Category: theatre

Katherine Soper wrote ‘Wish List’ as her dissertation play at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She will be back at work at Penhaligon’s perfumers on Regent Street, where she has worked for two years, on Wednesday. “I do that part time, and the rest of the time I try and write,” she said.

“Last week, Clarion University in Pennsylvania was forced to cancel its planned production of Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India. The reason: casting. Three of the characters were written as Indians, and the predominantly white school had cast two white actors and one mixed-race actor in the roles. Earlier the same week, Katori Hall objected passionately in The Root to a Kent State University production in Ohio of her two-hander The Mountaintop, in which the role of Martin Luther King Jr. was played by a white actor.” Diep Tran looks at why the issue isn’t as simple as let-the-best-actor-get-the-role.

“Adult actors, cast overseers, teachers, and choreographers make sure no child is left behind when it comes to keeping grades up, feeling protected, and maintaining as much of real life for their young castmates as possible.” A director, choreographer, or touring company manager “must deal with tutors, handlers, and parents as an airport-runway controller would a busy flight plan.”

“But the greats may find Broadway a bigger challenge than they really want. Making movies is an art but appearing on Broadway a daily dare.”

Although there are hundreds of struggling playwrights yearning for a production, there are also independent producers and small not-for-profits hearing the words, “You can’t produce my play first, because then the larger theatres won’t want to produce it.” The real problem: it’s true.

“Since I first wrote about color-conscious casting, I’ve learned—by directing my own productions as well as casting plays that I did not direct—that color-conscious casting doesn’t guarantee a color-conscious production. Diverse casting is a cause; a more challenging and/or inclusive conversation is not inherently an effect.”

“The Belarus Free Theatre is banned in Belarus, but Will Gompertz was invited to a performance at a secret London venue.”

“I cast it without thinking what color people were at all. I would have cast a black Jesus if I had the right person for the role. I wasn’t thinking that this was a play about race. When I do plays about race, I try to be extraordinarily sensitive to those issues.”

“The nervousness that theatre-about-theatre raises in critics and audiences is similar to the prejudice among literary critics towards novels that have novelists as their protagonists: a fear of professional special pleading and jokes that mean more to producers than consumers.”

That’s the take of Avi Hoffman and Suzanne Toren, who play Willy and Linda Loman in the New Yiddish Rep’s production. “[Hoffman] hears Yiddish in the structure of Mr. Miller’s dialogue, as when Willy’s girlfriend asks when he’ll be back in town and he says, ‘Oh, two weeks about.’ Ditto Linda’s famously awkward immortal line, ‘Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.’ ‘Who talks like that?’ Mr. Hoffman asked, the question rhetorical. ‘That’s Yiddish.'”