ARTS/CULTURE | LAT: Should whites direct black plays, and vice versa?

[Heidi]

The theater world engages in a racially charged discussion after the 'Joe Turner' controversy.

August 30, 2009

Seated around a large table during the first week of rehearsal for "The Night Is a Child," director Sheldon Epps guides his actors' investigation of a scene between an American woman and the hotel owner she encounters in Brazil. He asks them about the differences between Boston and Brazil, the grayness versus the color, and the contrasts that these first scenes must embody.

With a cast led by JoBeth Williams, Charles Randolph-Wright's "The Night is a Child" opens Friday in its West Coast premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, where Epps is artistic director. The play revolves around the experience of Williams' Bostonian, and that of her family, in the wake of a Columbine-style killing spree by one of her sons.

Key characters in this play are a white woman and her family. The director happens to be black, as does the playwright. Should it matter?

If the answer seems simple, recent dialogue in the theater community suggests otherwise. What Epps has created in this Pasadena rehearsal room is largely the exception. A theater that facilitates artists of any race or ethnicity working on plays about characters of any race or ethnicity is far from the norm.

<snip>

"I don't think there is a simple and satisfactory answer," says black playwright Lynn Nottage, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Ruined." "This conversation is part of our cultural growing pains, and it's one of the many steps in the road to defining our creative and cultural identity."

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[BlooInBloo]

1. Can't wait to see the reverse-racism whining in this thread...

Of course there's a simple an satisfactory answer. Its only flaw is that lots of white folks don't want to hear it. The playwright is just being diplomatic.

[Iris]

2. That question was asked when I was a high school teacher in a predominately black community.

I'm white. Some people thought I shouldn't be teaching black children.

[aquart]

3. What difference does it make?

Well, the difference is that every director brings his/her own eye, vision and experience. The Japanese are doing Shakespeare. Would you really not want to see those versions of the Bard because the director has no Elizabethan white guy experience?

NOTHING AFFECTS THE PLAY. Only this one momentary interpretation. The play comes back unsullied and virginal the minute the stage is struck. Let the director rip out whole pages, the play comes back intact.

Which is why these arguments are so bafflingly laughable. So the black experience is directed thru a white filter for this production. BIG FUCKING DEAL. Will the director catch something never noticed before? Will he make a fool of himself? Will the audience be lost in the playwright's words, plot, and characters? YOU WON'T KNOW TILL YOU TRY IT.

A good playwright writes particularly about the HUMAN experience. The more specific he is, the more universal he becomes. The black experience is the HUMAN experience. So is the white experience. And the yellow one. And the brown one. And the red one.

The HUMAN experience differs in detail only. It is felt by HUMANS and we are all wired to have the same "senses, affections, passions."

How does it hurt anyone to see what we think we already know thru someone else's eyes?

[Jim__]

4. Whites shouldn't direct all black plays, but I think they should direct some black plays.

And, blacks shouldn't direct all white plays, but they should direct some of them.

If a play is racially charged, then a white director and a black director are probably going to bring different perspectives to the play. Seeing the 2 different versions would be interesting. Over time, the different versions of these plays may help to bring us a better understandiong of the issues and how they are perceived.

[skip fox]

5. "Should"? Where's this "should" business coming from?

I've been a writer for 40 years and have even heard professors at a Cross-Cultural Literature conference spouting this crap (No white writer should have an African-American protagonist, etc.) Then Armand Schwerner, David Antin and Dennis Tedlock entered the room. After listening a few minutes, Schwerner told them that they were not thinking the issue through.


No Othello. No Iliad (since Homer jumps into the minds of people on both sides). No Watership Down or Wind in the Willows. No Adventures of Huck Finn, if you extend the rule to class. No Alice in Wonderland, if you extended it to gender or age. Etc.

Let's be smart liberals, not the ones of ridiculous and unthinking restrictions.

This is not to say the question is totally useless. It needs rephrased. If an artist/director/writer is exploiting another culture, gender, age what kind of work will he or she produce? Can a work about another race/culture/gender based on an empathic awareness of the subject be viable, even sometimes affording an outside perspective? Or will this work do damage (even psychological) to another race or culture like minstrel shows? Will the work reinforce stereotypes held by the race/gender/class/species/culture of the artist/director/writer? Is it the business of the artist/director/writer to increase the blindness of his culture and/or to repress another? Even if well written, preformed, or executed, won't a work of such blindness be seriously flawed? So is the real question about the quality of the work in terms(today at least)of its role in society?

