Casting Questions

Hamlet tells the players that theatre should ‘hold a mirror up to nature,’ but nowhere does he say that mirror cannot come from a funhouse.  Inside a theatre, there is a great tolerance in both the audience and the actors for the absurdity of the whole situation in which they find themselves involved, a tolerance for the creativity of live storytelling.  We believe in flats and scene changes.  It is okay for an audience to see the wires.  Where the suspension of disbelief starts to fall apart for modern audiences in an inability, or unwillingness, to accept performers who ‘do not look the part.’

Much is made of Equal Opportunity Employers (EOE) and non-traditional casting in audition notices and mission statements – and it should be, since theatres should serve and reflect their communities.  Of course it is a thin line between EOE and non-traditional casting on one side, and discrimination on the other. Anytime EOE and non-traditional casting are brought up, it still brings everything into play it seeks to suppress.  It brings race and discriminating factors to the forefront of casting, and makes every casting choice a statement.

In his article in the December 2010 edition of AMERICAN THEATRE, entitled “Casting Without Limits,” Richard Schechner asks: ‘If the deeply ingrained conventions of casting to type was set aside, what then would the criteria be for playing a character?  Is it utopian to insist that training plus insight into a role is sufficient?  Can critics educate spectators and producers alike to at least look and listen to casts where gender, race, age and body type of the performers are, as it were, not perceived – that is, to see a white actor as a black Othello (without “blacking up”) or an actress, or actor, of 60 playing Juliet?’ [emphasis mine].

We have seen Laurence Olivier put on make-up and play Othello as a black man.  We have seen Patrick Stewart play Othello as the only white man in the production.  Will we see a non-traditional cast in FENCES?  Why stop at race?  How about Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer playing Juliet and Romeo?  Everyone knows the story.  Why must we see young actors in those roles, when the ages of the performers are not as important as their ability to express what it feels like to be young and in love.  There used to be a great tradition of actors and actresses playing these roles well into their fifties and beyond.  Boys portrayed women.   Masks were worn and anyone could play any part at any time.

Has the collective imagination of the audience atrophied so far that we must have literal interpretations on the stage in order to follow or enjoy a story?  Has actor’s creativity been hamstrung to the point that they cannot see themselves in roles they do not outwardly resemble?  If so, then it is time for Theatre to lie down and die, because the shared imagination of the audience and the performers is the biggest strength that Theatre has.  Films are about the directors’ imagination.  Books are about the authors' imagination.  In both cases the audience are receptacles.  There is a reason that someone who can sit through a 2 and-a-half hour movie needs a 10-minute break in the middle of a 100-minute play: 

An actor steps on stage.  Another one arrives and says, ‘Hello, Tim.’  The first actor answers, and we accept that he is Tim.  ‘How is the family, Tim?’  We accept that Tim has a family.  ‘How was the 50^th birthday, Tim?’ Now, we know that Tim is 50.  ‘But wait a minute, he does not look a day over 25,’ we say to ourselves.  We no longer accept that reality. (But we know that what we are seeing and hearing is not reality.  It's people telling us a story, so why insist, even in the back of our minds, on literal truth?)  Reconciling what we see and what we hear becomes tiring and uncomfortable, and sometimes we lose the story.

Rather than playing to the medium’s strength, producers decided to make it easier for the audience, and sacrifice storytelling, talent and imagination in order to present an understandable story.  It is a trade-off that more often than not confines actors to constrictive types, limits the expectations of the audience and the expectations that actors have of themselves.

What then would be the criteria for playing a character?  What then makes a great actor?  Can a woman play a male role, without having the character be changed into a woman?  What then constitutes good casting?  What is more important to the story, the character portrayed, or the actor portraying the character?

The quest for these answers is a journey that will sustain both Theatre and the audience.  It will define them both in the years to come.  Theatres should lead the voyage, and the audience should follow bravely.

And the Author Is...

Somewhere there is a man who believes that Shakespeare’s plays are hidden allegorical parodies of Judeo-Christian history and religion.  There are books, essays and documentaries dedicated to this theory.  In New York City a theatre company devotedly produces burlesques of Shakespeare’s plays expounding this philosophy.  It is absurdly appealing to the sense of reason, logic, common sense and intellect.  As off the wall as this theory is, it is good to have this point of view out there in the universe, in so far as it gives artists another pool from which to draw.  It ceases to be of any value once it becomes ‘the answer.’

The problem arises when this interpretation transforms into the conclusion that this is the one true hidden purpose of these plays, and therefore, the man known as Shakespeare could not have written them for any one of uncountable arguments that arise from the text.  It must have been a Jewish Venetian woman who was sleeping with the theatre’s owner.  Why not make the case that due to the treatment of women and foreigners in the plays the author must have been a self-loathing albino Congolese woman?  People postulate that 100 monkeys locked in a room with 100 typewriters for 100 years will produce HAMLET.  That is what happened, and the canon of plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually randomly composed over hundreds of years by a bunch of chimps with an inexhaustible supply of ink and parchment.  All of the references to the animal kingdom make that painfully obvious.

This machine needs to stop.  These theories and battles between Stratfordians and Anti-Stratfordians are all fine in themselves.  It is an interesting puzzle (for those who think Shakespeare’s identity is a mystery to be solved).  But it becomes dangerous when someone puts on blinders and begins using their choice of Shakespeare as an excuse for expounding dogma to the exclusion of all else.  The way plays effect us is the realm of Theatre.  Our effect on plays is the realm of academia.  Academia belongs in books; Theatre belongs on stage.

While these questions about authorship make interesting scholarship, they make terrible theatre.  Dogmatic theatre is church.  People do not go to church to be entertained, and if theatre is boring, it is worthless.

Who wrote these plays, and their original intent, is no longer of any practical importance.  The author can no longer celebrate the benefits of recognition, and any secret messages imbedded in these scripts were delivered long ago. The important messages are the ones we send to each other, Now; not messages sent to someone else, Then. That is the true genius of these stories: they exist on plane independent of who put the ink on paper.  Wherever we are, whoever we are, they speak to us.

What the plays reveal to us about ourselves will change as we do.  The 20 year-old Mr. Smith will read a different KING LEAR than that same Mr. Smith will read at 70.  The author did not change, the audience did.  While Shakespeare wrote the plays, we often forget that we are his audience, and the audience is the most important puzzle piece in theatre.  The audience, not the author, is the variable in the equation.

Anyway, the true identity of Shakespeare has already been discovered: Jack the Ripper.  The parallels are stunningly obvious.  Until this point in history nobody had a fix on either of these men.  Both men showed signs of intelligence far exceeding the bounds of their station.  Both men revealed something about the human soul previously untouched.  They were both geniuses of their art, and today they are both fodder for armchair detectives.  In both cases it does not matter who these people were: the ripper’s victims will still be dead, and the plays have already been written. 

What the plays of William Shakespeare reveal is not up to the identity of the author, but the identity of the audience.