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| Arena Stage's 2010 'Oklahoma!' set the benchmark for diversity | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 07:09 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 06:57 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| In reply to: Cast a Native American as Jud - aleck 06:31 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| In her director’s note, Molly Smith asserted that “Arena’s cast is an American tapestry, with all colors and types. African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian-Americans lived in Oklahoma at [the] beginning of the 20th century. They shared a territory but lived in separate communities. . . . Arena’s frontier is a fully cross-cultural one.” In an essay called ''Redefining America, Arena Stage & Territory Folks in a Multiracial 'Oklahoma!,''' Donatella Galella wrote: ''Team members were conscious of the multiracial implications of their [casting] decisions. … They decided that .. Jud should not be played by a black or Native American actor so as to avoid stereotypes of drunk, sexually threatening, working-class male villains of color. The creative team briefly considered casting a Native American actor as Jud because his outsider status and death would resonate with the violent treatment of indigenous peoples by the federal state. The team ultimately claimed that it did not find a suitable singing actor and expressed concerns about offending audiences with such a portrayal.'' By the way, Galella's essay also notes how ''Green Grow the Lilacs'' ends, as opposed to ''Oklahoma!'': White–Native American playwright Riggs was far more attentive to racial specificity and history in 'Green Grow the Lilacs' which has a significantly different ending from the musical version. In the play, after Curly and Jud fight and Jud dies by falling on his own knife, Curly goes to federal prison to await a formal trial. When the territory folks catch him escaping from prison, Aunt Eller persuades everyone to allow him to spend his wedding night with Laurey. She admonishes them, “[w]hy, the way you’re sidin’ with the federal mashal, you’d think us people out here lived in the United States!” They reply, “[n]ow, Aunt Eller, we hain’t furriners. My pappy and mammy was both borned in Indian Territory! Why, I’m jist plumb full of Indian blood myself.” Citing blood, which reduces race to biological essence, they claim to be part Indian and identify as Indian Territory folks, not as Americans, so they are willing to flout US federal law. To then Americanize the musical, Hammerstein erased this indigenous complexity, lightened Curly’s sentence, and celebrated the United States. In the musi- cal, Curly does not go to prison; instead, the ensemble immediately stages an informal trial and exonerates him, and they gleefully sing about the territory becoming a state.'' |
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| Thanks, Wayman. | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:26 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| In reply to: Arena Stage's 2010 'Oklahoma!' set the benchmark for diversity - WaymanWong 06:57 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| I should have read further before posting my nm comment. Indeed, if we look at GGTL, casting a Native American as Jud (Jeeter) would not necessarily be wrong, but doing so in order to make a point that the other characters consider him therefore of lesser value than white people would be going against what GGTL tells us about these people. Since Hammerstein omitted these things from his adaptation, it's reasonable to question whether we should care, but I surely don't think that Hammerstein's intentions would be served by doing this. There are those who would say that those intentions don't especially matter, and that's another argument (one we've had here many times). | |
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| re: Thanks, Wayman. | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 03:31 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: Thanks, Wayman. - AlanScott 08:26 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| Mindful of the fact that, early on in OKLAHOMA!, Curly describes Jud as a "bullet-colored, growly man," it entered my mind many years ago that the role could be specifically cast with a black actor, but I ultimately decided that would make all of those scenes involving Jud'sotherness and, ultimately, his death too dark (certainly no pun intended here) and painful for the audience. For some reason, It never actually occurred to me until recently that Jud could be Native American, but that might have the same effect. | |
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| Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: aleck 10:00 am EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: Thanks, Wayman. - AlanScott 08:26 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| There have been many reconsiderations in this production of the text as it has been performed since its original production. However, I don't think that in most cases of these reconsiderations that they are invalid. I think, for example, that the way the final "trial" scene is staged and spoken that ALL of the characters know that what they are doing is wrong. But, other considerations push them to make a decision -- mostly instigated with prodding and illogical justifications by Aunt Eller -- to bring things into an order that benefits the dominant culture -- namely the goals of white people and specifically those of Curly who is beloved by the crowd. Yet not all in the group respond as jubilantly at the end as Curly does when he proclaims "everything's going my way." Just look at the horror on Laurie's blood-splattered face. There have been many provocative things raised in this production. The interracial aspect, with African-Americans represented in the cast, is valid since, as we know, when the Cherokees left Georgia, where they held African-American slaves, they brought their slaves with them to the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. That issue, by the way, still boils today because new restitutions with the Cherokees are complicated by whether or not African-American descendants of the Cherokee slaves should or should not benefit from those restitutions. (Many Cherokees don't want to share with these descendants of their former slaves.) Unlike a cast of color-blind"diversity," I see this a production as one of specific racial diversity. It isn't like it is color blind in the way, for example, the Lincoln Center production of Carousel was in contrast to the most recent Broadway production which had race-specific diversity. If this recent Carousel production had been color-blind, the daughter of Julie and Billy would not have been specifically and pointedly bi-racial. You can be color-blind all you want, but the audience can't help but noticing it and making their personal assessments of it. Thinking about the absence of any type of inclusion of Native Americans in this current reconsidered production of Oklahoma seems to me to be a lost opportunity to inject some type of commentary about the Native American dynamic in the origin story of the state of Oklahoma. Looking for a way of dramatizing this without changing the text of the book, I can see how Jud could be the stand-in for this dynamic. (I don't mean to detract from the fantastic job the actor playing Jud is doing. I had never seen Lonely Room performed with such intensity. He made a buffoonish character into a truly living, breathing person.) With a Native American in that role, the audience could apply their own individual assessments of the role of Native Americans in the history of Oklahoma -- as well as the entire United States. Most, I think, would see the final action as a tragic expression of the complete annihilation of Native American presence to satisfy the colonial interests of white people and a symbolic suicidal surrender by a Native Ameircan Jud. I fear, however, there might be audience members who still think that "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."_ |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: singleticket 10:44 am EDT 08/29/19 | |
