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Recasting Race: Casting Practices and Racial Formations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Angela C. Pao
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Extract

He used to come to the house and ask me to hear him recite. Each time he handed me a volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.… He wanted me to sit in front of him, open the book, and follow him as he recited his lines. I did willingly.…And as his love for Shakespeare's plays grew with the years he did not want anything else in the world but to be a Shakespearean actor.

Toshio Mori

“Japanese Hamlet” (1939)

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , November 2000 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2000

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References

1. Mori, Toshio, “Japanese Hamlet” in The Chauvinist and Other Stories (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, 1979), 39.Google Scholar

2. These include Huerta's, Jorge A.Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti: Bilingual Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Fabre's, GenèvieveLe Théâtre noir aux États-Unis (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982)Google Scholar, translated as Drumbeats, Masks and Metaphors: Contemporary Afro American Theatre (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; The Theatre of Black Americans (New York: Applause, 1987)Google Scholar, ed. Hill, Errol; a number of works written or edited by Kanellos, Nicolás including Hispanic Theatre in the United States (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1984)Google Scholar and Mexican American Theatre Then and Now (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Hay's, Samuel A.African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Kurahashi's, YukoAsian American Culture on Stage: the History of the East West Players (New York: Garland. 1999)Google Scholar.

3. Book-length works falling into this category include Moy's, James S.Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Fusco's, CocoEnglish Is Broken Here (New York: New Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Elam, Harry J., Jr.'s Taking It to the Streets (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Lee's, JosephinePerforming Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1997)Google Scholar; Kondo's, DorinneAbout Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar; Murray's, TimothyDrama Trauma: Specters of race and sexuality in performance, video, and art (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar, Arrizón's, AliciaLatina Performance: Traversing the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Muñoz's, José EstebanDisidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1999)Google Scholar. In the past decade, theoretically informed treatments of racial, ethnic, and national identity and theatre appear in critical anthologies focusing on cultural pluralism, diversity, or social change including Staging Diversity: Plays and Practice in American Theater (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1992)Google Scholar, ed. Wolcott, John R. and Quinn, Michael L.; Crucibles of Crisis: Performing Social Change (Ann. Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1996)Google Scholar, ed. Reinelt, Janelle: Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama (New York: P. Lang, 1995)Google Scholar, ed. Maufort, Marc; and most recently Performing America: Cultural Nationalism In American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1999), ed. Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen GainorGoogle Scholar.

4. Wolper, Andrea, “What is the Non-Traditional Casting Project?” Back Stage, 23 February 1990, 27A.Google Scholar

5. Wolper, Andrea, “Non-Traditional Casting: Definitions and Guidelines,” Back Stage, 23 February 1990, 29A. These definitions are taken from the Non-Traditional Casting Project's pamphlet, “What is Non-Traditional Casting.”Google Scholar

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21. On one of the rare occasions when the harmonious (if sometimes noisy) community atmosphere that pervaded most of these early performances was disrupted, the disturbances were apparently caused by local gangs who considered the public park where the NYSF play was being performed their territory. Richard Faust and Charles Kadushin's detailed report on the 1964 Mobile Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream noted: “Several shows had to be stopped because of rock throwing. These incidents were triggered by resentful teen-age gangs who claimed the playground as their private ‘territory’ and felt that it had been unjustly usurped by the Mobile Theatre.” Faust, Richard and Kadushin, Charles, Shakespeare in the Neighborhood: Audience Reactions to “A Midsummer Night's Dream“ as produced by Joseph Papp for the Delacorte Mobile Theater” (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1965), 5–6Google Scholar.

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31. By 1979, Papp was seeking alternatives to an integrated company. In his 9 April interview with The Villager, he stated: “…the festival has a whole tradition of trying to create some sort of an integrated company, which after awhile I got to dislike. I didn't like integration as a way of doing it because integration meant tokenism” (p. 11).

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54. Coe, Robert presents a detailed chronicle of this production in his article “Verona. Mississippi,” American Theatre 6:2 (1989) 14—21, 52–57Google Scholar. The article includes several photographs. Edret Brinson, the amateur actor who played Romeo, is one of three actors featured in a 1999 HBO documentary film titled Cornerstone. Produced and directed by Michael Kantor and Steven Ives, the film follows the company on the 1991 national tour of its updated musical version of The Winter's Tale. Brinson was one of the Cornerstone “alumni” reunited for this project.

55. Coe, 20.

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58. Coe, 56–57.

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63. Omi and Winant, 55.