Casting Our Shows

This week I want to talk about casting.

The Rhymes Over Beats position is that we intend to cast the best actor for the role.

This is not what other theater companies do. Other theater companies cast the best actor for the role based on the breakdown. If the breakdown calls for a male, thirty years old and white, other companies will cast the best white male thirty-year-old actor they can find.

We won’t do this. We will cast the best thirty-year-old male actor we can find. Regardless of the breakdown, it does not matter if the actor is white or black.

Why Are We Practicing “Color-Blind” Casting?

We are doing this for two reasons.

First, unless the play has a contemporary setting, the breakdowns will always specifically say the actor should be white.

In the nineteen thirties for example, there were no Black CEOs, no interracial marriage or siblings of different races – so these characters are assumed to be white.

We don’t feel we must follow this rule any more than when the HAMILTON team felt like it needed to cast a white person as George Washington.

The second reason is to offset the trend where non-white characters are turned white.

This happens  all too frequently. I’m not talking about white actors who portray a character of another race, like when John Wayne was cast as Genghis Kahn. Rather, I’m concerned when there’s a case of the original character being non-white in the original source material but then “magically” becoming white in the film or play. The character of Alma in HUD is an example, or the character of Katniss in the Hunger Games.

We Want the Best Actor for the Role

As long as the casting practices I mentioned continue, we will continue to cast the best actor no matter what the breakdown says.

Because casting matters today.

Do you agree? I’d love to know your thoughts.

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Jury Nullification and Theater: Here’s How

Last week I talked about theater having a positive impact on society by encouraging Jury Nullification. This week I want to talk about how.

When people see something happening repeatedly on stage or in the movies, it has an effect.

Sometimes it helps the prosecution, other times the defense. There is even a name for it – the “Perry Mason Moment. “

Originally, the Perry Mason Moment was when the real killer confesses. This favors the prosecution. Juries  tended to convict when no one made a dramatic confession in the middle of the trial – like they do on TV.

Another more recent example is what people have come to expect from forensic science because of the recent spate of CSI-type shows. An actor in a lab coat puts a tiny piece of evidence in a big machine with flashing lights and seconds later out comes the name of the person who did it. This bias favors the defense.  I even wrote a short play about it called A Story Conference in Pilot Season. In my play, a criminal gang buys a movie studio in order to make television shows that makes it easier for juries to acquit members of the gang.

Are You Writing Something?

Ever since I produced The Exonerated, I have been aware of the many people who were convicted because of misidentification and coerced confessions. The general public, the potential Jury pool, still is not aware of this.

I would encourage everyone who writes a show that involves a criminal trial to include a scene where a defendant is convicted because of the use of suspect evidence.

Let us all create a new Perry Mason Moments, where a retracted confession and an eyewitness identification is NOT enough to get a conviction.

The best current example of this is the recently renewed ABC series For Life. Let us make sure it is not the ONLY example.

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Jury Nullification and Theater

This week and next, I want to talk about Jury Nullification and how theater can encourage it.

Basically, Jury Nullification occurs in a criminal trial when a jury acquits a defendant, even though it believes the defendant might be guilty for the following reasons:

• because the law is unjust
• because the punishment is too severe
• because the prosecutor has misapplied the law, or
• because of certain beliefs the jury has about the defendant.

It is the last reason where theater can have an impact.  

The Facts

A person is convicted of a crime because of evidence or, in some cases, because of a confession. Sometimes it is because of an eyewitness identification.

Society seems to hold on to a core belief that only guilty people confess. We also seem to believe that, absent a reason to lie and with reasonable distance and lighting conditions, an eyewitness identification is accurate.

Neither of these beliefs are correct. In the case of confessions, over one-fourth are false in general, and in the case of murder with poor or disadvantaged defendants, it can approach eighty-one percent. This lack of reliability is the same or worse when it comes to eyewitness identification. The most frequent  contributor to wrongful convictions, at seventy-one  percent, is mistaken identification.

Society’s incorrect beliefs result in innocent people going to jail.

This is Where Theater Comes In

Because Hip Hop Theater is at its core social justice theater, it is our obligation to change these beliefs with our art. 

How we can do this is the subject of next week’s blog. Stay tuned to see how you can help.

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