----- Original Message -----
clipped from from Colette Conroy:
>
Theatre scholars and practitioners are fond of
> claiming that on stage any person or object can represent any character or
> object. Although cross-gender casting is an accepted tool of theatrical
> performance, it is not common for disabled performers to take roles which
> are not specifically written as disabled characters. There is no reason
why
> Hamlet shouldn't be played by a disabled person, is there?
Colette (and now Timothy who weighed in before I finished my thought),
Your comment started me on a different train of thought: An interesting
parallel might be to ask the same question about "race" -- can a white
person play a black person or vice-versa? My personal opinion is that when
the movie/play is not about "race" then anyone (with talent) can play any
role -- e.g., the recent remake of Cinderella by Disney cast characters
irrespective of "race." Or, as you say, there is no reason a disabled person
shouldn't play Hamlet. However, could a non-Dane play Hamlet or a non-male
play Claudius? We don't question whether Hamlet can be played by a non-Dane.
Would the non-male playing Claudius be made up to appear male, and, if not,
her marriage to Gertrude would have a slightly different spin from the
original (but then, gender is a more powerful social construction than
national origin). Or, could a really talented non-male play a male role
without make-up and evince in me emotions appropriate to the play? (i.e., I
wouldn't get hung up in wondering if the actor "really" was male.) The
original question was whether or not a particular person (in this thread,
Toulouse Lautrec) ought to be played only by an actor with the same physical
characteristics. Somehow I can't picture a biography of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., with a white actor portraying him (and certainly not in
"blackface") but perhaps that is because eradicating racism was an important
part of his life and his color was a critical part of who he was or,
perhaps, because I am still racist even though I have tried to change.
Sadly, I can't think of a famous black person in the US where color wasn't
part of who he/she was -- but then, that's because the US is a racist
society and color is always noticed (e.g., I noticed it in the remake of
Cinderella even though "race" was irrelevant to the story). And Timothy
noticed it by questioning the color of the character rather than of the
actor ("However, he [Laurence Olivier] should not be excluded simply because
of the color of his skin. After all, perhaps Othello was a light-skinned
Moor, no?") but nonetheless assumed a "color-match" between actor and
character.
Lilah
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