Discrimination in theatre

I have no problems with colour-blind casting. I have no problem with (or interest in) the sexual tastes of an actor - or anyone else for that matter.

I have a problem with statements such as that made by Jonathan Bate (who I consider to be possibly the finest living auhtority on Shakespeare) in a video I watched for an online course recently when, whilst discussing Othello, he said that Adrian Lester could play Hamlet but Raplh Fiennes couldn't play Othello any more. This seems to suggest that colour-blindness can only operate in one direction and at that point you have to count me out.

There is no such thing as positive discrimination, only discrimination. As a Brit I have no desire for the GB 4 x 100 metres relay team to contain three and a half whites. I want the best athletes.

Casting should be about finding the best actor to fit each and every character in a given cast. That should be the priority. Not trying to complete some tick-box exercise in order to please people outside of the creative process.

It is not serving the audience or the author to cast someone who is not up to the part just because you feel that you ought to do so in order to fulfill someone else's concept of diversity. Indeed it is an extremely patronising approach to your potential cast.

Should the acting industry be more diverse and better represent our different communities? Yes.

Is the best way of achieving this to set arbitrary targets? Absolutely no.

Should producers be looking at a more diverse range of authors? Very probably.

No author should be made to feel guilty because they are writing the plays they want to write. No author should be pressured into writing in a way to meet a target. Authors should be allowed to tell the stories they want to tell.


But the whole move towards targets and pressure to be seen to be diverse is not going to create good theatre. And there are too many people who want to be seen to be doing what is perceived to be the 'right thing' rather than going out and just doing the 'right thing' - and that posturing is really unhelpful.

I don't think you can pick and choose colour-blindness. You either implement it or you don't. This was discussing Othello so don't think he could have picked another really.

There is nothing to suggest Hamlet is white in the text because there doesn't have to be. There wasn't a black community in 12th century Denmark or whenever it was. But I'm happy to see a black actor play it even if the text does not justify the casting. So equally I will not accept that Othello cannot be played by a white actor just because traditionally we have thought of the part as a black one. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that if there had been such a character he would have been anything other than North African and only seen as black by his whiter contemporaries.

But making great theatre is not about reaching goals set by those outside of the creative process.  This goals are all too often about making those who set them feel better about themselves rather that making a real difference.  Yes, there will be exceptions to this but artificial goals can have a tendency to stifle rather than promote creative excellence.

I have no desire for virtue-signalling to be at the heart of theatre-making in the UK - that would be a massively regressive step.

Othello is an odd one - it seems to have become the role for prominent black actors to play and yes white actors don't play the role anymore - well mostly, Patrick Stewart did play it within the last 20 years but that was in a production where the rest of the cast was black. Robeson famously played him on Broadway so possibly that started the trend. I wonder if the sensitivity is due to it being one of the only major classical parts that black actors could play before colour blind casting came along and because so many white actors played it blacked up and therefore there's an uneasiness around the role now. Othello is also about an outsider and that he looks different to the rest of the characters is there in the text so it's no surprise that it's cast that way while Hamlet for example isn't exploring those themes.

Also I don't think it's as easy as saying - if non white actors can play white roles then the same should be true in reverse. If there were that many good non white roles in western theatre in the first place we wouldn't need to have colour blind casting. It's not a level playing field so I don't see it being unfair to white actors that they can't play a handful of roles - they have 99% of them in the first place.

As for the whole family members thing or in unusual historical settings - it doesn't bother me in the same way I'm not going to get hung up on most Juliet's clearly not being 14. Theatrical casting can never be perfect and has never aimed for the same level of realism as TV and Film.

What is a "non-white role"?

On the old forum this discussion came up and I was arguing against colour-blind casting and was receiving quite a bit of hostility, and didn't understand why until someone asked why I'd have a problem with the idea of, say, a black Javert. And then the penny dropped. They were working on a "white by default" basis, while I was working on the basis that Javert has no implied colour in the script at all. As someone else said in the same discussion, casting a black Javert isn't colour-blind casting. It's casting.

The overwhelming majority of roles have no implied ethnicity whatsoever. Before we start going on about how there should be more non-white roles shouldn't we first address the issue of why people are taking it for granted that most existing roles aren't non-white in the first place?

But there will always be those (purists?) who will say: well actually in that time in France it would make no sense for a black man to have high rank in the french police army blah blah (now I have no idea of the actual history of that period in France- so maybe it IS very possible for POC to have been in positions of power back then, but that arguement always seems to come up)

I'd say "non white roles" are roles of POC in stories OF POC- take Eclipsed or Color Purple for example. or Alligence or In The Heights- they are stories about very specific exprience of POC. I can't imagine white people (or even POC but not of the narrative of the story, say an Asian playing Celie) in the roles (at least not in this day and age- maybe in the future, when the playing field really has evened out and we can mix and match everything)

Then I look at Hamilton, which anyway you look at it- is the story of white people (because revolutionary as it might be, it erases the narrative of POC in history, it just tells a white story with POC actors, but that's a whole other discussion) but it is played by POC- and it works, it even makes a statement, so there's that.

So while many stories are fictional/ non ethnicly/racely oriented (Les Mis/ Phantom etc) and can color-blind cast (ar as you very well put it- cast, because that's all it is), others are stories specific to different experience which a relevant to a certain race/ etnicity- those stories are very few and far between... I can't think of too many musicals that tell those stories relevant to POC- and THAT needs to change.
I think the main reason behind this is that the majority of creators are white. A way to encourage and matrealise the work of POC has to be found- I think that will be the ultimate change.

Edit: I'd just like to add that I read my comment over and it might come as insensitive- there is so much ground you can cover with this topic, and it's so interesting, but I was bound to skip and forget (or ignore) some things. Like the fact that Eclipsed is a story of Liberian women, but some of the actresses are not, but of a different origin- so where does it end.. I don't know, I feel like I am so not qualified to even voice my thoughts, but this is a very interesting topic, I just think I'll end it here for me before I tangle myself in some messy non politcally-correct mess lol
It was, however, never my intention to be insensitive. I am only striving to educate myself

Thank you all for your replies. Very interesting reading and good to get a feel for both sides of the argument.
In my case I think the answer will be to determine that we will be casting a certain number of non-white actors and ask our CD to make sure we audition them in the same ratio we see white actors for each role. It feels a little unpleasant to be specifically bringing people in based on their skin colour but I suppose it's the only way to redress the imbalance already present in the industry. Hopefully in the future the situation will change.
Thanks again. Please do continue the discussion on this topic.

The phrasing makes it sound very purposeful. Had they said they "have agreed that a different director would be better", then there wouldn't be any issue whatsoever and it would simply be another case of too many applicants, not enough positions. But they chose to say "male". Which is truly f***ing audacious - women are expected to absorb novels and TV shows and movies and plays about men, the expected "default" (and thus why we need to constantly address the balance), but to then turn around and say "yeahhhhh, but you can't be expected to *tell* the stories" is a double-standard too far.

You and The Guardian are quite welcome to your opinions of the performance and how it worked in the production, but I very much doubt that the casting was due to positive discrimination.