I had a happy little accident a few days ago. I had been writing a blog post about the recent hullabaloo regarding white actors cast in a Hartford production of Stephen Adly Guirgis' "The Motherf*cker in the Hat":
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/playwright-criticizes-casting-for-production-of-the-____________-with-the-hat/
And lo and behold, it was totally erased by my faulty computer after three hours of editing it. I cursed my own existence, and gave up for the day, vowing to revisit at a later time when I was more calm. That time came today when I happened upon a fellow actor's blog regarding the issue:
http://peacockchronicles.com/
I found that the talented Carmen Pelaez summed up my experiences exactly, so I didn't have to write anything!
After you've perused these articles, I will leave you with this: I completely support Guirgis' views regarding the production and understand his anger at not giving Latino actors the opportunity to audition for this production. However, I found myself grimacing while reading about the issue, simply because of the manner in which Puerto Ricans were swept under an enormous umbrella of a certain urban type. In fact, I expected more care to be taken in using labels for a certain ethnicity from a publication as prestigious as the New York Times. Dare to dream.
It did make me realize the absolute NEED for a wider range of Hispanic characters in our media outlets. The reason the term "urban" was not used to describe the characters instead of "Puerto Rican" is because there have been no true successes on a wide scale from Puerto Rican artists to make known the wide range of walks of life that Puerto Rican society enjoys. It (obviously) is as big as any other society, as big as what they call the "white" society. There are white Puerto Ricans/Americans, there are black Puerto Ricans/Americans, there are poor Puerto Rican/Americans, there are white Puerto Rican/Americans. There are even rich-then-stock-market-crashed-and-now-poor-with-a-dark-skinned-son-but-from-light-skinned-parents Puerto Rican-Americans. I think you get the point. How odd then, that only the poor and black Hispanic population is portrayed in our movies and media outlets. How very odd.
I wonder why that is?
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/playwright-criticizes-casting-for-production-of-the-____________-with-the-hat/
And lo and behold, it was totally erased by my faulty computer after three hours of editing it. I cursed my own existence, and gave up for the day, vowing to revisit at a later time when I was more calm. That time came today when I happened upon a fellow actor's blog regarding the issue:
http://peacockchronicles.com/
I found that the talented Carmen Pelaez summed up my experiences exactly, so I didn't have to write anything!
After you've perused these articles, I will leave you with this: I completely support Guirgis' views regarding the production and understand his anger at not giving Latino actors the opportunity to audition for this production. However, I found myself grimacing while reading about the issue, simply because of the manner in which Puerto Ricans were swept under an enormous umbrella of a certain urban type. In fact, I expected more care to be taken in using labels for a certain ethnicity from a publication as prestigious as the New York Times. Dare to dream.
It did make me realize the absolute NEED for a wider range of Hispanic characters in our media outlets. The reason the term "urban" was not used to describe the characters instead of "Puerto Rican" is because there have been no true successes on a wide scale from Puerto Rican artists to make known the wide range of walks of life that Puerto Rican society enjoys. It (obviously) is as big as any other society, as big as what they call the "white" society. There are white Puerto Ricans/Americans, there are black Puerto Ricans/Americans, there are poor Puerto Rican/Americans, there are white Puerto Rican/Americans. There are even rich-then-stock-market-crashed-and-now-poor-with-a-dark-skinned-son-but-from-light-skinned-parents Puerto Rican-Americans. I think you get the point. How odd then, that only the poor and black Hispanic population is portrayed in our movies and media outlets. How very odd.
I wonder why that is?
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