My "I Want" Song

In musical theatre, the main character usually has one or more “I want” songs. These songs are referred to as such because this is a number in which the protagonist sings to the audience what it is the character hopes for most, aiding in moving along the plot. Sometimes, these songs actually include a repetition of the phrase “I want” such as the song “America” from Sondheim and Bernstein’s West Side Story—one of the first movie musicals I remember watching as a child.

I was enamored by the script, score, choreography, and plot which tackled racism and the devastating aftermath when racism is perpetuated. A few years later, I discovered that most of the actors and actresses portraying Puerto Rican characters in the film— besides the actress who played Anita, Rita Moreno—were not of Hispanic descent at all. This was a disappointment as race is imperative in terms of the storytelling of West Side Story. The musical’s central plot follows two gangs, the white American characters wanting to drive the Puerto Rican characters who immigrated to the America off of “their turf”, going to unfortunate extremes in order to do so. Recently, a casting release for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story film remake announced the actors and actresses who will play four of the main Puerto Rican characters. All four cast members belong to the Hispanic community; this adaptation refuses to follow the original film’s white-washed casting.

My sister graduated college with a BFA in musical theatre, so she is constantly searching for performances to showcase her talent at its fullest potential as an actress who is often pegged as “ethnically ambiguous”. When casting directors utilize this term, they often use it to imply that there are countless roles available to actors and actresses who are visually similar to my sister. What this really means is that roles suited for “ethnically ambiguous” actors and actresses are actually scarce as casting types are often racially specific.

While I am currently majoring in creative writing, not theatre, the latter is still a passion of mine. I have enjoyed participating in educational and community theatre since my sophomore year of high school and hope to audition for more theatrical opportunities in the future. I have seen theatre bring people from different walks of life together. I have also seen theatre stir up prejudice in the hearts of others.

In high school, while painting a set piece during theatre class, a senior member of the theatre troop suggested that we should do the musical Hairspray, to which I replied, “We don’t have enough black people for that.” (I was the only black student attending the high school at the time, my sister graduated two years earlier.) This was met with a misguided suggestion that students could “just paint their skin black.” Even if the history of blackface in minstrel shows was unknown to the student, she had to have known the comment was problematic.

The following year, my senior year, our ragtag theatre troop was able to sway our director into agreeing to produce Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as the musical of the 2014-2015 season. While I knew the production budget was small, matching our cast size, I was excited to participate in a show that was well-known as opposed to the obscure titles of previous seasons at my high school (not Young Frankenstein obscure, but Zombeo and Juliet obscure).

Initial auditions were held, followed by callback auditions—a usual part of the audition process, but this was unique for our high school where the theatre director had made casting decisions based solely off of prior performances for former shows. Callbacks were held in the music room in front of all choir students and, naturally, the theatre and music teachers.

The cast list was posted soon after, and the student body began buzzing about the papers posted in the hallways—even students who didn’t care about musical theatre. This was most likely due to the fact that our theatre department was not known for producing popular musicals and cast lists were normally only found on the art room door, not plastered around the entire building.

I walked up to one of the several cast lists and saw my name printed at the top of the page, following “Belle” and a long line of periods. Through the rumor mill, I heard that one of the auditionees who had been called back for Belle had been shocked by not receiving the role and had mentioned that she “could not believe they cast a nigger Belle.“ (The student clearly must have been unfamiliar with Toni Braxton’s—a black singer and actress—portrayal of the Disney princess in 1998 on Broadway.)

The summer after Beauty and the Beast, it was rumored that Little Shop of Horrors would be the musical of the 2015-2016 theatre season at the community college I planned to attend in the Fall. As a woman of color, I was prepared to be cast as one of the three Doo-Wop Girls. A former theatre student at the community college whom I had performed with before asked me what role I was vying for. I was indifferent about the choice of show. While Little Shop of Horrors holds a special place in my heart as another one of the first musicals I was ever introduced to, I often find the show is rarely executed in the manner I assume Menken and Ashmen, the show’s writers, intended. I told the former theatre student that I assumed the directors would view my casting type as one of the Doo-Wop Girls although, at the time, I couldn’t view myself playing any of the three very out-spoken characters due to my own shy nature and based off of the meeker characters I had played in the past. To this, the recent community college graduate replied, “Yeah, because they’d never cast a black Audrey.”

The interaction was nothing new to me. In the past, the same student had mentioned how it was just “so funny” to her that there were “two black March sisters”—referencing, of course, my real-life sister and myself as Jo and Beth March, respectively, in a production of Little Women. These repeated microaggressions from the same former member of the community college theatre department made me question if I wanted to continue participating in theatre while stuck in my hometown where the social climate was so poor.

The comment rang in my head once auditions for the musical approached in the Spring. What a thought, that an actor or actress being of color instantly meant that the actor or actress was not qualified to portray a character whose default race was often “white”. I was disgusted—with the words of the former community college theatre student but, more so, with myself. I realized in that moment that I never even considered myself for the role of Audrey because I am a woman of color, comprised of a mixed heritage—summarizing my identity as “black and white” to others because it is “easiest.” (By “easiest” I not only mean for others to accept, but for myself to explain. My mother’s side of the family—my “black side”—is known to be mixed with other races, we aren’t sure what exactly with due to the trickle-down effect of matters from slavery such as the “one drop rule” as well as, by doing so, simply tracking one’s heritage is often wrongfully viewed by others as looking for a “way out” of being considered fully black. My father—my “white side”—is adopted, so I can’t be fully sure of his racial history either but, to my knowledge, he is white, was socialized as white, and has always been treated as such.) Once I realized I had done to myself exactly what the theatre student had done to me, put myself in a box, I found that I was no different than the casting directors who write-off people of color due to the history and orchestrated normalcy of white actors and actresses being entitled to most leading roles. (Leading roles are most central to the plot and often have the highest acting value. Leading roles are also usually the most relatable characters to the audience as these roles are the most fleshed-out, the most human. Refusing to consider people of color for leading roles is assisting in ostracizing people of color in society as art and pop culture does, in fact, shape how we all view our country and those who live in it.) I wasn’t fighting against the problem. If anything, I was aiding it.

