There are times when the race of an actor matters. I previously mentioned "Hairspray". "Hairspray" deals with racial segregation. If skin color is ignored in the casting, the entire theme is lost. At the other end of the spectrum, there are many plays where skin color plays no part at all. The ethnicity of the characters isn't mentioned and the setting is fairly general. One example of this would be the play "Deathtrap".
The obstacle, in this situation, is when the people casting the play envision the character as white, and will not look past that.
This happened with Theatre Company D. I had a class on the day of auditions, so I came in early. One other person, who is white, also came early. We walked in, filled out the forms, and handed in our acting resume. The director of the play knew nothing about us -- he hadn't worked with either of us and he didn't even look at our acting resumes. He pointed to the other person and said "I want you to read for Sidney". He pointed to me and said "I want you to read for the lawyer."
I don't even remember a lawyer in the play.
A friend who is also a director said that I should have told the director that I wanted to read for Sidney. Personally, I don't see the point. He had made a determination at that point that I was not right for the part of Sidney. Keep in mind that this was just an audition: we could have both read for Sidney and it would have been fine! But he didn't say that he wanted me to read for Sidney AND the lawyer. He didn't want me to read for Sidney at all. He made up his mind, and while I think I'm "good" I don't think I'm so good that I could get a director to look past his biases.
Oh, by the way, I wasn't offered the part of the lawyer.
This was such a bad experience for me that I refused to go back to Theatre Company D for any subsequent auditions. Just recently, though, I saw photos for their latest production, "The Beaux Stratagem". I thought about going to this audition, but I saw it was set in the 17th century. If they wouldn't cast me for a modern day play, they sure as heck wouldn't cast me for something set in the 17th century!
Well . . . surprise, surprise! In the photos I saw an african american actor! He doesn't have a big part, but he's in the play and in the publicity photos!
With Theatre Company B, color blind casting is their "policy" for all of their shows. With Theatre Company C, I auditioned twice with different directors and my skin color was most certainly a heavy strike against me: whether they would admit this or not, racial bias was certainly "policy" for them. With Theatre Company D, it would appear, this sort of thing was left to the director. So . . . I'm going to have to give Theatre Company D another chance.
Of course, they did just piss me off. I showed a friend of mine a 10-minute play. She, it turned out, was on the committee evaluating plays for an evening of one-acts at Theatre Company D. She submitted my play for consideration. It wasn't chosen, which is fine. But . . . they didn't have the decency to tell me it hadn't been chosen! In fact, I haven't heard anything at all from them.
No comments:
Post a Comment