Black Audiences

A few weeks ago I went to see Passing Strange, a show on Broadway about a cutie Black ex-patriate who floats through Europe to find (and love) himself.  I felt guilty because though I thought it was a nice afternoon, the play felt a bit too slight somehow.  I am sure that if I had not received these tickets for free, I probably would've been disappointed. 

I really wanted to love it.  It just oozed with good intentions.  But it was just ok.

Britt wrote an entry about this article in the Times about the new influx of black audiences to the theater thanks to the star studded Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  Her comments:

God forbid older white female theatregoers go to any play that doesn't affirm their status on the pedestal of American society!  And apparently it would Armageddon if a play that had an all-black cast drew a racially diverse audience. How can theatre still be so culturally backwards...especially theatre in New York?! It's infuriating!

When I was in line for Passing Strange, I had this conversation with a young white woman who is a part of the Broadway "scene".  I wondered what the word was in the industry about Cat on A Hot Tin Roof.  (Full disclosure:  I worked in theater for many years and though I no longer do, I still feel curious and interested in plays and the theater scene as a whole.)  We got into this whole conversation about how Cat was just ok, which I had heard, and how Diddy's Raisin in the Sun was just plain bad, though it brought a lot of cash to Broadway.  The conversation was going fine until she said, and this is a paraphrase:  You can not just cast a show originally meant for white people with people of color without having a good reason.

OK but I did not know what that had to do with A Raisin in the Sun because well, Raisin is a show by and about black people (Duh!).  Yes, Raisin was a case of celebrity vanity casting which mainstream (aka white) Broadway shows do all the time.  What was her point? 

Somewhere in that conversation, it seemed clear that somewhere deep down inside she thought Cat on a Hot Tin Roof should not have been remade with black actors.  I completely disagree (though I think yummy Terrance Howard is completely miscast as Brick) but that is not really the point.

At the end of this coversation, I was reminded why I left theater.  Theater is so completely non diverse.  It is pretty shocking.  And when it is lucrative, the Tyler Perry circuit for example, the plays are seen as less than.  Sure, the same can be said about movies but at least you can reach a bigger audience and $15 is different that $115.  That is for sure.

Now that blacks are coming out in droves to see plays and marketing companies are figuring out how to get them there (hello Black churches!  What took you rocket scientists so long to figure that out.), everyone of every ethnicity wants a piece of the pie.

Sure, when I read this piece, I thought, as long as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is doing well ($700,000 in one week, amazing business for a nonmusical), who cares who the audience is?  But it is pretty fascinating that these are all black audiences and that the old white ladies who see many plays a year, are not seeing this show.  The original Cat obviously resonated with white audiences.  Why, all of a sudden, doesn't this version.

Comments

[L. Britt]

THANK YOU!!! Why is it when black productions put stars in their casts they are pandering for dollars and can't be as good? Meanwhile, anytime a white actress gets bored, she does Broadway and everyone swoons: Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Garner...you name it! Everyone described those productions as 'vehicles for an actress to stretch her talents' or some such nonsense. Ridiculous.

[L. Britt]

THANK YOU!!! Why is it when black productions put stars in their casts they are pandering for dollars and can't be as good? Meanwhile, anytime a white actress gets bored, she does Broadway and everyone swoons: Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Garner...you name it! Everyone described those productions as 'vehicles for an actress to stretch her talents' or some such nonsense. Ridiculous.

And don't get me started on the fact that we can't even have this discussion about other minority casts and/or plays because there just haven't been enough of them on Broadway. I'm rooting big time for "In the Heights!"