Because of history. Tolstoy's novel is now far enough in the past and so enshrined in the "eternity" of the canon that there is room for casting beyond the realistic. We aren't there yet with "Dreamgirls" and with race in the United States. We can't have a mixed race or white "Raisin in the Sun" yet (except, perhaps, in acting or other performance classes) because we are still too close to the segregation of the late 50s in Chicago (which still lingers in that city, alas) and to ask us to imagine the white actors in those roles, particularly with speech patterns of black vernacular English that Hansberry used, would feel like a minstrel show. I suppose if one wanted to do an avant-garde deconstruction of Hansberry's play, such casting could have a kind of Brechtian effect, but I need to be persuaded what would be gained from that. That's where I think Bruce Norris'"Clybourne Park" was such a useful play (whatever some think of him as a playwright--I happen to admire his work)--it engaged the play from a white person's perspective and made that conscious and apparent, without coopting the reality of Hansberry's own drama.
So, in fifty years, maybe a white Effie would work. Not yet. |
