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Tips For Effective Color-Blind and Nontraditional Casting
How can theatre companies use this casting practice
effectively without seeming gimmicky?
• Be balanced throughout the production, and your
theatre’s entire season. “You don’t want it to be Here’s our
one token person',” says Zan Sawyer-Bailey, associate director
of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. “You must mix it up
so it goes across the entire production. So you don’t have to
explain why you have a black Dorothy and a White Auntie Em
in Wizard of Oz. If you have enough people of color, the audience
will understand this is a multicolor world. Make sure it’s
a rich fertilization rather than a hodgepodge.”
• Think about why you want to interracially cast a role. Is
there a point you’re looking to make? “Or are you trying to
suspend the audience’s belief about race to make another
point?” asks Oskar Eustis, artistic director at New York City’s
The Public Theater. “What is the aesthetic language that you
want the audience to understand? Try to take risks about that
language.”
• Trust your directors to find the best actors. “An actor
during an rehearsal process will transform,” says Director Lori
Adams. “If you think about America, it’s what we see: We look
at something and we make a judgment. If we can stop just
looking at the surface and listen and try to understand, that’s
what it is about.”
The show, which tracks the
viewpoints of a wide range of
characters connected to the
Brooklyn Crown Heights riots in
August 1991, was originally performed
solely by Smith, a black
actress/playwright. When Adams
was holding auditions for Fires
in the Mirror, she was given carte
blanche by the producer to use
whomever she wanted.
“I found the two actors who
were the strongest during the
auditions—a white actress and a
black actress,” recounts Adams.
Both played a variety of genders
and races. And according
to Adams, the casting raised no
eyebrows.
“They were really gifted
actors,” she explains. “We just
did the simplest costume changes
to differentiate one character
from the other, and then on the
overhead screens the audience
was told who each character was.
We had talkbacks after several
of the shows. The audience did
comment on the characters they
thought were extremely successful;
sometimes the actresses were
playing their own race and sometimes
they weren’t. The audience
went with it.”
Like Eustis, Adams feels that
what makes nontraditional casting
so rewarding is that it gives
opportunities to talented actors
who, 50 years ago (unless they
were working for Papp), would
never have been considered for
these roles.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 21