Minority actors get big break with non-traditional roles

Monday, September 28, 1998

Minority actors get big break with non-traditional roles

THEATER: Casting takes turn for the multicultural as people of
color play ‘white’ lead roles

By Cheryl Klein

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

When Luis Alfaro was growing up in Los Angeles’ Pico-Union
district, he joined his classmates in complaining about an enforced
dose of refinement via a nighttime field trip to the Inner City
Cultural Center.

But the tragic verse of William Shakespeare’s "Othello" quickly
silenced him as the teen saw parallels to his own life unfolding on
stage. Perhaps Alfaro already possessed a strong, if dormant,
theatrical aptitude; perhaps that evening’s performance was
particularly vibrant. But undoubtedly, the fact that the cast was
African American also had a hand in speaking to an adolescent who,
like many people of color, had thus far been taught that white skin
was a prerequisite for good jobs and great literature.

"(‘Othello’) was all about race, and it was all about class,"
Alfaro remembered. "My introduction to theater was Shakespeare, and
it seemed like it was meant for me in some ways."

Today Alfaro heads the Mark Taper Forum’s Latino Theater
Initiative and has plenty to say about the phenomenon that peaked
his inner thespian. Known as "non-traditional casting," racial
discrepancies between actor and character began to stir in 1959
when the Chorus Equity union issued a statement on "Integration and
Employment of Negro Performers" but became commonplace on stage
during the late 1980s.

The movement serves several purposes: It presents a fictional
world that is either color-blind or creative in its statements
about race, and it grants quality work to actors who find "black
roles," "Asian roles" or "Latino roles" patronizing or
non-existent.

But even before the practice has truly taken hold, controversies
have revealed the theater to be anything but blind to race. And as
legislators and college campuses quarrel over affirmative action,
the arguable artistic equivalent finds itself caught in the turmoil
and continually evolving.

On one side, there’s Bill Rauch’s theory: "I feel really
passionately that any actor can play any role." His Cornerstone
Theater Company boldly carries out this declaration, casting across
both race and gender lines. A recent production saw an Asian woman
as Medea, an Indian man as Macbeth and a white man as his wife.

Rauch points out that the director’s position as deity to the
play world allows him or her to make a flood of subtle statements
that the audience often takes for granted.

"To do a play with an all-white cast is an active choice," Rauch
said. "It’s not like there’s a default that’s ‘normal’ and then you
do other things."

Not taking white leads as a given seems to have made the most
strides in the realm of musicals. Cases in point include
"Chicago’s" Velma Kelly, originated by a Latina actress (Chita
Rivera) and played recently by both white (Bebe Neuwirth) and
African American (Jasmine Guy and Khandi Alexander) performers;
Diahann Carroll diva-ed it up for "Sunset Boulevard"; Filipina
actress Lea Solanga played the pining French peasant Eponine in
"Les Miserables."

"When you’re dealing with musicals, you’re dealing with an
unrealistic scenario to begin with because none of us have choruses
or musicians following us around in our daily lives," said Willie
Boston, equal employment opportunity business representative for
Actors Equity. This sense of altered reality, he says, draws
audiences into a metaphorical domain. If a two-minute love song can
replace months of un-dramatic dating, why can’t an African American
woman have a white son?

But most instances of non-traditional casting have involved
actors of color playing white characters. This in itself is not
immune to criticism. In 1996, premiere African American playwright
August Wilson scolded black actors for taking classical parts at
the expense of complex, three-dimensional African American roles
like the ones he wrote.

Boston, however, points out, "I think there are plenty of actors
to go around for both."

The subject gets touchier when, as in 1991’s "Miss Saigon," a
white actor plays a minority character. When Jonathan Pryce took
the stage as the Vietnamese "engineer," members of the Asian
American community balked. Implicit in the protests that ensued was
that there was hardly an abundance of Asian men being cast as the
Phantom or Jean Valjean or Juan Peron.

Rauch echoes these frustrations but cautions, "If you start
making rules about who can play what, then you are on dangerous
ground."

Tim Dang, artistic director of Los Angeles’ East West Players,
was one of many who was dismayed, but the years since have revealed
a positive aftermath.

