Dramaturg's Notes:
GLOW Lyric Theatre
Greenville, SC
Summer 2015
by Allison Gibbes

 

 

The Great White Way: Race and Musical Theatre

 

"The musical finds its own history intersecting with the legacy of popular music in America from ragtime to jazz to rock and roll, musical forms that are infused with the cultural contributions of African Americans and immigrants, especially Jews. And yet, ironically, there are few blacks, Jews, or other minorities of any stripe to be seen onstage; rather the musical seems to be, at least on the surface, the domain of white people. Plainly put, the history of the American musical is the history of white identity in the United States." 

- Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (24)

 

"The Wiz, like its source material, finds Dorothy as the head of an assembled family. Her leadership resonates with 1970s feminism and even more with black women who were heads of their households.(...) The Wiz (...) alludes to the significance of women as mothers, breadwinners, and leaders in the African American community in the 1970s."

- Stacy Wolf, Changed For Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (25)

 

In the majority of musical theatre works, whiteness is invisible. While a character who is a person of color will usually have an identity that is centered around his or her race, characters never refer to their whiteness. (24)

- In West Side Story, the Sharks (a Puerto Rican gang) sings "America" about its immigrant identity. (24)

- "Chop Suey" from Flower Drum Song is about the experience of a Chinese person who is assimilating into American culture. (24)

- Perhaps one of the most well-known songs in musical theatre, Show Boat's "Old Man River," is about an African American man who has to work "while all the white boys play." (24)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Racism in the United States

 

"In the first part of the twentieth century, racial conflict was heightened and the line between racial categories was more clearly distinguished. At the end of the twentieth century, racism still existed, but how it manifested itself became more subtle. Violent racist acts such as lynchings and the use of derogatory epithets had declined, if not vanished, but were now replaced by structural forms of racism that in some ways were more damaging, because they were not only more pervasive but also more difficult to see and therefore get rid of."

- Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (24)

 

Frequently, characters of color serve as comic relief or sidekicks for the white protagonists. They are often portrayed as exotic and sexualized. Racialized customs and accents evoke laughter from largely white audiences.

- Persian Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! sings comical numbers that are tangential to the main story.

- In Miss Saigon, Kim, who is Vietnamese, fulfills the stereotype of the subservient "oriental" female.

- Finian's Rainbow satirizes race when the Senator is magically turned black as a punishment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Musical theatre evolved largely from minstrelsy, in which people would use burnt cork to darken their faces and outline their lips with white or red to exaggerate them. While these performers were mostly white, there were also some black performers who also wore blackface makeup. Today, when there are roles (or the potential for roles) for people of color, sometimes white people are cast in those parts anyways.

- In 1990, the producers Miss Saigon stirred up controversy by casting white actor Jonathan Pryce to play the role of the Engineer, who is Vietnamese. He actually wore makeup to make his eyes look narrower.

- The Broadway cast of Bullets Over Broadway used an all-white cast to depict the Cotton Club, which was a legendary Harlem hotspot.

- For the Broadway adaptation of Aladdin, which is set in the Middle East, Disney hired no Middle Eastern actors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have been some revisionist productions of traditionally white musicals that have been cast with people of color. And like The Wiz and The Hot Mikado, some canonical stories have been reimagined for diverse casts.

- In 1967, actress Pearl Bailey starred in an all-black cast of Hello Dolly! on Broadway.

- Guys and Dolls saw a 1976 Broadway revival with an all-black cast.

- Carmen Jones was an all-black version of Bizet's opera Carmen with a rewritten book and score in 1943.