Saturday, September 08, 2018
The Race Card
Today I found myself having to explain to a group of my fellow lawyer theatricals why it is exactly that I am not comfortable with the idea of a white person playing an Asian person on stage. As someone who, as a child, was pressed into playing one of the "Siamese children" in The King & I (which is also why I had black hair for my sixth grade photo), you would think I would have a well-thought-out rationale at hand. But as it turned out, my opening salvo was something along the lines of "it's just kind of icky, isn't it?"
To be fair, my sparring partners did not do much better, saying things like "I mean, it's not like we're going to do Asian eyes or anything" and "but what about Hamilton?" In fact, it was the utter inability of the older straight white men I was talking with to even fathom why anyone could even consider this to be a problem that kind of got me off kilter. But I'm afraid our dialogue wasn't exactly transcendent; I did end up invoking both Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's and the shameful legacy of blackface.
I guess at the end of the day I just don't understand why, since we're doing a show where we write every single word in it, we would ever choose to write roles that we don't have appropriate cast members to play. It's not like there's a shortage of white people in the news and pop culture to make fun of. And since our audience mainly just wants the show to be short so they can get back to a place where they can drink, maybe one fewer number isn't the worst thing?
At least drinking is one thing we can all agree on.
Today I found myself having to explain to a group of my fellow lawyer theatricals why it is exactly that I am not comfortable with the idea of a white person playing an Asian person on stage. As someone who, as a child, was pressed into playing one of the "Siamese children" in The King & I (which is also why I had black hair for my sixth grade photo), you would think I would have a well-thought-out rationale at hand. But as it turned out, my opening salvo was something along the lines of "it's just kind of icky, isn't it?"
To be fair, my sparring partners did not do much better, saying things like "I mean, it's not like we're going to do Asian eyes or anything" and "but what about Hamilton?" In fact, it was the utter inability of the older straight white men I was talking with to even fathom why anyone could even consider this to be a problem that kind of got me off kilter. But I'm afraid our dialogue wasn't exactly transcendent; I did end up invoking both Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's and the shameful legacy of blackface.
I guess at the end of the day I just don't understand why, since we're doing a show where we write every single word in it, we would ever choose to write roles that we don't have appropriate cast members to play. It's not like there's a shortage of white people in the news and pop culture to make fun of. And since our audience mainly just wants the show to be short so they can get back to a place where they can drink, maybe one fewer number isn't the worst thing?
At least drinking is one thing we can all agree on.
