I have a dream that we will one day live in a nation where our choice of play will not be based on the color of the skin of the actors on stage but by the stories told and the questions grappled with by the playwright.
Saw Katori Hall's Mountaintop yesterday. It's a wildly ambitious play. And I'm really glad I went. Even though I'm not black.
I am male. And yet, surprisingly, I find much of interest in Lady MacBeth, Blanche DuBois and Hedda Gabler. (And not just because I happen to be gay.) Like most audience members, I go to the theatre to engage my imagination. And my involvement in a particular story does not depend on whether the people on stage look, sound or act as I do. I don't say this to brag. I actually believe this is true of all theatregoers. Can you imagine?!
Which begs the question. Why do the marketing geniuses continue to assume that only black folk will want to see The Color Purple, only Jews will want to see Brighton Beach Memoirs and only Gays will want to see Love! Valour! Compassion!?
I think Edward Albee got it right when he wrote The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? No one was going to be able to fill a Broadway house with a bunch of goats (or the men who love them) so the marketing geniuses just had to resort to something far less exciting to them: They had to sell the play itself.