Music Theater in Black and White
2009; Routledge; Volume: 65; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoTHE SPRING MUSICAL IS PART of nearly every high school events calendar in America. One of the most challenging aspects for those of us directing is selecting the right show for our particular group of students. You cannot perform Annie Get Your Gun, for instance, if you do not have a strong female lead to carry the show. You also do not stage West Side Story if you do not have strong men (who also can dance). I faced an even greater challenge, however, as the person responsible for the annual musical in a predominantly African-American school where I was the choral director. Although there are great black musicals and musicals featuring black characters, most American music theater features white characters. Should I produce only black shows? Was there a way to put on shows that historically were white with a black cast and be true to the show's intentions? I found the answer in both performing black shows (The Wiz, Purlie, Once On This Island) and putting a black cast in a traditionally white musical (Guys & Dolls, Grease, Footloose). Dealing with race in casting a musical can be a sticky business. Should we cast in a completely color blind way, that is, cast the best person for the part regardless of skin color? On the surface that sounds like a wonderful idea, except some musicals are about racial tension, and showing that conflict with characters of different races is crucial. One of the reasons I never attempted to direct Ragtime at my school is because with a homogeneous student population, there was no way to show the obvious racial divisions necessary to the plot. I recently saw a production of Aida run by a theater company in southern New Jersey. The young woman playing Aida was white (the director put her in micro-braids in an attempt to show ethnicity), even though they had a better singer who was black playing the part of Nehepka. A woman near me in the audience was shaking her head saying, didn't they cast the black girl with the great voice as Aida? If an audience knows anything about Aida, it expects to see a racial difference between the Egyptian Radames and the Nubian Aida. For my first show, I chose Once On This Island. This jewel from Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime, Lucky Stiffs) is a Caribbean version of The Little Mermaid (the version by Hans Christian Andersen, not the Disney adaptation where everyone lives happily ever after). This seemed like a choice for my first year. The book is not excessively long, the music was easy and accessible, and I certainly had the cast. What I underestimated, however, was that there are some very serious issues to explore in OOTI. The foremost conflict in this musical is racism between dark-skinned and light-skinned black people. How was I, as a white director, going to explore this issue honestly with my students? Additionally, I had to base casting decisions somewhat on the skin color of the actors. Ouch! I had ended up in the fire on my very first attempt. My students came through in ways I could only imagine. They dove into the issues of skin color among black people-how they have felt because they were very dark or very light or somewhere in between. They discussed how many people make an issue of good hair and bad hair, and how people often see light skin as desirable. When we revisited this show nine years later, there came a point in the rehearsal process where my choreographer (who I must admit I was very thankful was black at this particular moment) and I were staging the opener, and he started separating the group according to dark skin and light skin. It took a few minutes and then the murmurs began, He's putting all the light-skinned people on the other side... Why is Dwayne on that side ... What's going on? That was the moment, however, when it all came together for the actors. That was the moment my students got it. This show was about the high cost of prejudice and divisions based on skin color alone. …
Referência(s)