| In reply to: Within the context of this particular current production - aleck 10:00 am EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| The interracial aspect, with African-Americans represented in the cast, is valid since, as we know, when the Cherokees left Georgia, where they held African-American slaves, they brought their slaves with them to the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. That issue, by the way, still boils today because new restitutions with the Cherokees are complicated by whether or not African-American descendants of the Cherokee slaves should or should not benefit from those restitutions. (Many Cherokees don't want to share with these descendants of their former slaves.) That is fascinating. Thanks. |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 03:56 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: Within the context of this particular current production - aleck 10:00 am EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| "There have been many reconsiderations in this production of the text as it has been performed since its original production. However, I don't think that in most cases of these reconsiderations that they are invalid. I think, for example, that the way the final 'trial' scene is staged and spoken that ALL of the characters know that what they are doing is wrong." But this is not a good example of your thesis, because while the text of the trial scene remains the same in the current production, both the staging AND the text of the scene of Jud's death -- which is what Curley's on trial for -- has been changed. I think the huge change in the staging has been covered enough that I don't need to detail it again, but the textual changes involve the addition of one line -- right before the murder, Jud hands Curly a gun and says, "You know what you have to do" -- and the cutting of another line or two --in the scene as originally written by Hammerstein, when Jud is killed in the struggle, Curly and or someone else says something like "He fell on his own knife, stuck clean through the ribs." So it may be true that, in the trial scene in THIS production, all of the characters know what they are doing is wrong, but it arguably wouldn't be "wrong" if the staging were the original and Jud fell on his own knife during his struggle with Curly, rather than Curly shooting an unarmed man at point-blank range. "I had never seen Lonely Room performed with such intensity. He made a buffoonish character into a truly living, breathing person." I'm guessing you saw neither Martin Vidnovic nor Shuler Hensley as Jud in the last two Broadway revivals of the show, because I certainly thought both of them made Jud a living, breathing person rather than a buffoon, and I believe most if not all of the critics felt as I did. |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: mikem 05:05 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Within the context of this particular current production - Michael_Portantiere 03:56 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| I did not realize that the "you know what you have to do" line is an addition. IMO, that line completely changes the context of the shooting, making it seem like Jud has some complicity in his death. The line makes it seem almost like a mercy killing. | |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 05:30 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Within the context of this particular current production - mikem 05:05 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| "I did not realize that the 'you know what you have to do' line is an addition." Probably because the production keeps insisting that there are NO textual changes to the show, which is not true. Also, yes, that line completely changes the context of the shooting -- but further than that, the shooting is not a shooting in the original script, it's a knifing. And it's not even a knifing of one person by another. What happens, again, is that Jud falls on his own knife during a fight with Curly in which Jud is the only one of the two with a knife. |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: mikem 11:09 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Within the context of this particular current production - Michael_Portantiere 05:30 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| Has Daniel Fish ever said anything about why it's a gun and not a knife? I guess he couldn't have the blood shooting onto Curly and Laurey if it were a knife. And the displayed rifles on the walls of the theater are echoed by the use of a gun. I agree it's odd that they keep saying that there are no textual changes when one of the most important segments of the show is changed in a meaningful way. |
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| What Fish told Deadline.com about the shooting in 'Oklahoma!' (spoiler) | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 04:53 pm EDT 08/29/19 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 04:51 pm EDT 08/29/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Within the context of this particular current production - mikem 11:09 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| Fish: When we did it at Bard in 2015, Ted [Chapin] felt it seemed a little bit too much like cold-blooded murder, and that was not how I intended it to be, and it’s not what I thought it was. I thought it was more a kind of almost-suicide in which everybody is made complicit. So we worked very hard at St. Ann’s to make a few adjustments to make it clear that Jud had agency in that action. Ultimately he’s not the person who pulls the trigger. In this version, Jud hands him the gun. Jud cocks the gun. Those two gestures were not there in 2015. Jud brought the gun, but he didn’t hand it to him, and he didn’t cock it, and it didn’t take quite as long. | |
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| re: Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: Billhaven 05:03 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Within the context of this particular current production - Michael_Portantiere 03:56 pm EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| Neither Rod Steiger as Jud in the movie version nor Howard Da Silva in the original version could be described as buffoons. | |
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