Quality vs diversity: why not both?
“I mean, if he doesn’t fill their One Black Guy per Show requirement next semester, then I might have a shot.”
My friend Devin has always been a joker. He rarely seems to take things seriously, and most stuff rolls off his back with a witty barb. But this comment had a little more barb than wit behind it. Devin is a student in the theatre department. He acts, writes, and directs. He most recently Assistant Stage Managed the department’s production of The Mail Order Bride. He is also one of the fewer than ten black students in the theatre department this year. In this group of ten or so students, at least five of them identify and train as actors in the department. If it were so many, then why does Devin joke about there being a singular black guy in the department? Perhaps it’s because in the last three years, only one black actor has been consistently cast.
We’ve mentioned my friend Ramon several times in other pieces. While editing and sorting through my vignettes to this point, I noticed this and asked myself “why?” In searching for the answer to this question, I realized that it’s because Ramon has been the only black man consistently cast in productions over the last three years. He has appeared in These Shining Lives, Voracious, Rhinoceros, and Suddenly, Last Summer. Despite being in the same year as another actor of color, Steven Gondre-Lewis, he is the only black man who has been consistently cast. Gondre himself, graduating in May after four years in the program, is only completing his second show at UMBC with The Mail Order Bride.
Devin’s comment struck a chord with me. This is an individual who has many, many talents. He’s been praised by professors and directors for his abilities, and he’s done well in the department. It’s not like he’s been shorted on work, he just had a very large role on The Mail Order Bride’s production staff. Yet he still feels that on stage, there is only room for “One Black Guy per Show.” What does this implication of limitation from a rather accomplished individual say? What other avenues and opportunities for work are there? The answer came to mind rather quickly: production staff. While we may have a limited number of roles to offer each semester, surely the production side of our department must have ample opportunities. So I began my research. Things started looking up a bit. Devin worked at ASM on Mail Order, Liz Ung was the ASM and Assistant Director on Suddenly, Last Summer, Neda Yeganeh was the Stage Manager for that show. Neda had consistently worked as backstage crew and in production positions for several years. Production staff was looking up.
Then I asked another question: how had they come into these roles? I knew that both Devin and Liz had auditioned, and been asked to fill their roles when they weren’t cast. So I asked Neda. She had gotten into the production side of theatre after acting in the department hadn’t worked out. She stuck with it and eventually rose up to Stage Management. A rather odd pattern had begun to emerge. Actors of color, who hadn’t been cast, whom there hadn’t been “a role for” (as Devin had been told) took over production responsibilities. Responsibilities that hadn’t been filled by successful applicants.
It’s not uncommon for actors in the theatre department to take over production responsibilities when they are not cast. It would be irresponsible and dishonest to say that it only happens to actors of color. But the trend that emerged, of actors of color falling into production positions due to their not being cast, is worrying. Gondre was only cast for the second time in four years this semester. Liz Ung, who has auditioned consistently, has been cast only once, as a background character in Voracious. Neda was essentially weeded out of the acting pool entirely, and indoctrinated into production positions. If the behind-the-scenes work, which seems to be a good source of experience for some of my subjects, is primarily fed by failed or unaccepted attempts to be cast, what does that say?
We’ve heard time and again, from various sources, that UMBC’s theatre department is woefully lacking in diversity and minority students. While this may be somewhat true, especially in comparison to other departments or environments within UMBC, it is not an excuse. We cannot act like we don’t have diverse actors auditioning, or diverse students in our department. It’s a matter of how they are being used, and how they are being represented. It’s a matter of if they’re “good enough actors” to be cast. While the quality of their acting certainly must be a factor, especially if our Theatre Department wants to produce exceptional work, to write off diversity in the name of objective quality is irresponsible and violent. These artists are good enough to make it to callbacks, to be cast in background roles, and to fulfill much-needed production positions. What makes them not good enough to be cast? To say that the department has an outright bias against casting actors of color is unfair and untrue. But to say that they don’t perpetuate a violent narrative is equally untrue. Consciously or unconsciously, for some reason or another, there “aren’t enough roles” or “aren’t the right roles” for the minority actors in our department. To only cast one black actor consistently is to say to our audiences, to the community, that our department only has access to one “good” actor of color. This is simply not true.
