Ready for a new op-ed :-)

Thoughts?  

We can make theater more imaginative, more compelling and more sympathetic to a larger group of people by making it more diverse and multicultural.

                Theater isn’t created in a vacuum.  Theater speaks to both our individual and social conditions.  Kenneth Tynan, an influential English theater critic, wrote “No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.”  For that reason, the goals of producing a show should be much larger than to just shape what happens onstage.  When we produce a show, we should also communicate social messages, as well as provide an educational experience not only for the cast and crew of that particular production, but also for the audience and community that the production is a part of. 

                Sam Linden ’10, during a question and answer session for The Laramie Project, quoted a friend who stated that “theater is education disguised as entertainment.”  I wholeheartedly agree.

                Sometimes, however, we can get so caught up in details that we forget what the essence of theater is.  In order to stage a show that “looks good,” and “looks right” we may confine ourselves to precedent rather than liberate our ability to make change.  We get so caught up on emulating the shows that we’ve seen in the past that we pass up opportunities to create something entirely different and unique.

                The quality of theater at Harvard is superb, but still has room for improvement and can better reflect the community that it serves.  The philosophy behind common casting, that anyone should have an equal opportunity for a role, is almost perfect in theory but relatively unsubstantiated in practice.  How many lead roles are continually played by actors of the same stripe that have always played those roles?

                There has already been much work to make theater here more diverse and more inclusive.  BlackCAST, for instance, made a point of staging a gender-neutral and color-blind production this past fall.  Hopefully, with the arrival of a new Dramatic Arts concentration and graduate school, and with more theater courses offered, formal training for more people will be more available and accessible. 

                However, this alone will not be able to resolve our problem of under-representation.  What is needed is more calculated risk-taking, and better support in place to maximize the chance that cutting-edge decisions will succeed.  Quite simply, we should try to cast some actors who don’t typically populate our major shows.  For many outsiders, the world of Harvard theater is exclusive and relatively confined.  It’s time to shake things up.

                I do not wish for affirmative action of the theatrical bent.  Rather, I am asking that directors and producers to re-evaluate what qualities they look for when they cast their shows and take a chance on recruiting fresh new faces.  Students of multicultural backgrounds traditionally under-represented in theater should not be discouraged by prior experiences and keep training and trying out for theater shows if theater is truly something that they love. 

                Cultural groups, if there is an interest, should host their own theatrical productions as a way to train talent and provide more theatrical experience for more actors.  In staging their own shows, cultural groups may find that theater is a meaningful way to explore cultural identity as well as expose others to their cultural art and artists. Cultural groups can provide support, as well as provide consistency, for diverse Harvard theatrical productions.

                During The Laramie Project pre-show panel, Rev. Stephen Johnson noted that The Laramie Project is a play performed around the world in Africa, India, and a multitude of other countries.  The reason why The Laramie Project is so popularly produced, he stated, was because people have found that the powerful message behind this one show is not just confined to one group of people in particular, but to all who face stereotypes and prejudice.  The show is more popular, and meaningful, because of the diverse groups that perform it.   

                You can find similar universality in almost any theatrical production.  When you choose to make theater a more inclusive place, then you add another dimension to the message behind the play and the production.  You can connect with a greater number of the audience and make the theatrical experience more meaningful. And in the process, you can invigorate old themes with new significance.