Essential Questions:

• How do I (we) reconcile a piece of art that has been created by and for a dominant culture?
• How do I (we) help students frame their experience so that they might empathize with someone who does not share their identity?
• How do students’ identities shape their understanding of playing a role?

As the LREI high school fall play director (my “teaching” in trimester 1 and therefore the focus of my anti-bias work), I have the daunting task of choosing a large ensemble cast play. Always at the back of my mind is how I am going to accommodate roughly 20-25 students who want to “tread the boards.” I am hyper aware of the published theatrical canon having a number of limitations: I have only read so many plays. And from the ones I’ve read, many modern plays are usually written for a much smaller cast and large cast published plays (mostly written in the 20th century or before) tend to reflect the dominant culture and/or run the risk of not speaking to students. I continue to have so much reading to do. Constant research requires constant reading (or re-reading) of plays.

With these challenges, I try at the very least to find a play that makes students think about the world around them in some significant way. I know that whatever choice I make, it is likely to impact students around their established or emerging identities in a myriad of ways. Theater and acting is all about identity. When a student auditions for a role and are cast in that role, they are trying on an identity, whether they identify with it or not. Students have many reasons for auditioning for a particular role and I try to listen to their shifting thoughts and desires during the process.

At the start of auditions, I post descriptions of each character for students to read. I also set up a number of choices of scenes and/or monologues to audition with. My expectation is that students will have done some research around the play or the role, though that is not always the case given the busy life of a teenager. Either way, I have students read for me at least two times, with friends or solo, depending on what is most comfortable for them. From there we do a couple of rounds of callbacks and then I agonize over the casting for a couple of days before I post the cast list outside of my office door. 

This year, I settled on staging “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. I had to make the choice over the summer at the latest, because in order to put on the play, I must apply for performance rights in advance. An indictment of The McCarthy era, Arthur Miller’s play centers on themes of reputation and integrity, authority, and ideology. Written in 1952, “The Crucible” felt very problematic when thinking about the students and their identities. Arthur Miller was a writer from the dominant culture and his depiction of the Salem Witch Trials centers on a “good” yet flawed character named John Proctor, who has a fictionalized affair with a young Abigail Williams (age 17 in Miller’s play, 11 in the actual history). Abigail is the lynchpin of the story and she is referred to as a “mad, murderous bitch” by Proctor. Abigail herself lobs some racist language: “They want slaves, not such as I. Let them send to Barbados for that. I will not black my face for any of them!” I had some thinking to do around the depictions of the characters as well as the language. I didn’t want to automatically cut those lines, because those lines revealed what was systemically problematic in the first place and so was holding the mirror up. But, what would it mean for students to lean in and say those words, given that they did not agree with what the character was saying? This can be a common question from students, and best practice (and something I employed this time around) was to leave room to have that frank discussion and decide what to do once we unpacked the question. Incidentally, I remember having this same kind of discussion during rehearsals for “The Laramie Project.” Students debated whether or not they should display the signs that Fred Phelps carried in his hate-filled tirades.

Another large identity question ranged around the role of Tituba, the only enslaved character in the play. Tituba is from Barbados and there are a number of questions as to whether the actual Tituba in history is of African descent or an indigenous woman from South America. Either way, I was unsure about how to frame the audition process because it was obvious that I’d need to contend with asking a student to play an enslaved person (and the ONLY enslaved person) in the story, and I honestly didn’t know where students (or I) stood in facing that identity, even in a fictionalized account. I talked with some colleagues about possible ideas. One idea was to have a meeting to discuss the casting of Tituba with the students themselves. This could have been a wonderful addition to the process. I think about this idea in general with students – having a forum to discuss various issues around identity in casting, but I tabled the idea and wanted to do a round of auditions to see which students came forward and which roles they were attracted to. I knew that if I needed to, I would hold more auditions for this or any other role and would hold a later meeting if needed. A senior student of color went out for the role – it’s the only role she auditioned for (which led to many more questions) – but I knew she wanted to play the role so I decided to take a chance on her and cast her. Looking back, I would have liked to have opened this up for more discussion, but I also wanted to let the audition speak for itself. I sometimes don’t know why students come to certain roles but there are sometimes reasons that are central to them and to them only and I want to respect that. In retrospect and knowing this student, I really respect how the student took the role and ran with it.

I was also aware of the tremendous gender politics of the play, which made me think about gender lines in casting and how fruitful of a conversation we might or might not have throughout the process. One student, male-identifying, would have much rather played one of the girls (last year he played the Mother in “The Government Inspector”), and we had a conversation about what this year’s casting would mean for the storytelling on top of his identity. Ultimately, I ended up casting him in a role that was so opposite of what he wanted or expected, and though he struggled with the idea at first, his foray into playing an entirely different identity proved to be extremely satisfying for him. This isn’t necessarily true for all students, and so, there’s always a gamble with this work, which could be a thesis unto itself.

During the rehearsal process, I came up with a frame for talking about the play which I repeatedly focused on: the larger ideas of “Othering” and “Who Gains Power in This Scene?” By generalizing these questions, which were actually very central to the story of Salem, I was able to free up the conversation with students depending on who was in the room, the status/identity of the character and which scene we were working on. For example, in one scene we watch indentured servant girls battle it out amongst themselves. As characters with very little power, they gain more power by pointing the accusatory finger at a neighbor or someone who is unable to defend themselves or is extremely marginalized. The students began to learn that power was behind every scene. This liberated them and made them think about whether they were gaining or losing power/status at all times. It also made playing and watching those scenes more enjoyable/fruitful.

More often than not, I let the students know that I was sometimes uncomfortable with Miller’s depiction of the story; patriarchal, heteronormative, racist, and mysognist – even though I was also a huge fan of Miller’s writing. In addition, I reminded the students that the actual world of Salem was one that was autocratic, theocratic, punishing, and relentless towards anyone who was different or who had no power. I also brought in the idea that all of the land that the characters squabble over was indigenous Massachusetts land taken by the colonists. We ended up doing a land acknowledgement every night of the show, which I hope also helped to frame the audience’s perspective of the play. 

Lastly, we had a very fruitful opening night talkback, where students talked in depth about playing roles very different from them. The conversation led us to talking about McCarthyism and the government’s current relationship to immigration and border policy. At one point a young audience member asked “What is Barbados?” The student actor playing Tituba patiently described the Caribbean nation and its history with enslavement and talked about her own relationship to playing an enslaved character, which was different from her own experience. I was floored by her ownership of that moment and the role.