I'm having this conversation with Dayenne, the actor in question, who has a different perspective from many of my readers here, as an actor and a black woman and the person in the spotlight
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Oh, PLEASE don't write a director's note about an actor's race. Honestly, good for you for non-color-specific casting choices, but the more you call attention to them, the less comfortable it seems a choice to make.
Just let her play the role. Whatever audiences think or critics say is their own business. I think that's the entire point of opening up every role to every race.
I think I'm going to hold off and see how Dayenne feels about it. It was the one overt thing I could think to offer and if she felt it would be a positive thing, I would be willing to give it a try. It's not really a comfortable thing for me, but I've learned that a lot of things that I instinctively feel should go without saying...don't.
Oh, PLEASE don't write a director's note about an actor's race. Honestly, good for you for non-color-specific casting choices, but the more you call attention to them, the less comfortable it seems a choice to make.
Ahhh... tricky. Because this is totally an opinion that some percentage of your community will have. And some other percentage will have the exact opposite opinion, that by not having open dialogue about them, by not acknowledging the issues of diversity, the more people feel like the question wasn't even considered and the more upset that makes people. And, so you're stuck navigating between people who feel that by addressing the issue you're making more of an issue of it, and people who feel like by not addressing the issue, you're pretending it's not an extant issue and thus perpetuating it. That's a hard line to have to walk; I don't envy you it.
I just wanted to say that I think you're doing the right things and being very thoughtful.
Also, this underlines for me how much you and I live in different countries. I can't imagine an audition without 40-60% of the people auditioning being people of color! I don't think I've ever seen that! Absolutely, utterly alien to me!
But I realize that's the norm in other parts of the country, strange as it is to me. In 2000 Penknife and I went on vacation, and it was about day two when we realized what seemed vaguely creepy to us -- that almost everyone around us was white. All the restaurants, all the streets, every face white. It was so bizarre and it felt so wrong, as the only time we'd ever been in an all white setting before was when it was deliberatly exclusive. The idea that you could walk down the street or go in a restaurant and not see a single person of color was just bizarre. Truly a different country!
[Damn it, stupid browser ate my reply before I could post. Argh. Let me try to recreate it.]
It's not as though Somerville is a lily-white town, though. It's not. From the 2010 census: White/Caucasian: 73.9% Black/African-American: 6.8% American Indian/Alaska Native: 0.3% Asian: 8.7% Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 0.0% Some Other Race: 6.7% Two or More Races: 3.6% Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 10.6%
The ongoing question is how to make people of color feel welcome to audition and participate in T@F. Maybe Pride and Prejudice, as wonderful a story as it is, isn't a story in which people of color tend to envision themselves. Maybe seeing Dayenne in this production will help change that perception. I hope so. Then again, I seem to recall that one of the more recent Bare Bones productions specifically contained characters who were PoC, and it seems like it was still difficult to attract actors of color to participate in that. So...I don't have answers, really, but am glad to see that it's the kind of thing that T@F is
Yup. One of the ideas that has been tossed around, and that I'm interested in, is collaborating with another group that is more POC-focused, but we haven't quite figured out how to make that happen yet. And we want to balance outreach with serving our existing participants and community and celebrating the interesting diversity there. Onward and upward!
All that said, I've had that same reaction to visiting places where almost everyone is white. I am redhaired and fair-skinned (and Jewish, which would have made me "not white" in many places 50-100 years ago), and have always lived in racially-diverse areas, so being surrounded by only white people seems very odd. In a way, visiting regions where I'm one of only a very few white people around seems less odd. I can't really explain it.
From what I've seen of the rehearsals, I think Dayenne and Lydia absolutely come off as birds of a feather. It's easy to see where Lydia gets her ideas from. FWIW, I believe you are on the right track.
I like the idea of a small set of liner notes in the program. Ideally maybe even one written by you, one written by Dayenne, maybe even one written by someone else who self-identifies as a member of a different group that is often discriminated against and who feels comfortable with T@F
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Just let her play the role. Whatever audiences think or critics say is their own business. I think that's the entire point of opening up every role to every race.
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Ahhh... tricky. Because this is totally an opinion that some percentage of your community will have. And some other percentage will have the exact opposite opinion, that by not having open dialogue about them, by not acknowledging the issues of diversity, the more people feel like the question wasn't even considered and the more upset that makes people. And, so you're stuck navigating between people who feel that by addressing the issue you're making more of an issue of it, and people who feel like by not addressing the issue, you're pretending it's not an extant issue and thus perpetuating it. That's a hard line to have to walk; I don't envy you it.
Reply
Also, this underlines for me how much you and I live in different countries. I can't imagine an audition without 40-60% of the people auditioning being people of color! I don't think I've ever seen that! Absolutely, utterly alien to me!
But I realize that's the norm in other parts of the country, strange as it is to me. In 2000 Penknife and I went on vacation, and it was about day two when we realized what seemed vaguely creepy to us -- that almost everyone around us was white. All the restaurants, all the streets, every face white. It was so bizarre and it felt so wrong, as the only time we'd ever been in an all white setting before was when it was deliberatly exclusive. The idea that you could walk down the street or go in a restaurant and not see a single person of color was just bizarre. Truly a different country!
Reply
It's not as though Somerville is a lily-white town, though. It's not. From the 2010 census: White/Caucasian: 73.9%
Black/African-American: 6.8%
American Indian/Alaska Native: 0.3%
Asian: 8.7%
Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 0.0%
Some Other Race: 6.7%
Two or More Races: 3.6%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 10.6%
The ongoing question is how to make people of color feel welcome to audition and participate in T@F. Maybe Pride and Prejudice, as wonderful a story as it is, isn't a story in which people of color tend to envision themselves. Maybe seeing Dayenne in this production will help change that perception. I hope so. Then again, I seem to recall that one of the more recent Bare Bones productions specifically contained characters who were PoC, and it seems like it was still difficult to attract actors of color to participate in that. So...I don't have answers, really, but am glad to see that it's the kind of thing that T@F is
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