Word: saigon
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WITH over $25 million in ticket sales and countless jobs on the line, last summer's Miss Saigon controversy has forced actors, directors and audiences to rethink their ideas of just and unjust, plausible and implausible. The basic question: Who gets what role...
Public debate surrounding Miss Saigon revolved around two poles of thought. Perhaps Actors' Equity had a right to demand that Pryce's role be reserved for a minority actor since few performances are so custom-made for affirmative action casting? On the other hand, perhaps the union was infringing upon the rights of both producer and actor involved in what may be viewed as a case of reverse discrimination...
Actor B.D. Wong and M. Butterfly playwright David Henry Hwang are key proponents of nents of Equity's attack on Miss Saigon casting. According to Equity News, the pair envision the casting of minority actors in minority roles as the first step zoward non-traditional casting across the board...
...immediate dispute surrounding Miss Saigon subsides, Equity News admits that perhaps it has "applied an honest and moral principle in an inappropriate manner," in its initial attempts to take ultimate casting decisions out of the hands of the show's producer...
...casting contretemps over Miss Saigon may have been resolved, but the reverberations continue. When American actor Ken Page was cast as God in the forthcoming London musical Children of Eden, the British actors' union prepared to lodge an official protest. How could audiences accept a Yank as the Almighty? Director John Caird countered that he had auditioned British actors for the part, and all were, well, inadequate. British Equity backed off, but an official noted dryly that the union "welcomes talented foreign artists working in our country even when they are required to play such an obviously British part...