'Casting Shadows' Sheds Light On Race In Theater | New Haven Independent
Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin almost immediately was adapted for the minstrel show stage. Twenty-five years had to pass for the racial powers-that-be to allow an actual African-American actor, Sam Lucas, to replace the white actor playing Uncle Tom in that eponymous role.
Roll the clock ahead a century or so. A Broadway curtain rises and you see that the white, Jewish Loman family in a 1996 production of Death of a Salesman is all African-American.
Progress?
Not for August Wilson. He thought the all African-American casting in the Arthur Miller play not only did not add much value; it did a disservice to the African-American experience.
These tidbits of our tattered, twisting, and sometimes embarrassing progress on race in the theater — or as it is often called, “non-traditional” casting — emerge in a fascinating exhibition, “Casting Shadows: Integration on the American Stage.”
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