After a long decision-making process, the Connecticut College Theater Department has officially settled on what will be this year’s musical show: James Joyce is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret.
Those who pay attention to audition postings for the fine arts may have noticed that this is a very different show than what the department initially set out to cast and produce at the conclusion of the Fall semester. At one point, bulletin boards across campus advertised auditions for another musical: Violet. Violet is a new musical that focuses on the journey of a young woman deformed by a childhood accident traveling by bus through the South. On her way, she encounters first hand the gendered, religious and particularly racial tensions that shaped life in the 1960s as she develops a friendship with a young black soldier.
As our campus explores racial equality and diversity in our community, this seems like it would be an excellent choice. The musical was initially selected by the Seasonal Play Advisory Committee (SPAC), a group of theater students and faculty that review plays to assemble each season of performances. When reading plays, the SPAC has several factors to keep in mind which can include anything from considerations of an artistic match between the play and the director, to the relationship and contrasts between other plays being performed during a given season.
In preparation for auditions, the Theater department held a series of events they referred to as “Town Houses,” which served as department-centric events that joined in the overall campus conversations regarding race relations on campus.
“We held these events to talk about the show, and they led to discussions of diversity on stage as a whole, and how people perceived diversity in performance,” said director of the musical, Professor Ken Prestininzi.
However, when it came to the actual auditions, the department met an insurmountable obstacle in producing Violet. The plot of the show hinges on a black male character in a leading role. All auditions are open to the campus community as a whole. But, despite attempts to draw in a greater pool of auditioneers, no one that auditioned fit the bill.
It is also a practical question. Do we as a school choose shows that are easy to cast, that is, we know that casting requirements will be met by the students that are most likely to audition time after time? In light of the current issue the department faces that would be the simple choice. But as Prestininzi pointed out, Violet was only the first in what he hopes will be a series of attempts to draw in a more diverse pool of actors and performers.
The knee-jerk reaction would be to assume that perhaps Violet, though an intriguing option for performance, may have been inappropriate considering the overwhelmingly white student population. It is frustrating, of course, because the issues that the show encompasses are exactly those that are coming into focus in discussion. However, Prestininzi had an interesting response:
“We do have the appropriate racial demographic at the school to produce Violet, and that is why it was considered, but having a demographic at the school does not guarantee or determine who auditions for any specific show. Violet tells a specific story about class, gender and race in the United States at a certain time in its history and therefore requires specifically assigned diversity in some of its casting to meet the intent desired by its authors. We could not cast Violet to meet that intent due to the demographic of those who auditioned, not due to the demographic of the school.”
The difficulty that the Theater department had in casting this part struck me as particularly interesting. They are not the first group at the college to attempt to draw in new voices for performance, especially when considering initiatives such as As Told By Vaginas and The Color Brave Monologues. There has been a huge push this year to engage students in the act of telling their unique stories in a way that brings individual difference into critical view. We want to hear new stories, and we know that they exist. But the challenge that these performance groups meet time and time again is the question of what we are not doing; why is it that certain groups cannot draw in new voices? What kind of events are needed to successfully engage students beyond those that are interested from the start?
This works both ways. As previously discussed in an editorial written for The College Voice, it seems that the school events that are meant to build constructive conversations about race are also always attended by the same people. It is the same people having the same conversations, rather than one conversation that the entire campus engages in. Just like the Theater department could not predict who would audition for the musical, anyone who plans an event at Conn that hopes to make progress in discussions of race cannot fully anticipate who will attend.
“The main issue is how we access new voices in the Theater, both at Conn and across the board,” said Prestininzi. While he was referring specifically to the situation in the Theater department, it seems that this sentiment spreads far beyond.
As a professor of American Drama and Playwriting, Prestininzi is particularly attuned to the richness that these particular types of relationships can illicit onstage. The tapestry of American Theater is exploding with vitality and attempts to answer questions about racial identity in American culture and history. Violet is another example of a kind of theater that wants to approach social tensions and silences. The people that are required to meet the artistic intent for this show exist, that is clear, but the challenge lay in bringing them forward.
“These attempts to draw people in have to be proactive. That is, we can’t just try once and then back away,” said Prestininzi in closing.
This is not all to say that the audition process was a wash. The new show selected by the department is still provocative, though perhaps not in the same way. James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret is also a landmark show in the College’s theatrical history in that it represents the first foray into experimental musical theater. Our theater department will be the first to “devise” the play outside of the Pig Iron Company, who initially developed the show. The musical is meant to be relatively improvised by the cast and crew. This play also begs the answer to serious questions such as the relationship between gender and the creative mind, as well as the creative mind and mental illness. How creative can you be before you’re considered insane?
Though James Joyce Is Dead does not ask the same questions as Violet, the Theater department is obviously still dedicated to putting together a unique show that questions performance as it has been done up to this point at Connecticut College. The show will be staged during the weekend of Feb. 27 through March 1. •
