Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Isaiah Wooden

As evidenced by the recent controversy around The Nightingale, The Orphan of Zhao, the Berlin production of Bruce Norris’s play Clybourne Park, which was shuttered after Norris learned that a white actor was set to play an African American character and would do so in blackface, and Stephen Adly Guirgus’s public criticism of the casting of two white actors as the Latin@ leads in TheaterWork’s production of  his play, The Motherf*cker with the Hat, the uses and limits of nontraditional, multicultural, colorblind, cross-racial casting practices are debated perennially. Ultimately, these are debates about the politics of representation and visibility—and, indeed, they’re often about access, opportunity and, undoubtedly, capital. They take place in and against a system that still understands whiteness as universal or neutral: that is, in and against institutional structures that are frequently unwilling to do the necessary work to make space for bodies of color or, when they do, are incapable of doing so without trafficking in the kinds of fantasies that refuse to accommodate difference and, perhaps more problematically, refuse to even recognize inequalities or inequities. To be sure, I am glad that all of the casting practices for the productions cited above were met with resistance. Indeed, I am especially appreciative of Guirgus’s challenge to that oft-repeated, insidious refrain that “the very best actors available” were cast. It is a refrain that I despise precisely because, in its parroting of conservative meritocratic rhetoric, it not only indicates a disinclination for checking spots [of unexamined privilege], it also suggests an unwillingness to consider the possibility of their existence: really, why is it that “the very best actors available” are usually white?

Still, to the question: as a director committed to promoting cross-cultural exchange in and through my work, I believe that there are both uses for and limits to nontraditional, multicultural, colorblind, cross-racial casting. The key for any director is to remain cognizant of both—the uses and the limits—when making casting decisions. Given the dearth of roles written specifically for actors of color and given the dearth of instances in which actors of color are hired to play roles traditionally performed by white actors, I am of the mind that, if a script describes a character as belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group, then efforts should be made to cast a performer that meets that description. And, if a different choice is made, then I think that decision should be framed or explained in some way or otherwise be subject to intense scrutiny. Chiefly, I think it’s crucial for directors and those making casting decisions to always understand that the decision to, say, cast Denzel Washington as Brutus or to hire a white actor to portray an African American character in blackface is a political one. Accordingly, it’s important to scrutinize the politics and ideologies informing the decision-making process.

Of course, I feel like we can’t talk about theater without talking about August Wilson and his legacy. What do you think his legacy is to theater and to both Black literary arts and the larger world of literary arts? And who are the other playwrights of color do you think we need to look out for?

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