DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

A recent production of Samuel A. Taylor’s Sabrina Fair at Ford’s Theater (Washington) cast two African American actors in the leading roles of Sabrina and her father. Audrey Hepburn played Sabrina in it’s original 1953 production, and we can presume that Taylor probably didn’t anticipate a mixed race cast in his time. The plot line involves Sabrina, a chauffer’s daughter, becoming the object of the rich employer’s son. So where the original script explored the class theme we now bring in race, but without a word being added. This Washington Post article explores the production’s non-traditional casting and the feelings of Susan Heyward, the black actress cast as Sabrina. “It hurt so much to be in a world where something so elemental to your being was ignored.” What an interesting addition to the discussion of non-traditional or “color blind” casting.

The concept of “white default” casting is a subject in this class that has received a fair amount of attention. (Many white playwrights “default” their characters as white, unless noted as otherwise.) But if default casting is the proof that a white world view remains insidious in American theater, is color blind casting theater’s Affirmative Action program? Color blind is of course an oxymoron; no one is blinded at all. The question becomes, “Does it work?” If Hamlet is black, and Claudius is Asian, and the production is being done in the summer in Ashland, then maybe I don’t care. Give me fabulous performances and I’ll go home happy.

But I think what Susan Heyward bemoans is real and potentially problematic. The language isn’t being rewritten to announce or acknowledge or celebrate what we all can see. If Sabrina Fair can be pulled off because the director and cast bring a sensibility that lets race and class co-exist as issues that add conflict, then even if not a word is spoken, I imagine this could be a success. But it’s not a lock.

Perhaps this is more problematic when audiences are asked to accept mixed race casting within families, where the script simply does not support the concept. (See? I could be contradicting myself on Hamlet.) I saw a Suffolk University  production of Thornton Wilder’s The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden last fall that featured a young African American actress in the role of the mother. That she was about 20 years old made being “mother” enough of a stretch, but that she was black and her family was white was something I could never quite get past. (I know, it’s college theater so they get a big pass.) But in the portrayal of an immediate, nuclear family, I have to admit that for me it creates a difficult suspension of theatrical disbelief. Perhaps the real problem wasn’t that the young woman was black, but that everyone else was white.

If it sounds like I’m railing against this choice, and non-traditional casting, I’m not. I just think we have to be carefully considerate of many issues, not the least of which is the playwright’s intention. One can imagine August Wilson rolling in his grave were Julia Roberts to be cast as Aunt Ester in a 2015 Broadway revival of Gem of the Ocean.

The other issue is the play that doesn’t get produced. Wilson was very aware of the deficit of stage time for the work of black playwrights, and saw black actors playing “white roles” as a poor substitute for having black playwrights’ works produced. I hope we can give this careful consideration. Non-traditional casting might appease the subscriber who believes she’s getting diversity, or some kind of heightened social experience. And it may truly bring a different and important, relevant and contemporary slant to an old play like Sabrina. But it also might be working to keep exciting new works by black playwrights sitting on the shelf.