<p>I haven't posted on here in a while (about a year and a half to be exact), but I know that a lot of current students, alumni, interested students, etc. post on here about Harvard and I wanted to start a discussion on minority participation in theater. To that effect, I wrote an op-ed that I hope to submit to the Crimson. I was wondering what your thoughts were, criticisms, or any other additions.</p>
<p>Here's to a (hopefully) constructive critical discussion of Harvard theater and minority representation in theater in general!</p>
<p>Equal Opportunity Casting
Note: In this article I reference Oh Dad, Poor Dad and The Mikado as an example of a pattern of productions at Harvard. The mention is not intended to single out various plays, but instead to make a point in general about Harvard theater.</p>
<pre><code>This past fall, the brand new New College Theater was successfully christened with an excellent production of the hilariously absurd play, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. One thing, however minute and unnoticed by all the audience members, actors, producers, techies, and critics, was missing. It is an often overlooked element in Harvard theater, and even professional theatrical productions: the absence of minorities, and the lack of concern as to why. Almost no one who attends a major theatrical production at Harvard can envision a member of a different ethnicity as the main character, and because of this no one wonders why minorities are conspicuously absent from the main stage.
This is troubling because minorities make up nearly half of the Harvard population, yet minority actors, directors, producers, and techies are few and far between. I challenge anyone to find more than a handful of active minority actors, apart from those who participate in productions that are inherently ethnic, such as Bodas de Sangre which was put on this past November. Certain ethnicities, particularly Asian and Middle Eastern ethnicities, aren’t represented at all onstage (to my knowledge) in key productions affiliated with the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC).
The idea that members of different ethnicities are not proportionally represented in acting roles in major productions is not as ridiculous as it should be. No one goes to a theatrical production expecting that 12.7% or some other number of the cast should be Asian; or that at Harvard a cast that is 40% minority is representative of the larger student population. At the same time, no one expects to go to a production to see ethnicities play roles in productions that were written in an era that Caucasians predominated.
No one can blame a producer, director, or casting director for looking at a quintessentially American role like Willy Loman’s in Death of a Salesman and visualizing a Caucasian male actor. Even though Willy Loman’s character extends to all people and ethnicities who struggle with the American Dream, theatrical representations of this play predominantly utilize Caucasian actors. There is no reason that Willy Loman cannot be played by an African, Asian, or Latino American, members of groups who also struggle with the American Dream.
In fact, the American Dream inherently involves minorities and people of different ethnicities. But no one openly discusses this, and we’ve been used to reading and watching Miller, Kopit, et al. and imagining only white actors in these productions for decades!
The problem is that no one is questioning why we have an obsession with Caucasian actors, especially in this day an age. The same casts of various plays can be taken from the pre-Civil Rights era and planted on today’s stages and no one will know the difference. For example, it is almost taken for granted that the major roles of Jonathan and Rosalie in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, will be cast as white. Many people may believe that most plays worth producing so far are written for Caucasian actors, but this line of thought leaves little room for actors from other ethnicities to find roles that are not a stereotype of their ethnic appearance and/or are not minor roles. Furthermore, this line of thought does not explain why inherently Asian productions such as The Mikado are played by Caucasian actors, even though the characters are supposedly Japanese.
Therefore, for whatever reason, we almost seem to reject ethnic talent automatically, and we miss key opportunities to expose theater-going audiences to the modern metropolitan experience.
All of the people I know involved with the Harvard theater scene are good people, and I would never accuse them of racism. In fact, this is an issue that involves professional theater beyond Harvard as well. At the same time, the preference for Caucasian actors in America has gone on for decades. At some point, one wonders when the status quo will ever change to better represent our more diverse and accepting society. I’ve finally figured out that it won’t change until we consciously will ourselves to confront the issue, today. If we wait, more decades might pass before we recognize that this may be a racial and equal opportunity issue. We cannot wait for a better time than now to challenge ourselves to consider imagining an African American, or an Asian, or a Latino, as Jonathan. Only when we, as actors, directors, casting directors, critics, producers and audience members, open up to the idea of such a possibility will ethnic actors truly be given an equal chance to perform in those roles.
Many of us, of all colors and stripes, are waiting for that day to come.
</code></pre>
<p>Jason Wong, a sophomore in Quincy House, played Jonathan in “Oh Dad, Poor Dad” in high school and graduated with honors from the Drama Department at San Francisco School of the Arts. He is also a California State Arts Scholar in the Dramatic Arts.</p>