For readers who may not follow theatre closely, or see its immediate relevance to opera, let me recount some instances of race-related casting controversies. (If you are unfamiliar with the plays involved, I urge you to make their acquaintance.) In one, the estate of Edward Albee refused permission to a small regional company to cast a young black actor in the role of Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The company had already cast the actor, but the estate’s representatives got wind of it and withdrew permission for the production. In another, the estate of Arthur Miller, with Miller’s daughter Rebecca as spokesperson, similarly disallowed (this time before the fact) the casting of actors of color as Ann and George (sister and brother) in a Broadway production of All My Sons. The production’s original director, Gregory Mosher, resigned over the disagreement. These sound like racist decisions, and were denounced as such by some. One’s sympathies are with the young Virginia Woolf actor who thought he had a nice role in a great play, only to be barred from it through no fault of his own. Legally, though, the estates of both authors were entirely within their rights—playwrights have control over matters of text, production, and casting if they choose to exercise it (many don’t), and their estates have such control so long as the material is under copyright.
But legality aside, what are the artistic merits of these cases? Put briefly, the estates’ refusals were based on the argument that in the plays’ given circumstances of time, place, and social situation, it would not have been possible for any of these characters to be black without that fact being, at the least, a prominent subject of discussion, if not the play’s central plot element. That would be a different play. While none of these roles is a lead, all are important enough to affect the overall credibility of a production—especially so, I would think, in the case of All My Sons, a foremost example of American realism, set in an Ohio suburb in 1947 and concerned with homefront events during WW2. I find these considerations compelling.(I)
Footnotes
| ↑I | Both the Albee and Miller estates have allowed “colorblind” casting in other productions of these plays, and before his death Albee did some rewrites to accommodate an actor of color in the part of Nick. My guess is that the real trouble in that instance was the company’s failure to inquire of the estate in advance, which it would have been well advised to do, especially in view of Albee’s well-known close proprietorship of his work. The All My Sons production eventually went ahead with an actor of color as George, but a white actress as his sister, which takes us from the improbable to the ridiculous. A Vancouver-based actor and writer of color, Omari Newton, has written a thoughtful and entertaining article about his discomfort while watching this production. He admired it, but found the unlikelihood a constant distraction. He would apparently have been comfortable with a brother/sister couple of color (at least that removes the miscegenation obstacle, and puzzlement over the ethnicity of the father). At risk of being seen as even more uptight than Edward Albee, I think the next-door neighbors in Miller’s nice Ohio suburb, c. 1947, have to be white, and that all the rationalizations are nonsense—”It’s the 21st Century, Miller would have approved . . .” No, he wouldn’t. He would have written a different play. |
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