This is what white people do when people of color even dare to ask the questions. My closest brush with a punch in the face happened in third grade during a game of dodgeball.
A big, bullying boy took aim at me with a stoutly inflated rubber sphere the size of my head. It hit my face as roundly as a perfectly flipped pancake slaps the griddle. The impact flamed inside my nose and tears burned my eyes. So if we’re going to talk about punches, for the record, that’s my frame of reference. I thought of it when I read Philly theater artist Kevin Glaccum’s response to an open letter addressed to Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) last week. “Infuriated and exhausted” The original April 9 open letter, signed by 20 Philadelphia theater artists (in disciplines from design and acting to playwriting and producing), points out that after PTC’s promising return to the scene with plays by Lynn Nottage, Marsha Norman, and Christina Anderson, the theater’s public promise to boost inclusion on its stage has fallen flat with the announcement of its 45th anniversary season.
Bristling. Hungarian State Opera Asks White Performers to Claim Black Identity for Porgy and Bess. This past week, the Hungarian State Opera gave three performances of Porgy and Bess, with three more slated for the coming week.
Casting of 'Kinky Boots' in Australia Reveals Issues with Character Descriptions — OnStage Blog. Next month, CLOC Musical Theatre in Victoria, Australia will be performing their production of Kinky Boots.
This past week they revealed come of the cast photos. Needless to say, there was some surprise over their choice for Lola/Simon. Former ACT faculty member sues theater company for racial discrimination. The Legacy of Blackface Ralph Northam Didn't Understand. To Keeler, the racial aspect of the performances seems incidental; his article makes almost no mention of the nature of the characters he played or his own understanding of blackness.
Instead, he dwells on his development as an entertainer, on the excitement of finding a place in a troupe and traveling the country, and on his eventual disenchantment with playing to an audience. When the social and political dynamics of race do enter into his story, it comes off as more inadvertent than anything. He describes, for instance, a black man named Ephraim who began traveling with and serving the troupe, although he was repeatedly told that it couldn’t pay him for his labor, and who became an object of ridicule before being jailed for an altercation with an Irishman that he didn’t initiate. When The Show Must Not Go On: Chicago Artists Respond to Controversial Casting Notice. On Wednesday, September 19, several Chicago artists received an invitation to audition for a play called Angel by playwright Henry Naylor.
Angel is the second production in a series called “Arabian Nightmares”. The invitation was sent by local Chicago theatre Akvavit on behalf of Urbanite Theatre, located in Sarasota, Florida. Angel is inspired by fake news tweeted by the English-language news outlet Slemani Times. The tweet contained a photo of a woman named Rehana who was rumored to have killed as many as 100 members of ISIS. It has since been proven that though the photo, taken by Swedish journalist Carl Drott, was of a real woman, she was not Rehana, or “The Angel of Kobane” as they claimed.
The production, which was slated for a December 2018-February 2019 run at Urbanite Theatre in Florida, is not only written by white British playwright Henry Naylor, but was programmed to be directed by white director Kirsten Franklin. First when I got the audition notice, I thought, “Cool! White Actress Banned from Singing "And I Am Telling You" Because She's Not Black...No Seriously — OnStage Blog. There are certain musical numbers that I consider "PhD's in Singing".
Songs like "Soliloquy" or "Glitter and be Gay", to master them is an accomplishment reserved for truly talented singers. Another song in this repertoire would be "And I Am Telling You" from Dreamgirls. Many have tried to master it, very few have succeeded. Nevertheless, it's one of the most popular show tunes performed in concerts and cabarets today. Ruth Negga to star as Hamlet in Gate Theatre production.
Part of the Problem: Porchlight’s Casting of ‘In the Heights’ Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson.
Earlier this week Porchlight Music Theatre, a mainstay in the Chicago theater community, announced the casting for their much anticipated production of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s “In the Heights.” Aside from the problematic handling of this announcement by The Chicago Sun-Times — Hedy Weiss described the cast as “unusually ‘authentic’” — the casting statement was bound to cause an uproar: Porchlight cast a white actor in the central role of Usnavi — a Bodega owner who received his name from the first words his family saw coming to New York from the Dominican Republic (US Navy).
As expected, the roaring has begun. It’s an interesting time to be a person of color in the United States. On the one hand actors of color won Tony Awards last year in all four Best Performance in a Musical categories, and Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical-turned-cultural juggernaut “Hamilton” has seen unprecedented and epic success. Authorial intent wins. Yeah, I’m a streetlight! Whitewash ‘In the Heights’? Chicago, You Can Do Better.
Samantha Pauly with the cast of "Evita" at the Marriott Theatre.
(Photo by Liz Lauren)
'In the Heights': Protests aside, Porchlight hasn't found its Washington Heights. A white actor is cast in 'In the Heights,' setting off a complicated debate. Who has the right to tell whose story?
Enough people to fill every seat at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater gathered Tuesday night for more than three hours to debate that very question during "The Color Game: Whitewashing Latinx Stories," a town hall hosted by Victory Gardens and the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists Chicago. (Latinx is a gender neutral alternative to Latino and Latina.) Shakespeare, universal? No, it's cultural imperialism. Recently I went to the theatre, as I am wont to do.
The acting was impeccable, the direction insightful, the costumes fun, the music accomplished and the set damn sexy. Only the writing lacked salt. Here's a summary: the long lost twin of a local gent shows up in town. The identical brothers run around being mistaken for each other for a few hours. Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but doesn't.