Sometimes the only reasonable response is outrage and a refusal to even consider discussion.
That’s not a quote I found somewhere. It’s hard for me to believe I’m saying that, but it’s also hard for me to believe that I was in a situation that called for such a response. My heart still beats fast when I talk about it.
That’s not a quote I found somewhere. It’s hard for me to believe I’m saying that, but it’s also hard for me to believe that I was in a situation that called for such a response. My heart still beats fast when I talk about it.
I quit a show this part week—just a couple of days. We had auditions earlier this week, and the director, choreographer and I had cast the show. We were all very much in agreement about the cast. The other two seemed to be very excited about the cast, and I was really looking forward to doing the show. It was going to be my “fun” show this year.
The day after callbacks, and after we’d settled on the cast, the director called and said the three of us need to get together and talk because there was an issue with the casting. I immediately thought that maybe someone had to drop out, or that we hadn’t seen on someone’s audition sheet that they would only accept a certain role...something like that. But that wasn’t the issue.
There’s an interracial (black and white) couple in the show—actually two couples—and the story includes a small town mayor’s response: that those people aren’t appropriate for each other. And the show goes on to basically say “why can’t we all get along?” (“If I can dream of a better land where all my brothers walk hand in hand...tell me why can’t my dream come true.”) There are optional lines of dialogue in an index at the back of the script for productions that don’t have the racial mix required. It makes the “inappropriate” couples of different classes, as opposed to different races.
We didn’t have the right sort of turn out at auditions to cast the show as written with the racial differences. But we did cast a black guy and a white girl in the leads. That’s not one of the interracial couple in the script. So we were just gonna do the class difference version, and it happened that there would be an interracial couple.
So, as you may’ve guessed, the issue that came up was that someone on the board (or some ones? I don’t know—what I heard was “the board”) expressed concern that when their audience base sees PR stuff with that casting, they just won’t come to see it.
My immediate response to the director was that if that’s their position, it is completely unacceptable and ridiculous and I will quit the show. The director and choreographer both felt the same way. The director was gonna try to get someone from the board to meet with us that evening. I thought about it and quickly realized that there’s no need for a meeting. A meeting suggests there’s a discussion to be had, but as far as I was concerned there’s no discussion to be had. The only possible thing that “the board” (or whomever the director was dealing with) could say was something like “Wow, you three are right. We’re so sorry this even came up. It’s hard to convey how horrified and embarrassed we are at our own fear and prejudice. Please forgive us.”
Well, of course, that was not the response. The next thing I heard was that the board needed to get together and have a meeting about this. And at that point, I was out. It didn’t matter what the board might eventually decide. I was done. The fact that they thought they should get together to discuss whether it’s a good idea to enable the prejudice of their community, whether to allow such a consideration to be a priority or even an element in casting (or re-casting) a show, is completely unacceptable. I wasn’t gonna wait around while that happened.
So I quit. I called the artistic director and the production manager (or some-such title) and informed them. By the time I called them, they said “Oh, I completely agree with you, and we’re not having a board meeting about this. We’ll go ahead with the casting as is.” One of them said that they “jumped the gun” a little.
It didn’t matter: jump the gun, go ahead with casting as is, whatever. I was out. I had to be out. Because I was so fucking angry that I wanted to throw things, break things, and scream profanities at passersby. I just could not fathom people wanting to sit down and discuss the possibility of instituting a racist policy. And I couldn’t imagine being part of that production having known that this had come up, and having had the reaction I had. I just couldn’t see my being able to back-pedal away from such rage and disgust.
It’s horrifyingly ironic that this happened with this particular show. It’s quite lucky for me that I had a massage scheduled for that afternoon. I don’t feel like I had a massage a couple of days ago. But that’s only because I was in such an emotional knot over this thing, and the massage helped that.
My masseuse suggested that I need to find a way to deal with extreme negative emotions other than sort of swallowing them and putting a stopper on it. I think I’m just afraid of what I’ll do if I really let that sort of thing out. I think maybe I would hurt someone—not on purpose. Or maybe it would be on purpose. Maybe what I really fear is that Mr. Hyde will emerge and say or do really awful things and hurt people.
Maybe instead of a massage I need a therapist. Or at least somebody I feel that I can really talk to about everything without their being uncomfortable.