Sydney Theatre Company Director Lee Lewis appeared on page three of Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald calling for more racially diverse castings.
The article by reviewer Bryce Hallett centres around an essay by Lewis entitled "Cross-racial casting: Changing the Faces of Australian Theatre." The SMH forgot to mention that it was published by Currency House as part of their Platform Papers series, which you can find more about here.
The SMH reports that "Lewis argues that the failure of the Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare Company and Company B Belvoir to cast diversely risks marginalising ethnic groups".
Lewis goes on to say that "a multicultural stage costs money and, as theatres see their funding under constant threat and their hopes for the future dwindle, they decide to mimic the government's isolationist immigration policies and retreat to [a] conservative, risk-averse, funding-safe, white-casting agenda."
It's an extremely interesting and fraught topic that Lewis raises and I won't say too much until I read the entire essay. Of course, this is not the first time that this issue has been raised. Almost always the debate then dives into one about conservative programming by the major performing arts companies which they quickly brush off as nonsense. But the fact is that the amount of plays that constantly get programmed that are straight off the plane from New York and London is enormously aggravating and is getting oh-so-predictable.
And the Independent sector, where Lewis comes from, doesn't fair that much better.
Currency House's timing couldn't be more perfect, in the week that the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest census results showing the increased cultural diversity of the country.
Other interesting debates about race include one that was raised a couple of years ago when the BBC director-general described the corporation as 'hideously white'. Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert wrote an excellent paper in 2002 that looked at the history of our multicultural, post colonial and inter-cultural society and how theatre did and didn't reflect that change.
The Australia Council also commissioned a research paper in 1998 on 'the representation of non-English speaking background people in theatre, film and television' which you can view a summary of here.
Of course this doesn't even cover the wide range of forums and discussions that the theatre community have been holding that cry poor to the white institutional theatres. You can find various types here, here and here.
Image: cjnetworks.com
Monday, 2 July 2007
Racey Issues
Posted by Nicholas Pickard at 1:10 am
Labels: American Plays, British Plays, General Comment, multicultural arts, News, Sydney Theatre Company, Theatre
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6 comments:
Like you, haven't read the Lee lewis speech yet so can't comment. It does seem a bit strange however to use Paula Arundel as an example. Having seen her in "The Three Sisters" and soon to appear in both "Love Lies Bleeding" and "Blackbird" in roles previously played by white actors, she's not exactly someone who never gets cast in cross-race roles.
Thank you for this, Nicholas. I am afraid I'm going to have to take it up on my blog as soon as I've read the paper too. It's an issue, as you can understand, perpetually somewhat close to my heart.
(And thanks for your contribution to the Sydney/Melbourne speculation... I'm still pondering the whole thing.)
I think this is a wonderful essay, not only for what Lewis says, but for what the very act of her saying it implies about the culture of STC. It would be very easy for a disgruntled "TWLP"-actor to make these claims, and just as easy to dismiss them as so much personal baggage. But Lewis speaks from inside the established theatre community. She’s an experienced white director working at STC. Robyn Nevin is starring in her next show – I doubt you can get much more “inside” Sydney theatre than that! A bit of Googling tells me she’s also the STC’s current Richard Wherrett Fellow, which is apt considering Wherrett famously expressed his own concerns back in 2000 about local theatre’s Anglocentrism. I’d actually all but given up on companies like STC ever being willing to reflect critically on their own practices, let alone having the courage to do so publicly and in print. Kudos to Lewis for saying the unsayable, and kudos to the powers that be at STC for supporting her. It’s just so refreshing to see STC getting engaged in a really serious artistic issue and making a case for change. I notice, too, that Neil Armfield (SMH, 02/07/07) from Belvoir gives in-principle support to Lewis’s argument, while pointing out some progress and noting the difficulties of prescriptive solutions. Sounds like a very important conversation to me - one that allows Sydney’s established theatres to reclaim some of the reputation they once had for innovation and intelligence. That’s ground they've often seemed willing to cede to the fringe. Perhaps Sydney’s established theatres aren’t conservative graveyards after all.
I'd be interested to read the whole article before I comment fully, but Lewis seems to be speaking about casting (as opposed to programming). I would argue that the programming of these big companies is the bigger problem. Often because themes of race are actually quite common, but in the 'oh-so-predictable' (I agree Mr Pickard) sense that they are often critiques of white middle class life. I would argue that urban stories about (primarily) white middle-class people would result in some anglo-centric casting because of the subject matter. This is a programming problem.
From my experience the majority of drama school acceptances are white-anglo young people. This might be another reason for anglo-centrism in casting by the big theatres.
Finally, how does having an anglo-oriented casting policy - whether it is unspoken or not - assist in gaining funding? The OZCO (for example) makes it very clear that they will particularly support projects which reflect Australia's diverse ethnicities and Indigenous culture. I don't understand her point here. Some companies, such as Western Sydney's Urban Theatre Projects put the refection of cultural diversity at the top of their social/artistic concerns, and they have been well supported by public funding in recent years. The middle-tier of arts organisations are doing what Lewis is citing a lack of. And they often serve a different demographic (e.g. Western Sydney) the big companies don't.
I appreciate Lewis' concern here, but I'm not convinced this is simply about Anglo casting in the big theatres. Anyway, I will wait to read her full article before I comment further.
I think Steven is quite right to point out that it is a good thing that companies such as STC, MTC, and Belvoir are giving serious consideration to this issue--well demonstrated by the mere fact of being responsible for lifting someone of Lewis' mindset out of the hinterlands of Independent theatre and giving her a major mainstage production with major league actors, including an aboriginal woman playing a role that is no way race specific. I also believe that all the goodwill in the world cannot overnight create a situation in which there is a deep enough talent pool of non-white actors in order to fill a large proportion of roles. This is the same problem places like Britain and the US went through twenty years ago, when the awareness of the disparity was great but the sheer numbers had not yet passed through drama schools and film training to create a critical mass of non-white actors. That is no longer the case, and as a result there is a much greater diversity in casting in those two countries than here. Like in most things, we are undergoing our transformation twenty years after the Big World. But with the dialogue remaining positive, we'll get there.
While I have not read the essay i have worked in the 'multicultural arts' for over twenty years and find it tedious and boring that after so many years, Australian theatre is still the vestige of a somewhat small and inconsequential white Anglo elite. I have always found more faces lime mine and my cohorts in American film, television and theatre. Worse, theatre in Australia is poorly marketed, if at all to culturally diverse communities, something I find ridiculous considering that many have a far greater tradition of theatre and performance than Anglo Australians and commercial institutions see them i.e, multicultural Australians, as the link to a changing and increasingly prosperous globally sharp multicultural Australian community. Sadly most of what graces our stages with exceptions reflects the nature of many of those who steer Australian theatre - limp, lifeless and sad. what is worse the number of Australians of diverse backgrounds with exceptional talent that do not get a chance on stage, unless there is a stereotype to play is criminal!
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