I'm looking forward to a rehearsal via Skype with actor Lorenzo Montanini in Rome, after he's rehearsed with director Jeremy Lydic in New York. Lorenzo will be performing my short interactive play, Ave Atque Vale, on November 12th as part of Around the World, a whole day event produced by global directors collective, The Internationalists. More info on the intriguing program here: http://theinternationalists.org/ATW11.html
My piece in today's Hollywood Progressive:
Adeye Sahran fell in love with Nicky Silver's dark farce, The Maiden's Prayer, when she was a student in the theatre department at USC. The role of Libby--the volatile, caustic, hard drinking romantic who accidentally becomes a prostitute while suffering from unrequited love--seemed perfect for her. Except for the fact that Silver is known for satirizing the world of gay, Jewish and WASP characters in New York City and its suburbs. Libby, like all of the play's characters, is written (or presumed) to be white. Sahran isn't. It's not as though she doesn't get work. There was the all-black production of Medea; performing in the Scottish play for kids on Skid Row. More Shakespeare (Othello, Coriolanus, A Midsummer Night's Dream). More Greeks: Lysistrata. (Why is it that casting without regard to race is less controversial when the play is centuries old? Is Shakespeare as imaginary to us as sci-fi?) Native American and African American playwrights keep her onstage. Last year, playing the lead role in Fabulation or the Re-Education of Undine (by Pulitzer-Prize-winning black playwright, Lynn Nottage), the LA Times raved about the "winning, full-throttle performance by Sahran, who nails the play’s extremes of satire and heartbreak." Sounds like she'd make an excellent Libby. Sahran couldn't get the role out of her mind. And why should she? Is it really necessary for Nicky Silver's plays to be cast with actors reflecting his own ethnic background? Or for most so-called "diversity initiatives" to concentrate actors of color in race-specific projects? Just for fun, Sahran and Stephan Wolfert, the actor/director who'd performed with her in Macbeth, arranged a staged reading of The Maiden's Prayer. Sahran invited her real-life sister, actor Annie Lynne Melchor, to read the role of Cynthia, Libby's sister and antagonist who marries the love of Libby's life. They rehearsed. They read. That was supposed to be the end of it, but "This is your dream," Melchor said. "Let's make it happen." Karen Harris signed on as co-producer and people pledged support. Sahran founded Phoenix Rising and the group got nonprofit 501(c)(3) status in what must have been record time. The mission? Not just to bring The Maiden's Prayer to the Atwater Village Theater (in a production that swings from riotous and frenetic to sobering under Wolfert's direction) but to be an ongoing presence in the Los Angeles theater scene, dedicated to casting without regard to ethnicity, race, age, or type. If you're not in the business yourself, you might assume that directors just want the best actors they can get. Here's a reality check: when Sahran sent her needs to a widely used breakdown service through which producers let actors know about auditions, she was told, "We can't post this." She had listed the characters without specifying age, race, or physical description. "But that's the whole point," she said. According to Melchor, many casting directors don't know what to do with actors who don't fit neatly into a racial category. She trained in classical theatre, loves the stage, and makes a living in television, but says it's hard to even get an audition "when they look at you and don't know what to think." (This, in spite of the fact that America's mixed-race population is one of our fastest growing demographics.) Ray Paolantonio loves everything Nicky Silver ever wrote. He's a white guy from New York--"I relate to his work"--but after a recent audition for a Silver play, he didn't get the role because, he was told, "they wanted someone blond." Phoenix Rising cast him as Paul, the gay man who, like Libby, is helplessly in love with Taylor, and who becomes Libby's best friend. John Ruby actually does match the tall blond type the script had in mind for the role of Taylor, but he turned in a great audition and got the part. No reverse discrimination here. Eric Davenport (Andrew in The Maiden's Prayer) doesn't hesitate before naming his dream role. The African American actor has been on the Broadway stage in Ragtime as well as performing regionally and in national touring companies. He's got the chops for musical theatre but unless attitudes change, will he ever get his wish: to audition for Tony in West Side Story? And so, as soon as the company website went up, Phoenix Rising put out the word, inviting local actors to suggest plays that would give them the chance to take on roles for which they've found themselves automatically out of consideration. Sahran believes audiences relate to the humanity of the characters and to the talent of the actors, not to their race. That doesn't mean race disappears. The audience may find meaning in the actor's race even when it's not in the script. In 2007, S. Epatha Merkerson received raves as Lola, the Midwestern housewife (previously assumed to be white) in Willliam Inge's 1950 play, Come Back, Little Sheba, a production that moved from the Kirk Douglas Theatre here in Los Angeles to Broadway. One critic thought that an interracial couple in the smalltown 1950's environment would suffer such isolation, their plight would help account for the intensity of the characters' frustration. Merkerson herself noted in an interview that in the script Lola has been disowned by her father. Could her marriage to a white man be imagined as the cause? In The Maiden's Prayer, when a white actor plays Andrew and describes his latest lover as the most beautiful man he's ever seen because he looks like a Nordic god, few white audience members are likely to question society's standards of beauty. But when Davenport, a black actor, speaks the same lines, the audience may feel uncomfortable enough to hold those standards up to scrutiny. The challenge addressed by Phoenix Rising is not exclusive to LA. In New York which is, like LA, one of the most diverse cities in the world, during the last five years, 82% of the roles on Broadway were filled by white actors. As a further example, while Asians Americans are the fastest growing minority group in New York, 12.6% of the city's population, they were cast in only 2.3% of all roles on all New York City stages, not just Broadway. Melchor points out that typecasting is not only about race. She would love to play Sylvia, the canine character in A.R. Gurney's play of the same name. "I'm a dog person," she says. She loves dogs and she wants the chance to embody one onstage though people tell her she has a feline presence and doesn't look the part. But transformation: Isn't that what acting is about? "We cast without boundaries; all ethnicities and ages encouraged to audition." Saturday night, when the lights came up on Phoenix Rising's inaugural production, Los Angeles theater took a welcome step in the right direction. You have to wonder. Audiences had no problem accepting Merkerson, nominated for a Tony in what had always been perceived as a white role. Why didn't her success start a trend and open doors? More to the point: When will contemporary theatre catch up with the actual composition of the contemporary American family? When are we going to stop referring to color-blind casting as "nontraditional"? Given today's society, a multiracial, multiethnic cast doesn't look experimental, but realistic. The Maiden's Prayer October 8th through November 13th, 2011, Thursday-Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm Atwater Village Theater, 3269 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039 Tickets: $18 on BrownPaperTickets.com; $20 at the door. www.PhoenixRisingTheater.org |
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