Ragtime production in black face!! so horrified!!! — Page 2

Fine. Call it "Non traditional casting".

And the comments on the video are right. Elphaba's not really green, either.

Damn! The video is no longer available. And I really wanted to see it. Did anyone save it?

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Besty, why would anyone take issue at white actors playing Macbeth? The dude was Scottish.

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I think the horror is precisely what Besty was describing, which is the American perspective on white actors using makeup to portray black people. I do think context is everything, especially when this particular method of casting is used by theatrical groups outside our country. I remember seeing a video clip of a Spanish company that performed Hairspray in the same way. I didn't find it offensive at all because it was not used in a mocking or derogatory sense. It was simply a means of identifying characters of their racial ethnicity, which is central to the plot (as it is in Ragtime). They did it the only way they could because they wanted to stage that show and tell that story and good for them! Now, there are probably other ways this could be accomplished through creative costuming or whatnot, but I'm certainly not going to insist other countries adhere to our own cultural history and biases when it clearly doesn't apply.

...but whiteface and yellowface do not have the problematic historical background that blackface does...

True, but what does that matter if anycolorface is used to mock and promote racial stereotypes? Personally, I consider "blackface" to be offensive in its original form. But what I consider theatre groups such as these to be doing is not "blackface", but character makeup. I recognize the difference.

Blackface promoted racial stereotypes that our society, to this day, has yet to eradicate.

Key words being "promoted" (past tense) and "our society" (not Ireland's or Spain's or any other country). At what point do we progress as a society and recognize that not all cultures are like our own and applaud those who try to find a way to connect with American history?

I always thought the black/white casting in Aida was ridiculous. It's not as if the white guys looked Egyptian or as if anything else in the show resembled realism of any sort. It just seemed like a gimmick to infuse some gospel into the score. That show just irritated me.

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Wow. It's gone. It was reported.

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Music Theatre International."

Sorry, cutie. I no read.

I understand the "Wheels of a Dream (Ax Your Mama How She Durrin)" Megamix after the curtain call really brought the audience to its feet. RuPaul said it was very loving.

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I'm sure the 1.1% of Ireland's population who are black really loved the production, because, you know, the Irish have historically been really GREAT about black people.

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I think whenever the character's race is a factor in their story you cannot and should not color blind cast, and any kind of black/white/yellow face is not ok. My high school did a production of WSS and all the Sharks got tans and looked ridiculous!!! I wish I could play Celie in The Color Purple but it's a f-ing pipe dream because I'm white. Would anyone here want to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof with a non-white cast?

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Music Theater International took the link down. Do they also have authority to not let the show be done in black face? It did sound pretty scary. Did all the actors have Irish accents?

Actually, the voices and accents were pretty good.

I'm sure there are plenty more clips of other Ragtime productions that would violate MTI's copyright, but they probably just took notice of this particular one due to it being linked on various boards and Andrew Keenan-Bolger's Twitter.

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Updated On: 1/30/10 at 11:11 PM

Blackface is abhorrent! But let me ask.... If I was putting on a show called Ragtime that called for Black actors and no one black showed up, am I racist for trying to put on the show with white actors in blackface? I don't mean this to be racist at all, but what information do we have about who auditioned? We, as a society, need to stop jumping to conclusions, based on what the news organizations tell us! If it was racial, it was a truly bad call. If they had no black actors to put in, they made do. I couldn't see the clip. It was taken down.

Uh, I can't tell you the number of actors of the white persuasion who have played Othello. I guess it's all a matter of perspective isn't it? And 500 years seems to give us enough perspective to give old William a pass.

The thing about blackface is that we are reminded of how casual the racism was (for some of us) in our own lifetime. I was alive when Selma and Watts happened, and Dr. King's tragic murder. The hatred was visceral in the south in the 40s-60s and other great swaths of the country were drowsing with their eyes closed, hoping it would all just go away.

And for me it's even more of a problem because my parents did it.

My folks were show people all their lives and often brought in as headliners or ringers by civic theater groups or Kiwanis or Elks or Lions Club shows and when I went through their scrapbooks about 20 years ago I found cast photos of minstrel shows they had done in the late 40s and early 50s.

In blackface.

It is shocking to see my mom sitting there with all the other actors, tambourine on the lap, Jolsen makeup and white costume. And nobody thought they were doing anything wrong.

Hell, Fred Astaire and Mickey and Judy did blackface in MGM movies (and MGM practically made Lena Horne do whiteface.)

Needless to say, there are now no photos of my folks "blacking up" (yes, there were photos of that too) in our family closet and were they around, they'd probably feel remorse and shame now.

Our revulsion is a good sign, especially in a country that could produce a man as brilliant as Dr. King as well as men as evil as the ones who killed him, but let's consider the people doing "Ragtime" in Ireland more like anyone mounting "Othello."

Hopefully, fifty years from now we'll be able to look at this situation and see the desire of the performers to tell a story, not how they went about doing it.

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