Black or White

Let’s start with the fact that a playwright has actually had to ask for people to boycott theatres that allow the use of ‘blacking up.’ Let’s begin there. No, no, get out of your time machine. We’re not going back to the 1920s. In fact, you don’t even have to turn your calendar back to last week. Oh no. This is happening right now. At this very moment, theatres are getting the greasepaint out and waving it in front of actors’ faces like with a cheeky grin like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

But what’s worse is that people seem to agree.  A poll run by The Stage today has shown that 29% of respondents agreed that the use of ‘blackface’ in the theatre was completely acceptable. According to these people, it’s perfectly fine to ask a white actor to play a black role by applying black paint to their face. Apparently there’s nothing wrong with this. Apparently it’s not offensive. Apparently we’re supposed to be totally OK with all of this.

It seems that the people who allow this to happen don’t see just how insulting this is. By getting a white actor to ‘black up’ you’re basically saying to all black actors that they’re not good enough. You’d far rather get someone to PAINT THEIR FACE BLACK than find a suitable actor from the vast wealth of black actors out there. And I’m sorry but even if the amount of black actors in Germany (where this story originated) is so low that you’re finding it almost impossible to cast then I suggest you choose a different play.  And the issue isn’t just reserved to this particular piece of miscasting. It’s happening all over the bloody place. Look at the cross-gender casting at the RSC at the moment. I’ve ranted and raved about this in several blogs already so I don’t want to cover intensely well-trodden ground. However, this type of casting is just as insulting. I know that the RSC are doing it as they want to put on plays how they used to be staged but instead it’s just a big ol’ Shakespearean slap in the face to us ladyfolk. Female roles are hard enough to come by as it is so when box office smashing blokes are cast in those scant parts, it’s pretty damning. Despite what the RSC says it just feels like they’re telling us women that we’re not good enough to sell tickets or play female roles on stage.

And I appreciate the work that other companies are doing by either getting casts who are all female or all black or all Asian or all who prefer tea to coffee. But I'm not entirely convinced that it's really helping the problem. The issue should be encouraging more people from ethnic minorities to enter the profession (apart from youngish Middle Eastern actresses, that area is FULL…) and also into supporting new writing that is far more representative of the real world out there. This silly little planet of ours is far more diverse than all women playing mothers or prostitutes, all black men playing criminals and all Asian women playing those in arranged marriages. However, if you lived your life just believing everything that the world of acting tells you then, 1) get outside you fool and 2) you'd believe that those stereotypes make up this Daily Mail-esque apocalyptic world.

The German theatre in question has since denied any intentions to use the archaic technique of blacking up, saying they had learnt from previous productions that this is now unacceptable. Whether or not this is true, we may never know. However, it doesn’t excuse the fact that people out there still think it’s OK to do it. Oh how we like to think in 2012 that we are thoroughly modern and forward-thinking but, unfortunately, it seems like we’re being desperately held back too.

Race Relations

I apologise for the continuing river of rant that appears to be running through my blogs at the moment. I would love nothing more than to write about me spectacularly falling over in front of an audition panel or coming a cropper up against a fiendishly mean director. I love telling you about how I’m forced to crawl around on the floor scrabbling for stale bread or running around a church hall in a swimming costume all in the name of work but sadly I have none of those tales at the moment. The world of auditioning is eerily quiet for me at the moment so until someone asks me to partake in a pointless improvisation or the kind of drama game that pulls on all your cringe muscles, you’ll just have to put up with my whinges.

Now, I’ve talked about race issues in the world of acting before. It was an issue I hadn’t planned on revisiting for a while but after seeing the new Spider Man film, I felt it needed addressing again. The film, if you haven’t seen it, is actually pretty good. The scripting is dodgier than Made In Chelsea and it doesn’t credit the audience with even a teaspoonful of intelligence but the acting is bloody wonderful. If you’ve seen Andrew Garfield before then you’re probably already aware that he’s damn good and he therefore plays a very fine lead. And it’s not just him, pretty much everyone in the cast is very strong and extremely watchable. 