I thought about being cast as the only black Doo-Wop Girl. I would no doubt be exploited, placed in the center in the group of three to make up for the lack of other women of color in the other two roles. In the end, I decided to not audition at all. I decided to not participate in theatre because I was made to feel uncomfortable about what other conversations may arise due to racism. I decided to not partake in an activity that would have brought me joy, fearing more prejudice comments or awkward situations to come.

I attended the performance when the time came. The actress who had offered the solution that white students paint their skin black for her envisioned performance of Hairspray performed alongside two other white actresses portraying Doo-Wop Girls, characters whose character breakdowns are stated as “African-American street urchins” on the website in which the licensing for the musical can be requested. I knew I had made the right decision in not auditioning.

The aforementioned personal instances are not simply moments in which I, a theatre kid of color, was bullied after being cast in a “traditionally white” role or told I would be denied a role viewed as “traditionally white”—these are instances of a white (or white-passing) person inadvertently telling me that being mixed race and a person of color made me “not good enough” for a role.

One musical that can’t be ignored in terms of featuring people of color is nonother than Hamilton, an empowering story of “America then told by America now” as Thomas Kail, the director of the Original Broadway production, has been known to refer to the show as. The cultural phenomenon is beloved by all walks of life, but Hamilton undoubtedly holds a special place in the heart of theatre kids, like myself, who are also actors and actresses of color and were once made to feel small by their peers for that fact.

The roles in Hamilton are not simply roles in a musical showing on Broadway and across the United States, United Kingdom and Puerto Rico in various touring productions. These roles demonstrate how people of color are now seen in society—actually seen! Seeing people of color play the Founding Fathers of the United States of America in a musical not only lets theatre kids understand that, yes, there is a place for people of color in the theatre as more than ensemble roles to be a “token minority”, but also affirms for all people of color that the world is changing and the voices of people of color are finally being heard—front and center.

Following the popularity of Hamilton, theatre fanatics have followed other inspiring casting choices such as the character Kristoff of Disney’s Frozen stage adaptation being originated by Jelani Alladin, a black actor, who has played opposite Aisha Jackson, a black actress who understudies the role of Anna. Most recently, Brittney Johnson made history as the first Black women as well as the first woman of color to ever play Glinda in the musical Wicked, a show which has been running on Broadway for fifteen years. (I’ll say it again, people. Fifteen years.) While watching a YouTube video of the curtain call and stage door clips, I found myself crying. Again, not over simply seeing a woman of color, a black woman in a leading role on Broadway, but seeing this woman embody a character with traits that are not often associated with black women in pop culture. The character of Glinda is associated with undeniable beauty. The character of Glinda is bubbly and fun. Most importantly, the character of Glinda holds a position of leadership in the land of Oz.

Three years ago, during Tony Awards season, my sister went to an audition in New York City, and I used all of the money I had earned from the summer of working my first job to tag along with her. We watched a screening of the Tony Awards in Time Square which was unlike anything I have ever experienced before as someone who was raised in the Midwest. People were applauding as if we all were actually there in Radio City Music Hall. I had never felt so immersed in positive energy towards the arts. My sister and I were laughing and smiling, starry-eyed for a full two hours.

The following summer, the summer of 2016, I watched the Tony Awards in my grandpa’s trailer because I didn’t and still don’t have cable. My aunt, who lives with my grandpa to assist him, warned me that the air conditioner was broken over text and that she had work that night. I turned up the television set as loud as I could, but the audio was still muffled by the large floor fans.

My grandpa came out of his “man cave” every now and then to sit and watch The Tonys with me that night, interrupting whatever televised sporting event he was choosing to view every now and then. He laughed and smiled at the Hamilton performances, sometimes even tapping his foot or the armrest of the recliner to the rhythm of the music. My heart swelled while I watched the wrinkles on his dark skin become more prominent from his entertained expressions, and I couldn’t help but be reminded that he lived through a time when black people weren’t even allowed on television, let alone perform as the undeniable stars of that Tonys season.

The group of musical acting nominees was more diverse that year than I had ever seen in all of my years watching the Tonys with several familiar faces of color belonging to the casts of Hamilton and the revival of The Color Purple. All four Tony Awards for Acting in a Musical were won by black actors and actresses. Leslie Odom, Jr., Daveed Diggs, and Renée Elise Goldsberry each took home awards for their performances in Hamilton, and Cynthia Erivo for her performance in The Color Purple. The official Twitter of The Tony Awards affirmed that this was a first for the awards show. This outcome foiled the 2016 Oscars strongly—the year the hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite” was trending on social media platforms.

My hope, my “I want” song, is that actors and actresses of color will no longer be denied roles due to racial prejudice or an incorrect view of race as a limitation by casting directors. My “I want” song is that actors and actresses of color will be cast like their white counterparts—based solely off of talent, availability, and ability to evoke and embody the needed essence of the character. My “I want” song is that actors and actresses of color cast in traditionally white roles someday, someday soon, won’t be met with surprise, because it will be normal. Diversity will be normal. All of us accepting everyone as relatable, valuable, and vulnerable will be normal.

Musical theatre is an American artform. I’m excited to see all kinds of Americans start to slowly be rightfully featured in it. On behalf of American actors and actresses of color, big or small, I’ll use my voice to sing out my “I want” song, centerstage.

We are talented. We are capable. We are equal. We are here—and we are thriving in a country we were never intended to.