Ok….a follow up to the previous post regarding directors and plays. It makes me crazy that there is a linkage to who can direct what. I know that it gets most sensitive when you have a white director directing a non white play and almost never do you have a non-white director directing a white play. But really the idiocy of that is beyond belief.
It somehow makes all black communities into one and that if you have some melanin in your skin then somehow you are entitled and cognoscente enough to direct any black play. And that is hogwash. There are many black communities just like asian communities or native communities and as such sooner or later you have to actually transcend the mundane and figure out that it is about the most perceptive director working with a cast that has the opportunity to create excellent work.
A bit of a case in point. Weyni Mengesha did a fine job in directing Raisin in the Sun at Soulpepper. The only thing lacking, in my estimation, was the visceral understanding of what life in the 50’s and 60’s for a black person in the States was really like. They had a good approximation of it but it was apparent that approximation was all it was. The only reason that stuck out for me was because I was around during that time and kind of lived through it. But so what eh? I mean there are very few people kicking around from pre Stalinist times so who really knows what Russian society was like in those Chehkov plays. And yet they are done and no one blinks an eye.
My contention is that if Weyni can have the insight and talent to direct Raisin then she has those same capabilities to direct pretty much anything and I wonder where she is in the next years season. I mean there are 11 plays 10 of which are directed by cough white guys cough. Are they bad directors? Hell no. But what message does it send when the new big kids on the block can’t see their way past to actually walk the walk.
Well the message is simply the same ole same ole. Touch base with a black play, get a black director and look like you are doing some culturally diverse programming. Anything else well…hmmm step back.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Dancing with August
Isaac Butler writes this amazing article for the Tony Blog. It is about Bartlett Sher directing an August Wilson play and then goes on to include some fascinating links. I would urge you to have a read and to follow those links all the way to the end.
The issues of who {ie what race} gets to direct a play about another race is one that is pretty fraught with land mines. I remember when The Colored Museum was produced by the Tarragon and Martha Henry directed. Martha was great. Ok she knew nothing about black women and their hair issues but she was able to direct us with craft and insight. Nowadays I don't think you would see that happening. We have managed come as far down the road as to only be able to have a non-white direct a non-white play.
Wilson talks about the need for a black theatre and his opposition to colour blind casting. It all leads to some fine contemplation of issues that never seem to get behind us.
The issues of who {ie what race} gets to direct a play about another race is one that is pretty fraught with land mines. I remember when The Colored Museum was produced by the Tarragon and Martha Henry directed. Martha was great. Ok she knew nothing about black women and their hair issues but she was able to direct us with craft and insight. Nowadays I don't think you would see that happening. We have managed come as far down the road as to only be able to have a non-white direct a non-white play.
Wilson talks about the need for a black theatre and his opposition to colour blind casting. It all leads to some fine contemplation of issues that never seem to get behind us.
Suitably handsome
Dance Magazine has this article on Reviews entitled Knocked Sideways
It’s about receiving bad reviews and how they hit us. All of a sudden I was floating down memory lane. It’s funny how some bad reviews are just kind of fuzzy in my brain. And trust me I don’t really want anyone to dig up the reviews of my Othello from the Arts Club Theatre. I already have my excuses in place for that.
The one bad review I really remember was from a production of Absurd Person Singular that I was in at the Globe Theatre. Ah those halcyon days when my hair was still black. This was unlike the production that I had previously been in at the Globe where I played the spunky runaway slave to the sage Richard Greenblatt’s Thoreau. Of course in this production I did indeed create my theory of “Natural Savagery Acting”. But perhaps that excursion should be left to a late night revel with much scotch.
Ok avoidance over. In the review of my work of Geoffrey the Architect that has that wonderful 2 page monologue as his wife tries to commit suicide in front of his oblivious self the local paper said “ And Philip Akin was suitably handsome”. Suitably Handsome? Like taupe, dry concrete, spam or bad adolescent rhyming couplet poetry?
I was crushed.
But in a wonderful kind of way it became an insulation for whatever reviews followed. No matter what critics thought of my work, in my heart I could always know that to that one critic years ago I had been.....suitably handsome.
It’s about receiving bad reviews and how they hit us. All of a sudden I was floating down memory lane. It’s funny how some bad reviews are just kind of fuzzy in my brain. And trust me I don’t really want anyone to dig up the reviews of my Othello from the Arts Club Theatre. I already have my excuses in place for that.
The one bad review I really remember was from a production of Absurd Person Singular that I was in at the Globe Theatre. Ah those halcyon days when my hair was still black. This was unlike the production that I had previously been in at the Globe where I played the spunky runaway slave to the sage Richard Greenblatt’s Thoreau. Of course in this production I did indeed create my theory of “Natural Savagery Acting”. But perhaps that excursion should be left to a late night revel with much scotch.
Ok avoidance over. In the review of my work of Geoffrey the Architect that has that wonderful 2 page monologue as his wife tries to commit suicide in front of his oblivious self the local paper said “ And Philip Akin was suitably handsome”. Suitably Handsome? Like taupe, dry concrete, spam or bad adolescent rhyming couplet poetry?
I was crushed.
But in a wonderful kind of way it became an insulation for whatever reviews followed. No matter what critics thought of my work, in my heart I could always know that to that one critic years ago I had been.....suitably handsome.
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