How to “pass” in theatre: The “removable” aspects of identity.
Would you ask a Muslim actress to remove her hijab? If the character demanded it, if she were cast in a role that required the actor to not be wearing a hijab, would you ask her to do it? This is a question that has been on my mind for many months. And no one seems to be able to answer it.
I’m sitting in my car with Kathrin Bizarro, driving around the loop after a rehearsal. We’re just driving and talking. She’s had a rough day, and wanted to talk to me about it instead of going right back to her dorm. She’s just had a very difficult conversation with her director about her bracelet, and having to remove it for her role. “I mean, I get it. You want to respect the Amish, make the play as realistic as possible. The Amish don’t wear jewelry. But… it’s the way they treated me, you know? Like… not like a human. Like not a person,” she says. “They’re all like ‘At some point you’re going to have to take it off for a role. If you’re being difficult about it, you’re gonna have a hard time getting cast.’ Like, is that a threat? I mean, I know they’re not gonna fire me, we’re too far into the process for that. But like, I’m a person, you know? And, like, you think this,” she points at the bracelet, “is gonna stop me from getting roles? There are people out there who are stopped from getting roles because of the color of their skin. They can’t get roles because they’re black, or whatever. This is a part of me, of my people, my faith, but I can take this off. They can’t.”
I later interviewed Kathrin in more detail about the situation regarding her familial bracelet, discussed first here. In my analysis of our first interview, I raised this Hijab question somewhat in passing. Now, I find it constantly on my mind. It was inspired in part by her comment on her bracelet’s connection to her faith, and in part by her statement about the unremovable nature of racial identity. Identity construction is a complex, layered thing, specific to everyone on a personal, individual level. At what juncture are parts of our identity “removable?”
The ability for an actor to be a chameleon is of utmost importance in the theatrical world. You always take a part of yourself, your identity, your personality into the role with you. That’s how you make it real. How you “pass” as that character. But you have to be able to transform and adapt that part of yourself to inhabit another being — another fully-realized individual. That is certainly the burden of the actor. But the ability, the willingness, to see that individual transform and accept them as this new character — to perceive them as “passing” — is the burden of the audience. There are unfortunately undeniable limiting factors in this regard. An actor cannot shed their race. This is why we rarely see actors of color in plays written in or before the 20th Century. It’s “not realistic” that a black man would be a young Russian banker in the 1800s, so “a black man can’t play Torvald in A Doll’s House.” It’s not realistic that a young Amish girl would wear a gold coptic orthodox bracelet, so “she has to get it removed before we open.” It is a tragedy all-too common in the theatre world that we are so set on what “makes sense” or is “realistic” or “faithful” that we limit actors. We ask them to change what they can to fit a role, and if there’s something they can’t change? They’re out. Don’t get me wrong, as a theatre artist I totally understand a respect the need for faithfulness to the script and the artistic vision. But how far does that faithfulness extend? How far do we go in asking actors to change themselves, change their identity? And why are we so quick to ask them to give those parts of themselves up?
Identity is formed by numerous, uncountable factors in one’s life. Actors, particularly actors of color, are constantly required to change, remove, and reconfigure their identities to “pass” as the character they are playing. We must begin to analyze what aspects of identity we view as “removable” and why, and what we perceive as “passing” for a character. Before we consider if we would ask a muslim actress to remove her Hijab for a role, we need to stop and think about why we think we must ask her to do so. We must also consider what impact this imperative to “pass” has on the actors themselves. Kathrin had to remove her bracelet to “pass” as an Amish girl. That didn’t remove her coptic orthodox faith. But it did change her.
