To See or Not to See: Race and Theatrical Casting

• In Event: 235 - Regular Session. Popular Culture and the Politics of Authenticity

Abstract

In nontraditional casting, actors fill roles in which they differ from the character they play, most often by race. This practice stretches norms of representation and calls on audiences to suspend their ordinary assumptions about what bodily characteristics convey. Drawing on theater professionals' experiences with and opinions about non-traditional casting based on race or ethnicity, this paper analyzes what such casting decisions reveal about contextual variability in the meanings attached to physical signifiers of race.

Author

• Robin Leidner, University of Pennsylvania