[snagglepuss]

11. Excellent post.

:thumbsup:

[snagglepuss]

12. Excellent post.

:thumbsup:

[EFerrari]

19. It's stupid framing from the L.A. Times.

They took a problem of opportunity and made it into a problem of race and ethnicity.

[Pharlo]

6. If the play is good,

I could care less about the color of the playwright, the director, or the theater. If the play is bad, same thing.

Give a good director a well written play, and the color of either is irrelevant. The end product will be worth seeing and worth the time and money spent.

Give a poor director a mediocre play, and I could care less about the color of the author, the playwright, or the theater. I just wasted x amount of dollars and x hours of my life.

Talent transcends skin color.

What's next? A debate about how every play using actors and actresses needs two writers because men can't write a woman's role, and a woman can't write a man's role?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

7. Ok, so where does that put Ang Lee. a brilliant director who's Chinese?

[AngryAmish]

9. He should only direct actors that are green

Oh shit, I saw the Hulk. He shouldn't do that again.

[Retrograde]

16. beat me to it!

That was an unwatchable movie.

[EFerrari]

18. The author of The Remains of The Day is Japanese, not a British butler.

:)

[Deja Q]

8. Depends on the content of the play, I suppose.

I can fathom both sides to the issue.

[HamdenRice]

10. Many people misunderstood August Wilson's point. It was about employment, as much as culture

Wilson felt that most plays in American theater were about whites, so most actors who got a shot at acting were white. Almost all directors were white. Most of the technical staff were white.

He was saying that when he wrote a play about black characters, not only did it give black actors an opportunity, but because of the interpretation of culture and history and accent needed, it could give black directors an opportunity.

That said, when Joe Turner was staged recently in NY, the white director admits that he relied heavily on the black actors to understand much of Wilson's text and the feelings and beliefs of the characters.

I don't really think there are many white directors who could have staged the first version of Wilson's plays and gotten them right (at least not without Wilson there, which was sometimes the case, or without a black dramaturge.)

[Karenina]

13. Makes you wonder if anyone read or UNDERSTOOD the article!

The issues are less about race, per se, than access to opportunity. :banghead:

[HamdenRice]

14. Yup, and the following clearly written paragraphs seem to have gone over lots of heads

<from the article:>

"The problem is, there is no balance," says Randolph-Wright, who appeared in the original Broadway version of "Dreamgirls" before turning to writing and directing. "I don't think by any means that Bart Sher can't direct an August Wilson play or any kind of play. But people of color don't get the reverse opportunity."

Penn says that among SDC rank and file, "most didn't begrudge Bart the opportunity. The conversation was about Wilson having been for so long something African American directors could count on and that there should be more access and opportunities for artists of color." Penn was formerly the managing director of the Intiman Theater in Seattle, where she worked with artistic director Sher. During their years working together there, the Intiman, like Pasadena, successfully mixed it up in terms of assignments, with white directors directing nonwhite works and vice versa.

Yet because opportunities that have traditionally gone to black directors -- such as Wilson's plays -- may now be open to directors of any color is of concern to Randolph-Wright. "There was not one black director on Broadway last season," he notes. "And the frightening thing now is, I'm not even going to get the black project."

Nottage created "Ruined" in collaboration with director Kate Whoriskey, a white woman who has been tapped to succeed Sher at the Intiman. Yet she too sees a matter for concern. "It seriously worries me that young African American directors . . . are not being hired at the same rate as their white counterparts to direct Shanley, O'Neill and Shaw."

[Karenina]

15. The hoops Lou Gossett Jr. jumped through

to win his role in "An Officer and A Gentleman" have mostly been WIPED CLEAN from any reference to the movie. Do you remember that one?

[HamdenRice]

17. I remember the movie

I had heard what he had to go through to get the part.

It is odd that certain black actors have managed to carve out a niche for themselves playing roles that could be a person of any color -- especially Morgan Freeman, who seems to have cornered the market on black presidents, generals and God.

Denzel can play "color blind" authority/law enforcement figures, and Will Smith plays "action figures" of no particular race.

That was kind of a rare achievement for Gosset.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Mr Epps and Mr Randolph-Wright speak for me in the article

and do so very well, so let me take a moment to speak for them and say that if you live in Los Angeles, you should run to buy tickets for "The Night is a Child". Randolph-Wright is a great talent. Epps is also the real stuff. JoBeth serves it up always. Go forth and buy tickets now. Today.

[Toucano]

21. What an absurd question.

Some people will never be happy until the world is completely segregated.

Any distinction that exists is imaginary.

[chrisa]

22. Of course.

Anybody should be able to direct any play they want.