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| re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" | |
| Posted by: wisebear 06:01 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
| In reply to: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" - chrismpls 10:43 pm EDT 06/19/18 | |
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| I'm troubled by the nature of the protest. I suppose the purists believe that the actors onstage are complicit because they didn't quit rather than don yellowface, but I find that unrealistic and unfair. Protest outside. You'll make your point. Kudos to the performers who persevered during the protest, doing what they were hired and directed to do. I'm also wondering if the rules must be as rigid for a revue, and where that leads in terms of cabaret performance. Of course I'd never cast a full production of Flower Drum Song with non-Asian actors. But does that mean a white man can't perform You Are Beautiful in an R&H revue? Can any white woman ever perform Summertime or Love Look Away? I'm really asking, and not for a friend. I perform songs from Ain't Misbehavin, Eubie, Raisin....is that offensive because I'm white? |
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| re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" | |
| Posted by: NeoAdamite 03:37 pm EDT 06/21/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" - wisebear 06:01 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
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| There is no definitive answer to your question, but I have a story. Back in the '90s I saw Maureen McGovern do a nightclub act at an East Side venue. She sang a Gershwin medley, and when she started in on "I Got Plenty o' Nothin'" it was impossible not to flinch at the contrast between the wealthy audience, expensively attired vocalist, and the POV of the song. In theory it could have been meant as a taunt to the audience, but there was no sign of such an intention. |
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| re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 10:22 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" - wisebear 06:01 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
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| Others will have their own answers, but .I'd say that you're fine performing those songs in a revue, as long as you aren't representing yourself as a person of color. If you darkened your skin or changed your voice to sound more black, then I would say you were being inappropriate. The issue here is that they were performing the material as it is seen in the original show, with a white woman playing Asian. I'd be curious to see if there would have been the same reaction if all three leads in this scene had been Asian (or even non-white), with the dancing ensemble fully diverse. |
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| re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" | |
| Posted by: mikem 11:53 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Protest during St. Louis "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" - Singapore/Fling 10:22 pm EDT 06/20/18 | |
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| As Singapore/Fling said, everyone will have different answers, but I agree with his general premise that there's a big difference between a white person singing a song as himself/herself vs singing it as a person of color. For me the issue with the King and I excerpt is the weird accent. If the white actress playing the role spoke in her normal voice, there would be a discussion about whether actors of color should be given the opportunity to play people of color, but that's a different conversation. Having the white actress play the role with this weird accent is much more problematic. As we talked about down below, the broken English of the text makes it difficult for any actress to play the role using her normal voice, so the simple solution here would have been to hire an Asian-American actress. | |
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