of racism? If you believe so, say it.
As for earlier comments about "The Book of Mormon" or "The Lion King" - sheesh. The ultimate goal in my opinion is that people aren't type-cast in certain shows because of their race. If you are an asian actor and confined to doing revivals of The King and I or Pacific Overtures your whole life I would be very upset. A better goal is to be someone like Pearl Sun in the N2N tour who played Diana because she was so talented not because of her race. I hope & assume we are aiming for more of this, which to be honest if I look at the N2N DC cast it feels like we have made great progress.
Give me claws and a hunch, just away from this bunch.
Updated On: 2/4/20 at 12:47 PM