Thursday, June 24, 2010

Accckkk

Location: The couch
Listening to: KIM POSSIBLE! :)
Days til College: 67


Well, this is awesome. There's a new theater company in my town. It just started this summer and it's a community theater for my area of town. For their first production, they decided to put on Miss Saigon, which is an incredible show with beautiful music and a wonderful message. The directors decided to colorblind cast, which means that even though a good portion of the cast is meant to be Asian, they weren't going to base who got what part based on race.

They ended up casting this phenomenal vocalist as Kim - the lead female, a young Vietnamese woman who falls in love with an American GI. And they ended up casting a Caucasian girl to play her. Now, one of the Asian girls who auditioned is causing a huge stink because there was also a very good Asian girl who tried out who ended up getting cast as the supporting female lead. She got cast this way because she is a better dancer and that role is more dance-heavy, and her vocals were not quite as strong as the other girl and everything is sung in this show.

Now, the girl who got cast as the supporting female has no problem with the lead being white. She's very happy with the role she has and is very happy for the girl who got Kim. This other girl is just complaining because she thinks the directors were being racist and unfair when they cast a white girl as the lead. It's true that our area has a lot of Hmong people and it would have been very possible to cast the show in a racially-correct way. But colorblind casting is more fair, because it ensures that the actors and actresses who are best for certain parts get them and aren't disregarded because of their heritage.

So the girl who is causing a ruckus started a group on Facebook to boycott the show because the directors are racist and is causing a lot of trouble for the new theater group. This is their very first production and it's possible that they might start getting a lot of bad publicity because of this one girl. This one girl in a cast of 40 or more who has a problem with how it's been cast.

Ack. It just pisses me off when people are like that. She's so full of righteous indignation that she refuses to see how single-minded she's being. I really hope someone (possibly one of the directors) talks to her and makes her understand that they were not trying to be 'racist' or anything. Because she's only seeing it from her point of view.

Bah humbug.

2 comments:

  1. Quick way to satisfy her complaints. The next play they put on should be an all Asian production of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or if you believe that there is so such thing as BAD press, this might bring a backlash of support to the production.

    It is unfortunate that no one can do anything these days without having someone hate on it.

    ReplyDelete