Evita white washing controversy?- Page 5
Evita white washing controversy?
bk
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/20/03
#100Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/14/17 at 7:22pm
Here's the simple deal: I will cast the best person who comes in the room - I don't give a crap what race or ethnicity or anything else - if they give the best audition and bring something I like and respond to to the table they get the job. Period. Any sane creative director will always cast that way. There's no discussion beyond that really. I would not cast a mediocre POC just so people on Broadway World could say, "Oh, that's so divers, bravo." But if a POC was the best choice I had, in they would be without so much as blinking.
The whole Evita thing is ridiculous, IMO. It's their production, they auditioned and saw people of all ethnicities, and cast the ones they thought best. AND - they offered contracts to some talent of varying ethnicities and some of that talent chose not to do the show because they probably had better offers or more interesting auditions elsewhere.
temms
Broadway Star Joined: 7/21/04
#101Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/14/17 at 9:23pm
I hesitate to even wade in... but I just have to say that the whole concept of "the best actor" is utter BS. There are an infinite number of "best actors" - it's not about who can hit the note, who can nail the dance routine, etc - because there are always multiple people who can, particularly at the highest professional levels. So it's a choice - you're choosing among the best and the decision is always completely subjective. You need to look at the bigger picture - it's about the essence of the actor and what they bring to it, not about technical skill. It's about the chemistry between certain performers and the energy an individual brings and how the creative team responds and how it meshes with how they envision the show.
This director made a decision that this is the cast he wanted and the production he wanted to do and that diversity in casting was not a priority. That is his choice (and the theatre's who has hired him) and nobody denies that the people he cast are talented performers who can absolutely play the roles they've been hired for, but particularly for a show as ingrained in the rep as this one I think it's the perfect time to have this discussion. The way you get good at performing is by doing it, and when performers of color have fewer opportunities, they won't grow as much as the people who are constantly onstage honing their craft. So the problem snowballs.
(Yes, you occasionally get a role where the requirements are so specific that there is a limited pool to draw from and finding even one person who can do it is difficult. But I don't think that's the case in this particular instance as there have been thousands and thousands of successful productions with perfectly capable casts of all stripes.)
#102Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/14/17 at 9:43pm
rattleNwoolypenguin said: "In a show where the director is claiming "Race doesn't play a part in the story"you don't think it's wrong that he didn't try to create a diverse cast?
No, because one has nothing to do with the other. Race doesn't play a part in most plays. I know a lot of people think every show has to have a diverse case, but I'm not one of them. Even if I were, that's a lot of shows I'd have to be complaining about. Who has the time or energy to protest every single all-white cast?
Have you ever even thought of the fact that a British man who's not even connected to the culture of the story wrote it and set the precedent by casting only white American people?
Does every play have to be written by someone connected to the culture it depicts? I mean, Dave Malloy isn't Russian. And the original cast was all British people. Playing white South Americans. I honestly don't see the issue.
#103Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/14/17 at 10:28pm
There seems to be a misunderstanding of what "Latina" means. It's not an ethnicity. It's simply a reference to anyone with cultural ties to Latin America. And it's primarily an American (i.e. U.S.) term, not widely used in South America. So calling Eva Peron "Latina" is both technically correct and essentially meaningless. She was Euro-Argentinian. She didn't "pass" as white, she was white.
#104Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 10:19am
So, everybody knows who auditioned for this production, their race, their ethnicity, their level of talent and ability, and the dynamics of their interactions with each other in combinations? I'm just trying to understand how so many people know who precisely should have been cast in this production. What I actually hear from several people is that the actors auditioning for roles in Evita should be racially/ethnically profiled first, THEN considered based on talent and suitability. I have no idea who auditioned for this show and it sounds like this director and this theatre have a record of diverse casting in the past. It sounds to me like certain people demand a Latinx production of Evita and that's pretty much the end of the discussion for them.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
Sunny11
Broadway Star Joined: 9/3/14
#105Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 12:02pm
theatregeek6 said: "Colour blind casting (a positive term) is deemed good unless the actor cast is white and the role is not perceived to be for a white person. Then that is called white washing (a pejorative term). It seems we have 2 very different terms for the same thing."
Ethnic representation on Broadway can be achieved in two ways. One is to create shows about a specific group of POC and cast them accurately. Looking at film and theatre examples:
Dream girls- African American
The Prince of Egypt- Middle East
Moana- Pacific Island
Bend it like Beckham- South Asian British
On your Feet- Latina
The other way is to colour blind cast every role regardless of context accuracy. This way is a quick and easy way to counter balance the fact that there are not enough roles specific for POCs relative to their general population.
I think that the best approach to avoid ambiguity and controversy is the first method. Encourage creative to produce a more diverse range of shows so that eventually colour-blind casting will not be necessary.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#106Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 12:46pm
^Sunny, I'm all for new writing for a much more diverse cannon of characters
But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be more diverse casting in the cannon that we have now.
