The public debate on non-traditional casting

Tony Nardi's email to Don Rubin following the public debate on non-traditional casting, with a commentary by Nick Mancuso.

November 22, 2010 
Subject: The panel

Dear Don Rubin,

I don't know about you, but I was very surprised at last night's turnout. I thought that by arriving so close to 5:00PM I would risk not getting in. As it turned out there were only a dozen people in attendance, if that.

THAT perhaps is the most important statistic, last night's actual turnout.

It actually felt like the many Letter presentations I did in Toronto in 2007 when only a dozen people or less would show up. With the Letters, the actor (me) at times threatened to outnumber the audience; with yesterday, the 5-person panel risked outnumbering the audience.

Does this mean the subject matter is irrelevant? Not at all. It is vitally relevant. It does mean, however, that, problem notwithstanding, people out there do not believe panel discussions can address the problem.

As Nick (Mancuso) said yesterday, it's all about perception. And there is a huge perception problem.

The other important statistic is the fact that Kamal was apparently the first and only theatre critic 'of colour' to work at the Globe and Mail - in its history.  Considering that Kamal was not born in Canada... this essentially means that no Canadian-born theatre critic "of colour' was ever hired by the Globe... This is a stat worthy of South Africa during apartheid, not of a multicultural Canada.

Telling yesterday was Playwright Djanet Sears' story, when, a number of years ago,  hoping she could be seen for a role in a Chekhov play at the Shaw Festival, got this response from then artistic director Christopher Newton: "You know there simply weren't black people living in Chekhov's Russia" 

Djanet Sears, if you recall, apparently understood the dilemma Newton found himself in.

I didn't. That's why I asked Djanet, "Did you ever think of asking Newton how many white Canadians with phony English accents lived in Chekhov's Russia?"

The house laughed, if you recall. Not because what I said was funny. They had not previously considered that what Newton and gang had been doing for years (at Shaw) was  non-traditional casting, but were reserving it for a few (white English Canadians).

The victim - it seems - gets used to believing the abuser is the norm, the standard. It had never occurred to Djanet - and many others - including everyone else in the room, that non-traditional casting in this country started when English-Canadians and French-Canadians, in other words the two mainstream cultures, chose to perform plays from foreign writers with funny (foreign) accents on stage. It was NORMAL, traditional, for white English Canadians to play Russians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, etc., usually and always with an affected English accent (go figure). The minute a non-English Canadian, those of different ethnic backgrounds and colour, wanted - expected - equal treatment, the whole issue of "non-traditional" casting was raised, as if it were a new, groundbreaking discovery and the mainstream would now have to make room for it. Unbelievable.

If more than 80% of the plays performed in Ontario (professional and amateur theatre combined) are from the British and American 'hit' list and canon,  'white' English-Canadians have been practicing non-traditional casting from day one, since most of them are neither British nor American. The pathology, the sickness, is in the fact that mainstream Canada, and even those not in the mainstream, like Djanet Sears, are so accustomed to accepting non-traditional casting as a norm (as traditional) when it pertains to those belonging to the so-called two founding nations, and see it as different, odd, new, abnormal, when it includes those outside the two founding nations. This is why Christopher Newton could make a racist comment (and get away with it), not even aware that he was being racist, and so out of touch with reality that he actually believed that white Canadians with phony British accents were a norm in Russia and that Russians would agree with him. 

Absent last night, sadly, was any discussion on power and politics, that those who control the public purse and institutions, unfortunately, have, for decades, embraced, organically, Christopher Newton's logic and reasoning. But history teaches us, if anything, that those who have the political power, and therefore the public purse strings (especially when both are held by those who firmly believe they have cultural and ethnic entitlement), if they do not share it equally will eventually force the 'others' to wrest it from them. Some of the great classics deal with this very subject. The not-too distant horror in Bosnia (Sarajevo) demonstrated how easily a celebrated multicultural state can dive to hell in a second. Artists from the former Yugoslavia living in Vancouver reminded me of this when I was shooting My Father's Angel in '98. They found our Canadian naiveté (and political immaturity) baffling and arrogant.

For those yesterday who believed (and maintained) that some subject matters belong (strictly) to a previous generation, that they have no relevancy today, they have a poor knowledge of history. History shows that the world does not move forward; it simply repeats itself. The issues repeat themselves and we're (collectively) too stupid (or scared) to move forward (by choosing not to deal with them). And if we have not advanced from when Tyrone Guthrie said in the late 1950s "English Canada will have no culture to speak of if it does not reflect the climate, the landscape and the people with whom it shares both" we have no one to blame but ourselves.

I thought that Antoni Cimolino and Kamal were refreshing voices. What they said should have been a starting point for a debate that, in a sense, never took off. In my opinion, you as the moderator, could have provoked the debate to go further given the 'polite' trepidation among the panelists.  How we discuss our theatre reflects in many ways the theatre we have. The odd thing is that academics are generally more interested in keeping score on these topics than theatre practitioners. Theatre practitioners do not make the same money as university professors; they have a tough time trying to make ends meet.  They're IN it, for the most part, and do not have the luxury of stepping outside of it. That's no excuse however.

Our theatre scene is essentially a fear-based facsimile of other people's culture. We're often drowning in second-hand - borrowed - culture. When our video stores place Canadian and Québec films in the foreign film category, what else is there to say?

A brief word about rants... since  Andrew Moodie brought it up, and feared delivering (falling into) one.   I think 99% of people hate rants. Always have. Throughout history. The paradox is that history also shows that 99% of people love rants, but usually after the fact, with a 30-year to a 50-year distance. Our universities are filled with professors earning good money on the backs of rants made years before ...all the way back to the big bang.
Thanks for yesterday.


Sincerely,


Tony

N.B.  Please see Nick Mancuso' comment below.

Begin forwarded message:

tony, after yesterdays panel on non-traditional casting, which orginally it seems was supposed to have been about "people of color" in really it seems about the inclusion and expansion, of women, colored folks, hispanics, etc-within the framework of a multi-colored nation which as of yet does not truly reflect, its rich and varied people- certainly worthwhile discussions and worthy of an attempt to implement into a culture which still mostly reflects the founding two nations, to say nothing of the indigenous people- it seems  to me that it is almost impossible to affect change as long as the cultural industres for the most part are influenced and funded by govt agencies which have mandates of control and lobbies of vested interest in the creation of culture, theatre, painting, poetry, novels etc...
as i pointed out in the Q&A right after the panel statements and was rather quickly silenced, in the ususal manner- the essential difference bewtween the american and the canadian mandates is that there is little to zero discsussion about american culture in the states, at least  within the creative communities, unless of course it manifests as a religious or for the most part right wing ideological idea of what consitutes a patriotic american, and for the most part its not a pretty picture-

personally i dont feel that that the issue of cultural mandates of one kind or another that do not entail freedom of expression on all levels in cluding the utter freedom of a white othello or a black juliet amount to much in terms of any ultimate creative gain

culture can not and should not be mandated from above, or from any prefixed idea f what should ot should not exist but will of course be influence from the direction of where the checks come in frm-

as long as canadian culture, so called is funded by a government system at at current rates of supprt amount to 4 - to 20 percent of the total dollar that actually goes into the pockets of the artists- there isnt much hope and it is tokenism and welfare culture at its finest

as chung-stzu, the chinese sage wrote;

"where beaurcrats advance, the people are harmed"
i would hasten to add- artists of all stripes, color, denomination, racial original and pont point of birth including england and france-

pax

nickm



nick mancuso