Word: theater
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Justin Krebs '00, a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, has long been attuned to the problem of minority representation in theater. "Harvard puts high priority on racial and ethnic diversity, and our organization lags behind," he explains. On the subject of color-blind casting, "part of the board thinks it's not important enough to mention, and the other part thinks it's so obvious that it doesn't need to be mentioned." What will it take to make people of color a greater presence in Harvard's dramatic mind...
...part of the struggle will involve educating the theater community about the dramatic range of minorities. Some directors seem woefully ignorant of what they actually have to work with. "If acting's the problem, shows need singers and dancers, too," says Montel in an unintentional nod to the common relegation of minorities performers to minstrelsy. Hood mistakenly asserts that "African-American drama did not come about until Langston Hughes in the 1920s." "African-American drama started a long time before that,"says Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department. Indeed, the first published play...
...Groups like the Asian American Players (AAA) and Black Community Action Student Theater (CAST) also figure into the process of increasing minority representation in Harvard theater. Both troupes seek to give performance opportunities to minority actors and playwrights and to treat theatrically the concerns of their respective ethnic groups. "It frustrates me that a place as diverse as Harvard doesn't seem to see the opportunity presented to it by its diversity," says Vanessa Carr '02, who is currently revitalizing CAST with Saffold...
...Krebs warns against the easy assignment of dealing with ethnic issues to groups like AAA and CAST. "If I'm a director picking a show, I have a responsibility to be flexible or make theater a venue to discuss important issues...
...terribly backwards of all of us to have fostered the idea that the only place for minorities in theater is outside of the mainstream. We are not eighteenth-century Britain but a diverse university community. In theater, it is long past time for all our colors...