No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theater

Introduction

Introduction Non-Traditional Casting is the casting of ethnic, female or disabled actors in roles where race, ethnicity, gender or physical capability are not necessary to the characters’ or play’s development. —beyond tradition: first national symposium on non-traditional casting I hate that term non-traditional casting. I believe that the kind of casting we are talking about is traditional casting. Casting that comes out of the great traditions of this country. I would propose a change of terms. I would prefer to isolate what 90 percent of our theatres are doing as non-traditional casting since it does not represent what America is—the American people. —anna deavere smith Over the past several years, there has been a sustained and productive convergence of concepts and concerns in the ‹elds of theater and performance studies, American ethnic studies, and national and transnational studies. Scholars working in these areas have conducted complex investigations into the nature and forms of racial, ethnic, and national identity and difference, moving away from traditional conceptual and geographical boundaries. At the same time, theater practitioners , particularly artists from internal racial or ethnic minority groups, have explored and deconstructed conventional notions of identity through new approaches to playwriting, intercultural performance, and performance art. Performance artists, in particular, have taken advantage of the properties of embodiment to revise concepts of human identity.1 One strategy for reforming visions of identity, however, often has been highly controversial in practice but remains relatively lightly explored from a theoretical perspective. This strategy (or more accurately, these strategies) is the rich array of casting practices—designated as multiracial , multiethnic, multicultural, color-blind, diverse, innovative, experimental , or nontraditional—that have burgeoned in the United States since the 1960s.2 Unlike forms of performance that rely on the creation of new cultural institutions and original works to engage with long-standing notions of and attitudes toward race and ethnicity, these (re)visionary casting practices, developed more or less systematically during the second half of the twentieth century, issue their challenge to Eurocentric conceptions of American society and culture from inside the very institutions dedicated to preserving a European-American dramatic heritage. This interior positioning is the source of both the potency of casting against tradition and the acrimonious controversies that have often surrounded these practices. The most enthusiastic supporters of what has commonly been called nontraditional casting see these practices as a form both of social action and of artistic exploration. Such advocates are committed to a larger social mission of inclusion and stimulated by the interpretive possibilities opened up when the bodies, minds, and experiences of a new set of actors are brought together with roles that have been performed hundreds or thousands of times since they were originally written. Such innovations in casting solicit original acts of imagination not only on the part of the directors and actors engaged in creating the productions but of the audience members who see them as well. Those ardently opposed to revising established practices are dismayed, even outraged, by the disregard for theatrical tradition and historical “authenticity.” In general, opponents regard nontraditional casting as attempts “to graft a social agenda onto the face of artistic enterprise.”3 Resistant spectators are unsettled rather than stimulated by the violations of expectations that innovative casting entails. They are distracted by racially mixed casts, ‹nding the results implausible if not outright offensive. Others just don’t see the point. Given the fact that these new forms of casting were designed to dislodge established modes of perceiving and patterns of thinking, it is not surprising that their initiation has been accompanied by disagreement, both acrimonious and productive. Since the 1960s, these differences have been played out on a daily basis in theaters around the country as productions are planned, directors chosen, casting decisions made, and 2 • no safe spaces performances staged, seen, and reviewed. On several occasions, landmark cases or decisions created highly publicized controversies that brought national attention to casting issues. These include Samuel Beckett ’s opposition to Joanne Akalaitis’s 1984 staging of Endgame for the American Repertory Theater, the 1990 Miss Saigon controversy over the casting of a Caucasian actor in a Eurasian role, an attempt made in 1992 by Samuel French publishers to prohibit gender-switching in plays they represented by attaching a rider to their standard licensing agreement, and ‹nally the exchanges between August Wilson and Robert Brustein that took place over several...