uncageg said: "BroadwayGirl107 said: "Globefan said: "I don't think Diablo was responsible for anything apart from writing."
Given the controversy surrounding the character of Jo, I'd say being the writer her might make her the most responsible for that then, lol. If you're going to hire a cis actor from your first draft, just write a character that matches the actor's identity."
But that's not how it works. So what if an actor who's "identity" (And there are enough of them) doesn't match, but gives the best audition? Do they say "sorry, you were great but unfortunately the character is a they and you identify as she, so we can't give you the part. And They will be really mad if we don't cast a they."?
It is called acting for a reason. The writers aren't out to satisfy everyone who has a hissy fit because they cast a person who doesn't fit the identity of the character. So then what, do actor's start changing their identity to get a role? And then will it get to a point where there will be anger over a writer who creates a character out of their identity because the writer doesn't identify?
Writers and actors don't just jump in a do the show. They do research to understand characters. But that still isn't enough for some people."
For some reason, this has been difficult to internalize for even the most open minded people. But let's break this down.
If a male-indentifying actor wants to portray Mrs Lovett and gives the best audition ever, would John Doyle cast him as Mrs Lovett and not expect changes to be made to the production/text to reflect that very conscious and specific casting choice? It would appear downright homophobic for this male actor to be pining after Sweeney, singing "ohhh mister Todd" without that.
Diane Paulus is currently working on a "gender"-reversed production of 1776. That production will absolutely not work if these female identifying and presenting actors *pretend* they are men on stage via dumb gimmicks like a moustache or some crap. It's a very conscious and actively subversive choice for the production. It will need to be reconceived to make sense. Company revival would be confusing as heck if they had taken Lenk and dropped her in middle of original Dean Jones production.
Until the idea of non-binary and transgender identities are not deeply internalized and normalized in our society, our brains will force us to think in the binary "if this, then this" way. The best trick to rewire that thinking that my casting director friend told me they follow is actually flip the script of "non"binary and just think of each individual identity as an actual gender. If you're going to cast an actor of "male" gender to character of "female" gender, your production needs to justify and honor that choice. Similarly, if you cast a "female" gender actor to a "non-binary" character - you better be able to justify that casting choice or truly expect criticism. I know this can be considered a horribly regressive way to think about this, but it works better than just pretending that all people can wake up and start understanding what non-binary means just because they read about it in or have someone tell them once or twice.
I am a cisgender femme guy, and when I saw this show at ART, Jo was absolutely written to be a non-binary character and Patten portrayed it as such. Her "You oughta know" brought the house down, and it was a powerful and very well done performance. I actually saw her at Medium Allison before on Broadway and already liked her. I guess I assumed that Patten identified as non-binary, because of how "woke" this production was...surely they wouldn't mess up the casting? But alas, how wrong I was.
Caption: Every so often there was a rare moment of perfect balance when I soared above him.
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