Theatre and the Face of History
"Color Blind" and "Color Conscious" Casting
This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with the talented and soulful Clifton Duncan for his highly successful podcast. Clifton is a Black actor who, like me, is classically trained, and has huge love and passion for theatre. We also share another quality: we have strong opinions about the work, and the way issues of race are currently being explored on Broadway, in films and television. Part of our conversation centered around issues of non-traditional casting, and with the permission of G&E Productions, I thought I’d share the following essay of mine, which was first published in January of this year in their blog, G&E in Motion.
Stay tuned for info on when and where you can enjoy my appearance on the Clifton Duncan Podcast!
I’m a history geek. I’m also a lifelong theatre person. I think, as a child, dressing up and pretending to be people from the past was the closest I could get to actual time travel. In my twenties, I had an eight year career as a female impersonator, performing three solo shows as Marlene Dietrich.
Channeling a great historical icon is a heady experience, and a responsibility. My dream role of John Adams in 1776 brought out the history geek in full force—I even did my own video blog, sharing my research, from a trip to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to a tour of the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where I held letters written by Adams himself.
1776 is, as I write this, completing a run on Broadway. This second ever Broadway revival of the musical was given a radical new life—all roles played by a racially diverse, cis- and trans- female and gender nonbinary cast. It’s a powerful commentary on the piece, on the Founding Fathers and our own perceptions of our American history.
Did I love it? No. But the show, as mentioned, was a dream of mine and it was a dream experience for me. That said, the theatre is an interpretive art form! Great pieces can support all kinds of visions and concepts. Particularly when it comes to diversity in casting—and today, we’re seeing a huge cultural movement giving artists of color, in particular, great opportunities to bring new life to the traditional repertoire.
Thanks to pioneers like Joseph Papp, the classical repertoire has, for decades, been home to actors of all races and ethnicities. As a classically trained actor, I’ve been proud to work in such diverse companies performing Shakespeare. The plays of the Bard unfold against epic tapestries of interwoven fact and fiction—his histories, in particular, play fast and loose with the truth in service to the drama. These vast plays, hundreds of years in performance and interpretation, cry out to inhabit a world as diverse and rich as our own.
From an artistic standpoint, it would be unfortunate not to acknowledge that the casting of an actor of color in a role traditionally performed by white artists, can have powerful impact on storytelling, symbolism and significance in interpretation. One of the best recent examples in the classical sphere is The Hollow Crown series from England.
This series incorporates the “Wars of the Roses” cycle of the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III. I've acted in the entire thrilling cycle twice myself. In The Hollow Crown, the most significant character portrayed by an actor of color is Margaret of Anjou, the French Queen of King Henry VI, referred to by Shakespeare as “the she-wolf of France.” The character is portrayed by accomplished Black actress Sophie Okonedo.
Margaret comes into the action of the play an outsider—in Shakespeare’s time, one commonly regarded as a villain. Okonedo’s race makes her Margaret more alien; we see her as the outsider/interloper she is. Now, a particular kind of person might argue that making a space in the series for one lead actor of color, then having her play a wicked villain, could be considered racist. Hmm.
Well, I doubt that Ms. Okonedo would have taken on the role (a tour-de-force part, one of the best in the canon, in which she was brilliant) if she felt that the director and production intended to send a racist message. I surmise, rather, that she used the feelings of the outsider to build up in her imagination the resentments, the rage and the vengeful energy that the character of Margaret requires. Her casting was a potent choice. Was the choice “color blind” or “color conscious?” From a strictly historical perspective, it’s color blind—Margaret of Anjou wasn’t Black. From an artistic standpoint, I think this choice was color conscious in the best sense. It illuminates the play by bringing new dimensions to the character.
One of the most successful ways of enacting history in theatre, especially in the musical theatre, is the use of a framing device. For example, in SIX, the framing device is a rock concert. Each of the wives of Henry VIII steps forward to introduce herself to us and we are invited/seduced/led into a rock concert version of the world of Tudor England. Each of the wives is an icon, and the cast is racially diverse. In a way, SIX utilizes quite a classical device. It’s representational. Like early Elizabethan plays in which an actor enters, and declares to the audience what character he represents.
Where it gets tricky is when the audience is meant to accept the anachronistic racial identity of the actor playing an historical character without being “taken out" or distanced from the story. This is not always successful. Audiences sometimes make that imaginative leap, or suspension of disbelief. Some don’t. The live, performative experience of theatre can push these boundaries often more successfully than film. I speculate that we want to lose ourselves in a film. Especially historical films—I, at least, enjoy feeling like I’ve time traveled. As always, it’s a matter of taste, yes? One of the best things about art.
When I first moved to New York City in the early ‘90s to pursue my acting career, I took part time work as an usher at Lincoln Center Theater, in order to see as much as I could for free. At that time, the highly touted new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel was playing. This was the production that introduced the world to an artist who would become one of our most luminous stars: Audra McDonald.
McDonald had just graduated from Juilliard, and was cast in the supporting but featured role of Carrie Pipperidge. I saw the show from my perch in the back of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre twelve times, and I can tell you: each and every time Ms. McDonald started to sing “Mr. Snow,” the audience went utterly silent and rapt; it was as if we’d been electrified. Audra was simply radiant, and her voice was the kind of voice that changes everything—like Betty Buckley and Elaine Paige had before her.
Did we notice that Ms. McDonald was Black? Sure. Was it notable, different, perhaps surprising, to see a Black actress in the role? Sure. Is that a bad thing? Did Audra play Carrie like a 1990s version of a Black woman (whatever that might have been)? No. She played Carrie as a woman in Maine in the 19th century, as the play called for. Audra’s race wasn’t a distraction; it was simply one aspect of who she was. And because the actress was Black, Carrie was Black.
I saw it as simultaneously that simple, and that meaningful. My eyes were opened to a more racially diverse imaginary world that this classic musical could now inhabit. Even if, historically, a young Black woman of that time might not have been able to live the circumstances Carrie Pipperidge lived, the director, Ms. McDonald and the production invited us to take the imaginative leap. I must also mention that the great opera singer, Shirley Verrett, played Nettie Fowler, and her rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was for the ages.
The most magnificent example of a traditionally white play being brilliantly reinterpreted for a Black cast that I can think of? The Broadway revival (and subsequent film) of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. The play is famous primarily for Geraldine Page’s Oscar winning performance in the feature film; her final film performance.
In the Broadway revival, Cicely Tyson took on the role of Mrs. Watts, supported by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Vanessa Williams as her son and daughter-in-law. The story of an old lady running away to see her country home once more before she dies translated—without a word of dialogue altered—vibrantly as a story of the Black experience. Small touches—the “Colored Waiting Room” sign at the bus depot—brought layers of meaning to the piece: what would the lives of these characters be as people of color? Brilliant.
At the end of the day, for me, and I think for good theatre in general: the play’s the thing. How do we honor the writer and their intent? How do we expand our audience’s ideas and challenge preconceptions while still preserving that which has come to be loved and cherished in our theatre repertoire and our American story? Thank goodness, we have the theatre—and brave, talented artists ready to try.
Really envious of you getting to hold the John Adams letters as he is a particular hero of mine. 1776 is one of my faves -- helped me get through AP US History too many years ago. (I suspect we are of a similar age).
And yes completely to colour blind casting. It is the quality of the actor which counts and makes you believe in the character.