Trinity and Black Actors Fight Over Roles

Monday, May 16, 2016

GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle

 

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Matriculating Brown/Trinity MFA student Adrian Blount was one of a group of protesters at the theater's production of Oklahama! on Sunday.

Members of the Brown University theater community are criticizing Trinity Rep for racial implications of casting decisions in the current production of Oklahoma! as well as recent plays, and the theater -- who runs a joint Masters of Fine Arts program with Brown -- is defending its actions.

Matriculating Brown/Trinity MFA student Adrian Blount was one of the students who spearheaded a silent protest outside the theater on Sunday before a performance of Oklahoma!.

“We want to use our bodies to show our lack of consent of this piece which is charged with racial stereotypes and caricatures and minstrelsy,” Brown told Golocal.  “Trinity Rep has made it I guess a tradition of reproducing these stereotypes in their productions or erasing our bodes -- POC bodies -- people of color. In their To Kill a Mockingbird, the whole concept of race is completely erased -- for black people. But white actors got to play white actors. Black people had to play white people, people they didn't identify with.”

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In a satirical handout protestors gave to theatergoers on Sunday, signed “Communities Affected by White Supremacy,” the protestors took issue with a number of casting decisions by the theater for Oklahoma!.

“Naturally, we had to cast Will Parker as a black man, who one might view as a coon. He is in love with the town harlot, and sings joyfully of loving 'pink, fat women.' We knew that to keep this play fresh and new, we would have no choice but to make Will Parker also dance a watered down version of ragtime. We could have not allowed the ragtime dance to be authentic, because then we would most likely have to employ a black choreographer and we already reached our black employee quota at Trinity Repertory Theater,” wrote the protestors in their mock write-up. 

“I’ll be in the program in the fall -- I was in an actor in A Christmas Carol.  That's when I first noticed a huge problem of cultural identity and racial erasure that's permeated this company,” said Blount on Sunday. “As a person who's going to be starting at Brown Trinity [MFA]  it’s important I stress the importance of identity recognition and Brown intervening with the Trinity MFA program. It's important that their standards of inclusivity and diversity meet what's happening here."

Blount wrote about Trinity’s casting decisions in other productions, including the recent To Kill A Mockingbird in the Tumblr blog, DismantleBrownTrinity.

"Trinity chose to 'complicate race,’ by casting Mayella Violet Ewell as a black female playing a white female. Thus ignoring the historical lynchings of black men in that time period for being falsely accused of raping white woman. Black women were, and still are, fetishized by white men and to this day black women are very rarely given any justice when they are victims of rape. The students at Brown Trinity brought this fact to the Artistic Director, Curt Columbus, and director of To Kill a Mockingbird, Brian McEleney, in hopes that they would rethink casting a black woman in this white woman’s role in order to force the production to fully observe the racial injustices presented within the piece," wrote Blount.

Trinity’s Response

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More student protesters on Sunday.

Trinity’s Artistic Director Curt Columbus issued the following statement on Sunday. 

Audiences for our production of Oklahoma! at Trinity Rep have responded to some of the casting of actors of color in this production in roles traditionally occupied by white actors.  This casting is not accidental, nor unconsidered, but is part of a larger conversation about race and justice that we have been having for many years at Trinity, and, more robustly, in this our 52 season.  Beginning with our presentation of the Every 28 Hours plays last October, through our productions of The Hunchback of Seville, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Blues for Mr. Charlie this spring, we have been actively seeking discourse around these issues in our community, and in our nation.

Oklahoma! has an iconic place in the American theatrical cannon.  In addition to being one of the most produced pieces in musical theater, its story is peopled with mythic American types – cowboys and farmers – and takes place at a moment of dawning statehood for the territory.  It is the very stuff of our American legend, our identity as it has been promoted to the nation for at least the last fifty years.

But there is a dark side to this American story, one that has been ignored or intentionally whitewashed since the musical first appeared in 1943.  There are strong currents of racism and xenophobia in the corners of the accepted myth, which can be found on full flower in the play on which Oklahoma! is based, Green Grow the Lilacs.  There, it is clear that the character of Jud is meant to be a person of color and that part of the reason that he is shunned by the community is his “bullet color.”

Our production of Oklahoma! intentionally shines a light on this overlooked part of the story, to encourage our audience to consider the part that race and privilege have in the overarching American narrative.  The production complicates iconic American symbols, such as the stained, looming flag, one that Jud emerges out from under, in order to focus our attention on the ways this racism and classism is ingrained in that story.  The final image, lingering on a jacket stained with blood, reminds us that our past is full of such events, that are far too often left out of the mythic narrative.

We hope that audiences will see Oklahoma! with fresh eyes.  We invite the dialogue around race and privilege into these iconic, canonical stories so that we can dispel the notion that they were never there.  We hope that these stories will continue to build a more just, more inclusive, more frank society around us.  To ignore their place in the theater is to encourage this behavior to continue to be practiced in the world.

Trinity’s Director of Marketing and PR Katie Leeman added the following on Sunday. 

“As a professional theater whose work it is to present stories and ideas to provoke conversation, we firmly believe in the right for the community to express their opinions regarding what we put on our stages. We actively seek discourse that allows us to examine the past, present and future of our community, our nation and our world,” said Leeman.

Brown faculty have expressed their support for students on social media. 

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Source: DismantleBrown/Trinity tumblr.

 

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