Race or No Race; That is the Question?
This is about a theater experiment with race matters in the post-Obama era.
The press release for the play, "Past is Present, Imperfect", has this quote by playwright Tom Minter. "I wonder. Now that we have a black president, can we tick the box of race and leave it behind as an issue? If not, how do we continue the opportunity of conversation?"
One of his own attempts has been to write a race-neutral play, casting a multi-racial family, and to push the experiment even further, he decided to have two casts of different racial mixes perform the same play before the same audience to see the outcome and reactions.
I asked the directors of the two casts if the era of post-racial theater was upon us. One of them said she didn't think so, because there is still racially-based casting, while the other didn't like the question, and said race never had anything to do with theater.
After the audience watched, there were nervous giggles, as well as carefully chosen words to describe the differences they perceived.
Judge for yourselves.
One of my earlier reports this year looked into how a diverse neighborhood in Washington D.C., still marred by race riots of the past, embraced Obama's swearing-in as soothing, both in terms of racism and economic policies.
The press release for the play, "Past is Present, Imperfect", has this quote by playwright Tom Minter. "I wonder. Now that we have a black president, can we tick the box of race and leave it behind as an issue? If not, how do we continue the opportunity of conversation?"
One of his own attempts has been to write a race-neutral play, casting a multi-racial family, and to push the experiment even further, he decided to have two casts of different racial mixes perform the same play before the same audience to see the outcome and reactions.
I asked the directors of the two casts if the era of post-racial theater was upon us. One of them said she didn't think so, because there is still racially-based casting, while the other didn't like the question, and said race never had anything to do with theater.
After the audience watched, there were nervous giggles, as well as carefully chosen words to describe the differences they perceived.
Judge for yourselves.
One of my earlier reports this year looked into how a diverse neighborhood in Washington D.C., still marred by race riots of the past, embraced Obama's swearing-in as soothing, both in terms of racism and economic policies.
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