by Curmie

[Curmie raises so many casting ethics issues that fascinate me in this post that I’m going to announce right now that I’ll post a veritable “Part II” tomorrow, although it will be “Jack’s Conjectures”, or something. Not that I disagree with anything the esteemed Ethics Alarms featured columnist writes here, because I don’t. Here’s a clue about one issue I’ll be covering which Curmie only hints at: for a cast to be sufficiently “diverse,” do the BIPOC members have to obviously LOOK like they are “of color”? I’m thinking of performers like Jennifer Beals, the late Olivia Hussey, and Jessica Alba—JM]

Jack and I exchanged a couple of emails about this story, which I first saw on the OnStageBlog back around Thanksgiving, when this was still news.  I’m pretty sure both of us wanted the other to write about it.  So, a little late, here we go…

The case involves the casting of the Christmas-themed musical Elf at Broadway at Music Circus in Sacramento.  OnStageBlog’s founder Chris Peterson often gets what Curmie’s grad school mentor would call “foam-flecked,” and his editorial here is no exception.  But he does have a point.  Sort of.

The company came under criticism when they announced the cast list for Elf; although a number of the leads were non-white, the entire chorus (seen above) looks pretty vanilla, white-passing if not literally white. Actress (or is she a “social media manager for major hotel brands”?) Victoria Price is one of those who led the charge, pointing to the difference between the Broadway ensemble and the one in Sacramento, and noting that any comments critical of the casting were being deleted.  (I assume she’s telling the truth about this.)

Tony nominee Amber Imam joined the fray, writing that Price’s criticism of both the casting and the removal of negative comments was “absolutely right.  A show that takes place in NEW YORK CITY cannot… CAN NOT have an ensemble that LOOKS LIKE THIS!!!  Do better.  Have you learned nothing?????”

The company’s CEO Scott Klier issued a response that made the situation much, much worse: “cover-up worse than the crime” worse.  Here’s part of it:

“Inclusivity has been and remains my casting and staffing goal for every production. I fell short of that goal for ELF. There is an uncomfortable truth here: Our industry as a whole has largely failed to attract, train and foster the artists necessary to meet today’s demand, and I fear this conversation will continue until it does. It will unfortunately take time. The painful reality of ELF’s casting process was that both the casting submissions and audition attendance revealed few candidates of color and, while those few were undoubtedly talented, they did not meet the dance, music and acting criteria set by our team.”

Hoo boy… Claiming inclusivity as a “goal” and then going 0-for-15 at fulfilling it?  Blaming other people while admitting the decision was yours?  Admitting there’s a “demand” and then ignoring it? 

Victoria Price responds that the standard for Broadway is surely higher, but they managed to assemble a significantly more diverse cast.  True, but one might also note that the talent base is considerably both wider and deeper in New York than in Sacramento, which is not exactly the first city one thinks of when contemplating the American theatre.

Price then accuses Klier of “writing lies,” and asserts that “we will continue to be here and not just be here, but excelling in everything we do bc (as you basically said in your response) we are expected to be TWICE as good as our white counterparts to even be SEEN.”

Ultimately, she launches into a rather odd commentary, complaining about tokenization.  So having one black ensemble member is somehow a bad thing… even worse than having none, perhaps?  I don’t get it.

So let’s talk about casting decisions.  They’re sometimes extremely complex; other times they’re easy.  There are some shows that require actors of a particular race to play a particular role.  When I directed “Master Harold… and the boys” a few years ago, Hally had to be white, and Sam and Willie had to be black.  Full stop; no discussion.  When I did Trojan Barbie, the male roles had to be played by two blacks, one white, and one Latino; the women’s roles were much more flexible in terms of race.  The majority of roles in most plays, of course, can be played by actors regardless of demographics, with the only considerations being things like blood relatives being of the same race (and that’s only true in realism).

Is casting the actors the director (or producer, or whoever is making the decisions) honestly believes are the best available an ethical strategy?  Of course it is.  Is attempting to employ a cast that represents the time and place in which the play is set reasonable?  Again, of course.  In this approach, it doesn’t matter which actors are white or BIPOC, only that some of the latter are.  If you’re going to claim diversity as a goal, then an all-white chorus is probably a bad idea.  The key word here just might be “probably,” however. 

Often—by no means always, but often—there are two actors who are essentially equal.  For the time I was at his most recent university, I was always casting at the same time as a colleague, and we were discouraged from casting the same actor twice in a semester.  Unsurprisingly, we’d often want the same actors, leading to negotiations: “you can have Actor X if I can have Actor Y.”  But I remember one time in particular when I said “I need one of these four actors.  You can have whichever three you want, but I get one of the four.”  In this sort of toss-up situation, a director who doesn’t need to accommodate a colleague might reasonably think, “why not make a choice that adds to the diversity of the cast?”  

That said, sometimes one actor is just flat-out better than another in auditions.  A director would be remarkably stupid not to cast that person.  The thing is, there’s no way of knowing whether the actors cast in the Elf ensemble were clearly the best, or whether Klier’s interest in inclusion extends no further than a marketing blurb. 

Is there still some racism in the business?  Of course, there is.  Does Klier have a spotless reputation in terms of providing opportunities for non-white actors?  No.  But is Price’s claim about black actors having to be twice as good to even get noticed a gross exaggeration?  Yes, at least in terms of the industry at large.  And we might reasonably suspect that she’d be less insistent on an authentic depiction of the people who’d be in a particular place at a particular time if a production of Fiddler on the Roof had a couple of black folks in a small town in Tsarist Russia.

I recall overhearing one actress telling her friends that the reason I hadn’t given her a callback was because she was black.  I called back ten women; three were black.  She didn’t make it four because… wait for it… her audition wasn’t very good.  And, as I wrote a couple of years ago , my “own experience as a director has included both casting BIPOC actors in roles obviously first played by whites and ending up with all white actors when [I] went into auditions thinking [I’d] almost certainly get a multi-racial cast. It works out how it works out.”

In other words, the original casting decisions might have been—as opposed to were—inappropriately exclusionary to non-white performers; the fact that there was some diversity in the leads mitigates but does not squelch the criticism with respect to the ensemble.  Some of Price’s arguments were legitimate; others were overblown at best.  Klier’s response to the controversy was sufficiently incompetent that he made matters considerably worse.  It’s rather a mess; I suspect that the one objectively true statement in all of this is Klier’s claim that a reasonable resolution “will unfortunately take time.”

The good news, such as it is, is that the production got a positive review on the Broadway World site.  But there is not a word about the ensemble; indeed the list of principals is said to “round out the incredible cast.”

<Sigh.>