Finding My Type
By Ariana Milian
I grew up on the stage. My mom put me in dance from the moment I could walk and taught me how to sing from the moment I could talk. She was a theater major in college, so it was only appropriate that I started to perform in musicals when I was younger. In the world of theatre, everyone is divided into their casting types, based on the way they come off to the creative team and the average audience members. Factors into casting types can include vocal range, physical appearance, and personality, and some examples of casting types are “the ingenue,” “the best friend,” and “the leading man.” Directors and producers often use casting types as a vantage point to determine what character that person will be in the show they are trying to cast.
My casting type is the ingenue, sort of like the Disney princess meets the supporting lead role. However, the way others see my casting type is very different from the way I see myself. In fact, the entire issue with casting and casting types is that directors, producers, and actors put themselves into a box. By extension, I put myself into a box that I struggled for a long time to understand.
I never thought that I fit into any sort of box. My mom’s family is Polish and Russian and my dad’s family is from Cuba, and when I audition for roles that fit my type, I have been deemed “too ethnic.” However, when I audition for roles that are traditionally ethnic, I’m deemed “too white.” I would go to auditions and be turned away because I didn’t “fit” in the role or with the cast. When I auditioned for a local production of West Side Story in my hometown of Fort Lauderdale, I was turned away because I didn’t fit their idea of a Hispanic woman. I wasn’t loud or brown enough and I don’t speak Spanish. It sometimes felt as though I didn’t fit anywhere.
That is, until I met Nina Rosario. Nina is a character in Lin Manuel Miranda’s first musical called In the Heights, which centers around a primarily Hispanic block of Washington Heights, New York in the early 2000’s. Nina is Puerto Rican, the first in the community to go to college, and everyone in her community admires and is proud of her. When the audience first meets her, she is explaining to the audience that she dropped out of college and is trying to figure out how she is going to tell her parents and the community. She is quietly resilient, somewhat stubborn, determined, modest, vulnerable, and dynamic- she’s my dream role. Her voice is sweet, yet unsteady as she tries to determine the path of her future. She falls in love with Benny, an employee at her father’s taxi dispatch, but her father forbids her from being with him because he is not Hispanic.
The role of Nina Rosario was originated on Broadway by Mandy Gonzalez, who is currently playing Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton. Mandy is a lot like me- her dad is a Mexican immigrant and her mom is a Jewish girl from the valley. She was a guest on the podcast Latina to Latina, where she described what it was like for her growing up with two different cultural backgrounds, how she balanced it, and how it affected her when she went on auditions. When I listened to that podcast, I felt like I wasn’t alone in the world of not fitting into the box that directors wanted me in, and it was incredibly freeing.
One of the most important things I’ve learned from my experiences is that if I don’t fit into the box others want me to, then I need to create my own box. I learned how to be completely and unapologetically myself. Every role I play and will play is defined by what I bring to it, and so I get to create my own role in every show I perform. For example, if I were to perform Nina’s role, I wouldn’t want to be imitating Mandy performing Nina. Although I admire Mandy and her performance, audiences have already seen it. I would need to study Nina and create my own interpretation of who she is. I used to think that being unique was a huge disadvantage, but I learned over time that it is more of a blessing than a curse.
I continue to always see a place for myself no matter where I am, and I’ve learned to stop trying to force myself into a box I’ll never fit in. Instead, I have begun to understand and accept that uniqueness is my type, my voice, and my place on the stage.
