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Feature
Michal Daniel
de’Adre Aziza in a scene from The Public Theater’s production of Passing Strange, directed by Annie Dorsen.
for an actor,” she says. This kind of casting can push an
actor to a limit they haven’t done.”
One of Adams’ most memorable experiences as a
theatregoer was seeing an Illinois Shakespeare Festival
production of Pericles in which the lead actor was deaf
and mute. “That is a performance that has stayed with
me all my life,” she recalls. “The power of that performance
was amazing in that another character spoke
the lines and he signed the lines. The greatest moment
of anguish for the character was in the line where he
screamed, so the sound that came out of him wasn’t
from a monitored place.”
For Adams, the negative aspects of nontraditional
casting would be “if you’re pushing to somewhere
that’s so far from you that you can’t understand it or if
you feel like you’re doing a gimmicky thing or playing
a caricature.”
Telling Stories for Everyone
In a similar vein, just because an actor is brilliant
doesn’t mean he or she is right for the role.
“I think there are certain situations where it’s not
appropriate or helpful for a play to cast an actor of color
just to have an actor of color,” says Zan Sawyer-Bailey,
associate director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. “I
think you have to be careful when it comes to nontraditional
casting. Does it give mixed signals with what the
playwright actually intended? Does it position someone
in a way that’s not socially correct and gives the wrong
kind of inference about the character?”
Courtesy of Mustard Seed Theater
Michelle Hand as Michael Miller in the Mustard Seed Theater production of Fires in the Mirror
At the same time Sawyer-Bailey, who has been a casting
director at the Actors Theatre of Louisville since 1985
and sees more than 1,500 professional auditions annually,
wants to find the best actor for each role being cast.
“There are many times when we realize that the color
of an actor’s skin has nothing to do with the telling of
the story,” she continues. “That’s the ideal situation. It
has taken all of us to think that way automatically that
any actor can play this role if they’re good enough and
right.”
But just like The Public Theater did five decades ago
and still does today, the Actors Theatre of Louisville will
frequently opt for nontraditional casting to reflect the
racial and ethnic composition of their audiences. This
is illustrated by their annual production of A Christmas
Carol.
22 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com