"That was the first time the Asian Pacific political voice
really spoke out on that matter," Dang said. "That was a real
turning point for a lot of Asian Pacifics including myself and East
West Players in terms of really empowering yourself to say, ‘Well,
if the mainstream doesn’t want us to be a part of the mainstream,
we can run a parallel track with them.’ Without being ghettoized in
terms of, ‘This is "Asian theater."’"

With a recently expanded venue and three decades of experience,
East West can readily claim mainstream status. The company is also
leading the way in what is arguably the next phase in
non-traditional casting. To begin with, East West productions
integrate the 65 Asian nationalities that cluster in the city.

"If we do a play that has a Filipino theme, we’re not going to
cast just Filipinos," Dang said. "It’s the same way if you take
film and there is a Caucasian actor, you never think of that actor
as specifically Swedish or Irish or German."

And while the company, the brainchild of eight actors
disillusioned with Hollywood’s lack of faith in Asian talent,
started out with the classics, the focus has shifted considerably
as more Asian American writers pen voices for their
communities.

Originally, Dang said that the founders rationalized, "We can do
Shakespeare, we can do Checkov … If we show Hollywood, if we show
the greater mainstream community we can act, there will be more
roles available to us."

The group continues to stage classic western works, such as last
year’s well-received rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s "Sweeney
Todd," but limits such exploits to one per season so as not to
crowd the growing library of Asian Pacific works.

Alfaro’s lab also funds and encourages original works, and he
laments, "We suffer, like every theater, in a limited belief in
non-traditional casting. Our theater doesn’t practice it, and I
wish they would."

Yet, Alfaro takes an active role in the movement, encouraging
other artists at the Taper’s mainstage and five offshoots to think
creatively when casting shows. A few years ago, the theater was on
a mission to find leads for 17th-century French playwright
Marivaux’s "Changes of Heart."

"They were bringing in a certain kind of actor who they thought
could do classical theater. So we suggested that they bring in
these people of color," Alfaro recalled. "It was a big surprise to
our casting director. I don’t think he was a racist or whatever –
he just didn’t know these people."

The show ended up starring an African American and a Cuban
American actress, both classically trained. But beyond merely
plugging people of color into Romeos and Juliets, non-traditional
casting seems to be taking a turn for the multicultural – reworking
texts, combining influences and teaming diverse groups of
artists.

Cases in point include last fall’s "Zulu Macbeth" at the Wiltern
Theatre, nearly everything Cornerstone has ever done, and one of
Alfaro’s recent writing ventures performed in Chicago. Titled
"Straight as a Line," the play was set in Britain, penned by a
Latino author, directed by a Jewish woman and starred African
American actors. It’s the sort of boundary-defying bear hug that
not only hints that we can indeed all just get along but also
tingles the skin with theatrical possibilities for the future.

Meanwhile, Hollywood appears to be dawdling in the mass-market
sidelines, bogged down by financial concerns, time limits and test
audiences.

And when production companies are trying to sell a product, be
it movie tickets or toothpaste, audience is everything. Dang cites
Jet Lee ("Lethal Weapon 4"), saying, "The producers know they can
hit the Chinese market because Chinese martial artists are really
big in Hong Kong, so they specifically cast someone who was Chinese
in that role."

But the global market has its upside. If Hollywood does venture
into the non-traditional, far more people will see it. And some
movies, especially those with theatrical roots, are making
tentative gestures in that direction. "William Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet" featured a rainbow of players duking it out in Miami;
"Much Ado About Nothing" saw Kenneth Branagh and Denzel Washington
as brothers; and the recent TV version of Rodgers’s and
Hammerstein’s "Cinderella" had an African American heroine (Brandy)
fall in love with an Asian heir (Paolo Montalban) to his white
parents’ throne.

But look to Los Angeles – not Hollywood, but Los Angeles – for
the next chapter in the increasingly non-traditional,
non-traditional saga.

"We have the largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico,
the largest population of Chinese outside of China, Koreans outside
of Korea," Alfaro pointed out. "We should welcome that. All that
stuff butting up against one another – it’s only complicating
things in the best way that theater complicates people’s
lives."

Warner Bros.

Denzel Washington (above) and Kenneth Branagh (top left) were
cast as brothers in the film version of "Much Ado About
Nothing."

Photo courtesy of Lori Dunn

Khandi Alexander stars in "Chicago" as Velma Kelly, a role made
famous by Latina actress Chita Rivera.

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