This year, of the six-hundred and eleven actors I saw perform in eight-seven productions, eighty-four of these were people of colour. This sounds like a fair percentage but you have to look at where the numbers lie. Curated festivals that actively encourage diversity in their programming (Next Wave and the Melbourne Festival) are where the bulk of these numbers come from, both in terms of their cast sizes and their representation. Sometimes, during open access festivals such as MICF and Fringe, I seem to be wading through a sea of white faces. That’s not to say that these festivals are devoid of people of colour but where I am working, in the hubs, the stages are undeniably pale. Only the whitest make it to the centre of the island. I didn’t see any one-man shows where a person of colour was that one ‘man’. I wonder about this. What is it about a single black man or a solitary asian woman that seems unrelatable? Or unentertaining? It is the big casts that make me most uncomfortable. I saw a MacBeth performed by eighteen, glowing white faces. Worse still, I saw a musical with a cast of nineteen. The solitary Asian-Australian played the maid. Most of the non-white performers can be found in shows about race. Colour-blind casting is apparently still a distant dream in Australia. .. I posted this in my most recent School for Birds post but Im not sure that was the right place for it, as it is a stand alone observation. Ive been gathering these numbers all year and Im still trying to work out how best to respond to them. Playwrights and directors, make 2015 the year when you push for your stages to represent Australia, in all its diversity and complexity.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 09:14:53 +0000
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