So if people want to object to a lack of non-white diversity in the casting of an array of roles (particularly of all principle roles in a particular production) that lend themselves to diverse non-white casting (to my mind, most roles do - with the exception of roles for which demographic identification of the actor as white is necessary because of the theme and or critical concept of the show) it's certainly a valid objection. And it may very well be a completely valid objection when it comes to the casting of all the priincipals (principles? I always confuse them particularly when autocorrect doesn't allow the first spelling) of Evita. Just as much as it might well be a valid objection to the wholesale casting of all white principles in, for instance, Hello, Dolly or Anything Goes.
But that wasn't at all my reading of the original post of this thread. Or at least of the original poster's main point.
My reading of that post's main point was a simple and valid debunking of the idea, held by some, that Evita, Peron, Che and Magaldi MUST absolutely be played by actors of partly Amerindian ancestry because the characters being Argentine must somehow be partly Amerindian (in that they are people whose ancestry is a mix of indigenous and European, indigenous and African, or indigenous, European and African roots).
To me the idea the original poster sought to undermine is worthy of debunking. It's an idea about as persuasive as arguing that any U.S. character should be played by an actor with Native American ancestry. The arguments are equally flawed because, as in the 20th Century United States, the population of 20th Century Argentina was made up mostly -- by leaps and bounds - of people whose ancestry is Eastern Hemisphere immigrant, rather than Western Hemisphere native.
The Amerinidian population of Argentina is only about 2.4% of that nation's demographic - much lower than the Amerindian or Mestiza populations of a great many other Latin American countries.
Very few Argentines have native South American ancestry. Tragically, unlike in other large parts of Latin America, the population of Argentines with Native American roots is extremely low. Because, and hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong on this, most of the native population of Argentina (as well as Chile) was killed off by the colonists.
Like the United States, Argentina and Chile have a pervasively tragic history of genocide of native peoples that is somewhat distinguishable (though of course far from entirely distinguishable, alas) from, say, the histories of Peru and Mexico.
The great majority of Argentines are of European ancestry - including descendants of very large immigrant communities of Spanish, Italians, Basques, French, Germans, Eastern Europeans and Jews.
True, there has been a significant immigration of Amerindian and Mestizo people into Argentina in recent times. But this wave of immigration - mostly from Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay - occurred well after Eva Peron's death.
The characters in EVITA are of course Latin American, and in that sense (which as I understand it is the only semantic sense) they are Latinos (which, to my understanding, means being from a Latin American country or having familial roots from a Latin American country - and is not a term confined to Latin Americans with Amerindian ancestry).
However the principle characters - especially the historical characters Evita and Juan - have ancestries which - unless we go back countless millenia to Africa, as all our roots do - are ethnically European (even if don't necessarily consider Che to be based on the Spanish and Irish Argentine, Che Guevara... though in many productions, the identification of Che with Guevara is not played up... Che is still a 20th Century Argentine, so would most likely have had European ancestry. No one, clearly, had any objection to Banderas as Che and, newsflash, Antonio Banderas is a European!. And the great majority of Argentines have European heritage - including, if I'm not mistaken, Elena Roger. If I recall correctly, Roger is mostly of French (shades of her Piaf) and Italian descent. And, it might well be worth adding, she certainly looks like she's of French and Italian descent.
Not to suggest that there's anything remotely wrong with an Argentine actress (of any racial or ethnic background) playing Evita. Far from it!
But the idea that there's anything particularly or especially like a whitewash in casting an American actress of European descent as Evita is rubbish.
Which, again, is not to suggest that the objection to the casting of all European Americans as the principles in your average show, Evita included, is an invalid objection. But it's a very different kind of objection that might posit that casting white Americans of European descent as Evita, Che, Magaldi, and Juan is tantamount to, for instance, casting white Americans of European descent as Bess, Crown, Sportin' Life and Porgy.
ScottyDoesn'tKnow2
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/22/14
#107Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 12:58pm
^ This is what I call a great post rebutting the arguments made that Eva Peron should not be played by a white woman.
#108Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 2:04pm
Which, again, is not to suggest that the objection to the casting of all European Americans as the principles in your average show, Evita included, is an invalid objection. But it's a very different kind of objection that somehow implies that casting white Americans of European descent as Evita, Che, Magaldi, and Juan is tantamount to, for instance, casting white Americans of European descent as Porgy, Bess, Crown and Sportin' Life.
Unfortunately, the voices of protestation are likely more interested in being heard immediately than listening and discussing, as we saw in the case of Great Comet. We get a lot of knee-jerk blaming and shaming on social media, hoping to "cause change" but are really inflicting damage and passing out torches and pitchforks to the villagers. I always get the image of Gaston yanking the mirror away from Belle and holding it up to the frightened mob.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
#109Evita white washing controversy?
Posted: 9/15/17 at 3:11pm
Mister Matt, you hit the nail on it's head. How on earth does anyone think this inflicting damage translates to more acceptance or being seen as more human or equal?
They are causing a bigger problem, not change.
Videos