AAJA Excerpt 1

Color-Blind Casting (Speech and Debate Team Radio Commentary)

One of the longest-running shows ever to hit Broadway is making a comeback this March. That’s right, Les Miserables is coming back to Broadway. It’s an all-star cast, each member with many credits to his or her name. But even more than that, it is a colorblind-cast of Les Miserables, with Carnegie Mellon graduate David Ilaw, a Filipino-American, playing Marius, one of the most iconic roles of musical theater history.

This is not the first time Les Miserables has been color-blind cast. Lea Salonga, another Filipino-American, is famous for portraying Eponine in the original  Les Miserables on Broadway as well as the 10^th Anniversary Concert, and is also well-known for her portrayal of Fantine in the 25^th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables. Norm Lewis, an African-American actor, played Javert in the 25^th Anniversary Concert and later reprised the role on the West End.

Color-blind casting in professional theater, film, and TV, however, is not as common as it may seem. A survey by the Asian-American Performers Action Coalition showed that only 3% of working actors are of Asian descent and 3% being Latino. But the Pew Research Center reported the U.S. Population as being 5% Asian-American and 17% Latino. This disparity in the number of minority actors onstage in contrast with the number of minorities in this country is perpetuated by a variety of reasons. Some directors believe that theater audiences (which are still primarily white) do not connect well to minority actors on stage. Others claim historical accuracy and the need to make the stage and the screen seem real. But even in cases where characters are described to be ambiguous or not of a particular race, directors and producers prefer to hire Caucasian actors as opposed to minorities.

This method of preferential white casting occurred during the casting of the box-office hit movie, The Hunger Games, in 2011. Katnis, the novel’s lead heroine, is depicted in the book as having “olive-colored skin” and “straight black hair”, and was is clearly shown as a character of potentially any ethnicity. Yet, the Debra Zane Casting Company announced that actors submitting for the role quote “should be Caucasian, between the ages of 15 and 20.’” Unquote Controversy erupted after this announcement was made, and several organizations, such as Racebending.com wrote to the Lionsgate diversity committee to no avail.   The controversial casting of the Hunger Games shows just how reluctant Hollywood directors are in casting minorities, even when characters are described to be ambiguous or nonwhite.

The theater world has been a bit more open than the film industry in its acceptance of nontraditional casting. The color-blind productions of Les Miserables, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Carousel are recent examples. Many people on the creative teams of plays and musicals are trying very hard to diversify onstage casts, including legendary American playwright Chuck Mee.

“In my plays,” says Mee”  “As in life itself, the female romantic lead can be played by a woman in a wheelchair. The male romantic lead can be played by an Indian man. And that is not the subject of the play. There is not a single role in any one of my plays that must be played by a physically-intact white person. And directors should go very far out of their way to avoid creating the bizarre, artificial-world of all intact white people, a world that no longer exists where I live, in casting my plays.”

“Controlling the product” is what many minorities agree is the best way to diversify the acting industry. Eva Longoria, an award winning actress and executive producer, says that living by example is of utter importance to minorities. If more people of color want to be in front of the camera or onstage as actors, there needs to be more people of color working behind the camera and backstage as creators, directing, writing, and producing. 

Until there are more non-white directors and producers, minority actors will have to be satisfied with what there is. But change is coming, slowly but surely. The color-blind cast production of Les Miserables  on Broadway sets an example for regional theaters across the nation and will hopefully make colorblind casting seem like a more viable option for directors. And hopefully, the Hollywood film and television industries will see the merits of having actors from diverse backgrounds play nontraditional roles. And hopefully, one day, the people we see on television or at the movies are the friendly faces we see next door or at work every day in our own towns. In our diverse, truly American towns. 

 Works Cited 
Latino in America. Dir. Soledad O'Brien. CNN, 22 Oct. 2009. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.

"Media Takes Note of “The Hunger Games” Casting." Blog. Racebending.com. Racebending.com, 4 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Mee, Chuck. "A Note on Casting." Online posting. The (Re)making Project. The (Re)making Project, n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.

Park, Kyoung H. "Cultural Democracy and Representation." Online posting. The Brooklyn Commune Project. The Brooklyn Commune Project, 30 May 2013. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.