But, it’s safe to say that when it comes to race, the casting of the film is more limited than my patience during an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet. A quick look at the featured roles  in this film and you’ll quickly see that Caucasian is very much the order of the day. Apart from a couple of couple of black actors who play a taxi driver and a crane operator and have been granted perhaps one line each, there is only one other person that I spotted within the film that wasn’t Caucasian, That character was the bad guy’s equally evil helper type person (sorry if my technical jargon leaves you feeling lost and confused) who was played, sadly not particularly well, by an Asian actor. And that, my friends, was it. A New York taxi driver, a construction worker and a villain. It’s the type of casting even the Village People would steer clear of. Well done, Hollywood. Let’s get the bunting out, you’ve excelled yourself again.

This raises two very obvious points. Firstly, although I’m the first person to complain about obvious ‘box-ticking’, the lack of characters portrayed by ethnic minority actors is quite alarming. As I said, I’m not saying that every single film should be employ some sort of skewed Noah’s Ark where they ensure there’s one of every race, but a bit of diversity wouldn’t have gone amiss. And hey, maybe include at least one actress of an ethnic minority? Sorry, just a thought. I realise my lady views are pretty extreme.

But then there are also the small issue of the roles they’ve been given. The only person of any authority also happens to be evil. That’s some real nice work there, Hollywood. I’m not saying you’ve done it deliberately but still, c’mon. I’ve often mentioned the hair-tearing stereotypes when it comes to ethnic casting. If there’s a character who’s Middle Eastern then you can pretty much guarantee they’ll have terrorist tendencies or they’re in an arranged marriage. That’s it. That’s your choice. I’ve auditioned for a lot of Middle Eastern roles and not one of them has just been your normal, everyday kinda gal who gets crisps in her hair and falls over in shop doorways. Oh no. They’ve all either been terrorists or married to one or are somewhere in the chain of an arranged marriage where they’re either being forced into one, living through one or are suffering the after-effects of escaping for one. (I had to audition for such a role in a branch of McDonalds. It makes for quite the Happy Meal atmosphere when you’ve got an actress wailing about being burnt alive…) And the problem doesn’t seem to be any easier for Asian and Middle Eastern men because as far as I can tell, you often play a villain or a geek. Again, no regular roles for you my ethnic friend.

Much like the problem with the lack of diverse roles for women, I think that there’s such a lack of diversity at the top that this then trickles down into the work that is then produces. So far this year I’ve seen Prometheus, Spider Man and The Avengers at the cinema and, as far as I can remember, not one of these contained a part (excluding extras) played by an actress from an ethnic minority and they had very few parts played by men who weren’t white. I’ve also had a quick look over the blockbuster-type films I haven’t seen this year such as Men In Black 3, Snow White and The Huntsman, 21 Jump Street and Wrath of the Titans and there’s an alarming lack of ethnic actors, especially of the variety that possess boobs. The only film that has an extensive list of ethnic performers is, unsurprisingly, The Dictator, which is a film that essentially mocks the Middle East. However, for women the roles are still pretty poor. I haven’t seen it but the two main actresses within the film appear to be Megan Fox and Anna Faris and, well yeah, you know what I’m going to say…Other than that, there appear to be a small army of ‘Virgin Guards’ played by Middle Eastern looking actresses who seem to essentially play ‘sexy’ guards. As roles go, they’re not the ones that dreams are built on. 

As with every single other blog I write, I don’t have a solution to the problem that I’ve just carelessly launched into the air. And, as I’ve said countless times before, I don’t want castings to change just because everyone feels like they have to be seen ticking the right boxes. Creating a more diverse cast should be instinctive and shouldn’t need someone like me to keep wittering on about it. I don’t want to seem like an actress with a racial, sexist chip on my shoulder but if you give a girl a racist, sexist, shoulder-shaped deep-fat fryer and, apart from the sore, burnt shoulder, then the results are obvious. So please, Hollywood, do something quick because I’ve got very weak shoulders…