Equal Opportunity Casting

This past fall, the New College Theater celebrated its grand re-opening with an excellent production of the hilariously absurd play, “Oh Dad, Poor Dad.” Like many other Harvard theatrical productions, however, the triumph of the production was attenuated by the lack of minorities in the cast. Sadly, many audience members and production staff were oblivious to the lack of minority representation.

That Harvard-affiliated and subsidized productions should better represent the diversity of its student body is a no-brainer. That there is little movement toward this goal, and also a history of homogeneity in Harvard’s theater community should be a cause for concern among Harvard’s artists, activists, and students.

Minorities make up nearly half of the Harvard population. Yet, minority actors, directors, producers, and techies are few and far between. In Harvard productions, how often do you find minority actors cast onstage, besides in productions that are staged by cultural groups such as BlackCAST or Bodas de Sangre? Certain ethnicities, particularly Asian and Middle Eastern, are conspicuously missing from Harvard’s thespian community.

To be sure, no one should go to a theatrical production expecting 21 percent of the cast to mirror Harvard College’s Asian population. But it is unfortunate that no one expects to see a variety of actors from different minority groups play roles in productions that were written in an era when Caucasians dominated the theater community.

Admittedly, it is hard to blame a casting director for looking at a quintessentially American role like Willy Loman’s in “Death of a Salesman” and visualizing a white actor because that is how the role is traditionally portrayed. But Loman’s character encompasses a more fundamental struggle to achieve the American Dream that transcends race. Why, then, can’t Loman’s character be played equally well by others who represent one of the many other peoples whose struggle to achieve the American dream is just as, if not more, real?

The American Dream is inherently multicultural and involves people of different ethnicities. But no one in the Harvard theater community openly discusses this dearth of minority involvement.

The problem is that no one questions why we tend to prefer white actors. For example, it is generally presumed that the major roles of Jonathan and Rosalie in “Oh Dad, Poor Dad” will be cast as white. Many people may believe that the only plays worth producing are written for white actors, but this line of thought leaves little room for actors of other ethnicities to find roles that are not a stereotype of their ethnic appearance and/or not minor roles. Furthermore, this line of thought does not justify why white actors were cast in “The Mikado,” in which the characters are supposedly Japanese.

For whatever reason, there is a tendency against “color blind” casting, and we miss key opportunities to expose theater-going audiences to a multicultural experience.

Of course, the idea of “color-blind” casting is a controversial one in the larger theatrical world. August Wilson, the African-American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, argued that ethnic experiences are distinct and unique, and therefore cannot be successfully intertwined onstage. By contrast, Professor of English, Emeritus, theatre critic, and playwright Robert S. Brustein, contended that racial issues could be resolved onstage when he stated that “theater works best as a unifying rather than a segregating medium.” This discussion is missing at Harvard. The theater scene still does not involve nearly the number of minorities that it should.

Why, at a place like Harvard that is exceptionally diverse in many respects, is the group of students involved in theatre so homogeneous?

We must decide not to be limited by our predilections toward actors of one type. By this I mean that we need to open up our minds—and stages—to the idea of minority leads in traditionally white roles. Other solutions include creating ethnically conscious productions, and using race and ethnicity in creative ways. Patrick Stewart famously reversed the colors in his production of “Othello” a few years ago in Washington D.C.

Isn’t theater, after all, supposed to challenge society, the human condition, and traditionally held beliefs through art?

At some point, one wonders when the status quo will change to better represent our increasingly diverse society. It won’t change until we will ourselves to confront the issue. Today, the first day of Common Casting, is a good opportunity to start. There isn’t a better time than now to challenge ourselves to imagine an African American, an Asian, or a Latino in important American roles such as Willy, Rosalie, or Jonathan. Only when we, as actors, directors, casting directors, critics, producers and audience members, open up to the idea of such a possibility will minority actors truly be given an equal chance to perform in these roles.

Jason J. Wong ’10 is a social studies concentrator in Quincy House.