Plano Children's Theater Does All-White Version of Hairspray

[Bolo Boffin]

Rarely has the Fail Train sped so quickly to its destination:

You need two things when you do the musical Hairspray: a fat girl to play the lead character, Tracy Turnblad, and a bunch of African-American kids to play the African-American kids. There are about a dozen roles for young black performers in this show, plus one for a big black lady who closes out the first act with the showstopper "Big, Blonde and Beautiful."

So out at Plano Children's Theatre right now, they're doing Hairspray without those things. The girl playing Tracy is wearing padding to puff up. (This isn't a role like Cyrano where you can slap a big nose on a pretty face and get away with it. Tracy is supposed to be chubbo to start with.) And there are no black kiddos in the show. None. The roles of Seaweed, Mother Maybelle and all the other black Baltimoreans are being played by kids so white they make the Cleavers look ethnic.

...At intermission, I spoke to Darrell Rodenbaugh, president of PCT's board of directors. My question was "Why do you have white kids playing black characters?" "Well, should we deny these kids the opportunity to do a fun show?" he said. "We'd paid for the rights to the show six months in advance. We couldn't cancel it."

...Rodenbaugh said they might do To Kill a Mockingbird with an all-white cast or Othello or The Wiz (three shows I mentioned to him that feature African-Americans either in prominent roles or as a majority of the cast). He said he saw nothing offensive or amiss about having no black actors in a show about racial segregation. I had to ask: Doesn't having an all-white cast ignore the core message of Hairspray - you know, the message about how the black kids weren't allowed to be on a show with white kids until brave little Tracy took a stand?

You'll need to click over for the answer, something involving not bowing down to "political correctness." Absolutely insane.

And it's not a "forget about it, Jake, it's Texas" thing. There are about five other high school productions of Hairspray going on in the area, and they all managed to cast it correctly. At least PCT got the memo that blackface = bad, possibly because there's a $13,000 fine per infraction in the contract from the rightsholder.

It's so nutty I want John Waters to make a movie about this whole thing.

[FredStembottom]

1. I wonder if it might all be accidentally revealing?

If none of the lines were changed, having white kids suddenly the object of racism might get some people thinking?

(Not that thinking is in fashion anymore.)

Kind of like those projects where all the blue-eyed kids at a school become designated inferiors for a week.

I dunno......

[Lionessa]

2. I lived with my aunt and uncle in Plano a couple years back in the day,

and now that it's being mentioned, I don't recall ever seeing a black person, much less child in Plano. Back then it was like 80% EDS employees, 1979-1983.

I sincerely hope this isn't the reason, a community shouldn't have managed to stay that vanilla for this long. Outside of that, it was definitely a community that had a real attitude problem. I much preferred living in Carrollton, even Euless, to Plano, which was just so haughty.

[OriginalGeek]

5. I lived in Garland around that same time

(and also Duncanville, Irving and Arlington for a bit)

and yeah, it didn't even raise an eyebrow that they would think this is perfectly fine.

I miss a lot of things about Texas but pervasive racist attitudes is not one of them.

[LynneSin]

3. I heard next year they're going to do the 'Vagina Monologues' with all men

[HopeHoops]

4. That would be interesting!

[LynneSin]

8. You want to audition?

[HopeHoops]

9. I have a lot of experience in that area.

[rainbow4321]

6. "$250 a pop for their kids to be on the stage"

Welcome to Plano....

As a Plano resident (20+ yrs) this doesn't surprise me. The theater guy's reasoning (too few AA's in Plano) makes him look like an ass. My first question for him would be "so do you guys hand out any scholarships/grants/financial aid to families who cannot afford that 250 bucks?" and "how much effort have you put forth in EAST Plano schools/community to recruit kids since you say that you knew SIX months ago that you were going to do this play?" If I remember correctly, the PCT group is a pretty small clique of upper middle to high income parents and kids, not a whole lot of community outreach on their part to the general community, never mind over in East Plano (higher number of minorities).



My one daughter (now 25 y/o) was heavily involved in Plano East's high school's theater club/community (worked back stage) and they had a pretty diverse group of kids on and behind stage. So for him to use that as an excuse is lame. The kids interested in theater are THERE, it's just PCT didn't bother to do any outreach. Cant upset their little darlings in that PCT clique.

It's not unique to just our kids' theater community, unfortunately. Very little if any diversity there, either. And not because there were "so few" minorities here.
My daughter did volleyball for years at her school and community center (free or little cost) and then decided to do club volleyball at the urging of her father (my ex-husband)...OMG, cha-ching, cha-ching. JUST to "try out" in front of the coaches you had to pay a fee, then IF you were accepted, you paid more $, and then there were endless travel costs because they travelled around the state and to surrounding states (gas, food, hotel rooms, plane tickets at times). In our case, the team sucked and lost alot because while each girl did well on an individual basis, they never could gel as a team because of some girls' egos and temper tantrums...the coach would try to reign them in and then the parents of the girls who were being reigned in threw a fit because their "angels" were pouting...and the coach was forced to step down. So, yeah, here the rest of us were paying, paying, and still paying to put up with that shitty attitude. It was pretty depressing and my daughter lost interest in the sport afterwards

[Bolo Boffin]

7. The other shoe drops!

Thanks for that, rainbow4321. The picture of all the "professional" head shots for the young actors was something that rankled me as well. Pretty sure the sessions and prints weren't included in that $250 per actor...