It never failed to get a laugh.
Eight times a week, during this fall’s run of “My One and Only,” there was the cue: “Why don’t you try Mrs. O’Malley’s boarding house?”
And then the spotlight would hit actress Karen Long, standing disheveled in peach housecoat and slippers, with bright orange hair . . . and undeniably brown skin.
And each time, the audience at the Candlelight Dinner Theatre in southwest suburban Summit roared with laughter. “I loved that role, I really did,” says Long, who also played a bishop/nightclub owner in the musical. “Every night, I was on the verge of laughter because you know there’s going to be this uproarious laughter.”
Even though she was on stage as Mrs. O’Malley for only 17 seconds each night, Long liked the role because the joke was really on the audience–even though she’s African-American, she has Irish blood. But
she also relished the part because it broke racial stereotypes. And that, in theater, can be difficult to find, especially in musicals.
It’s a topic that comes up consistently when actors of color gather: How can you get directors to ignore the color of your skin and cast you according to what you can do? Is it worth taking a stereotypic role in a musical to gain some experience and pay the bills . . . and maybe get noticed for bigger and less-offensive parts? And how can you accurately judge whether a part is a stereotype or simply a reflection of how social roles were in the past?
Those issues were raised during October auditions for next spring’s production of “Show Boat,” and some black actors reportedly stayed away in the belief that the musical glorifies racial stereotypes.
“People are used to seeing things a certain way,” says Long. “(Directors) have a certain audience that wants to see things a certain way, and they don’t want to risk losing their audience by casting differently than what they think their audience wants to see.”
Actor Dante Billedo, who laughingly describes himself as “a Filipino actor with an Italian first name and a Spanish-sounding last name, who looks Chinese or Indian,” struggles with stereotypical roles.
“It’s difficult,” he says. “There aren’t too many roles created for an actor like myself. And when there are some, there’s also high competition.”
Last year he played Ito, the houseboy, in Candlelight’s offering of “Mame.” “I would prefer other roles than the Ito one,” he acknowledges, “but it was an opportunity. It was a challenge: Let’s see what I can do with this.”
Billedo strove to portray Ito as a man with genuine affection and loyalty toward Mame, but he had his concerns too. “Perhaps I was perpetuating a stereotype,” he worries. “But that’s a character, and you hope that people can tell the difference.”
Proving them wrong
Some cast members couldn’t. “During the first few weeks of the run, most of the cast did not see me as a person, as a modern-day ’90s kind of Chicagoan,” Billedo recalls. “They never (addressed me as) `Dante,’ they always said `Ito.’ ” And one actor made fun of him while they shared rides to the theater, saying, “Ah so, ah so.”
There are times when Billedo wonders if there’s a place for him on the American stage. “Even my closer friends, whom I’ve done several shows with, have mentioned, `Dante, you’ll always get those roles. You’ll always get Chino from “West Side Story,” you’ll always get Ito from “Mame.” ‘ But that only gives me more motivation to try to prove them wrong. That’s what drives me.”
Like Billedo, Gustavo Mellado tries to flesh out stereotypical roles into three-dimensional characters. “When I started, I did anything that came my way,” says the Mexican-born Mellado. “I didn’t think about the content. All I wanted was the experience. And yet, I always wanted to give (each role) a lot of dignity.”
He recalls the time he was asked to portray a stereotypical Mexican in “Minority Report,” a revue, when he was in college in East Chicago. “The director wanted me to sit with this girl, fanning ourselves, and falling asleep because it was too hot. Then we started singing `Manana.’ Around that time the Frito Bandito commercial was very popular, the lazy Mexican kind of thing, and I was offended,” says Mellado.
“Right after that, though, I had a monologue called `Who Am I?’ Right after that little stereotypical bit, here was this human being explaining the heritage and where I came from, and how other people saw me. In the end, I was summing up that I am a human being, I am not a type. So then it was very easy to do that stereotypical bit. Because I was setting it up, I was saying something else.”
This summer Mellado was cast as an Anglo in “Lolita De Lares” at Latino Chicago. He portrayed an interrogator full of hatred for Latinos and people of color. “It was kind of uncomfortable in a way, because he used a lot of derogatory words and terms,” Mellado says. “I thought, How can I say that and really mean it? So I thought about the hate I have for discrimination, and that seemed to work. Which is what acting’s about; when you don’t identify with something, you substitute.
“I’ve done everything from `Oliver!’ to `Jesus Christ Superstar’ to `A Little Night Music.’ The only two shows that I can think of where I played Latins are `West Side Story’ (in Whiting, Ind.) and `Man of La Mancha’ (with the Village Players in Oak Park, among others), in which I played Sancho.
“I remember when I had to read Bernardo at the first rehearsal (of `West Side Story’). During the rumble, he calls the guy he’s fighting `kidando.’ I’m like, what is this? I think it’s the writer’s idea of what Spanglish is, because `kidando’ is not even Spanglish. I was reading a biography on (Stephen) Sondheim, and he said that when he wrote this (he had) never even met a Puerto Rican! So I made fun of it. I laughed as I said it, because I wanted to make it clear that it was wrong.”
Being typecast is a topic that comes up often with Millado and his fellow actors. “People are offered a role of a gangbanger, a junkie, and they take it because they say, well, it’s money,” he says. “And we ask, what are you playing? `Gangbanger, a rapist, what else.’ But that’s all that’s available now.”
To help change that, five years ago Millado co-founded Teatro Vista (Theatre With a View). “We realized there weren’t enough opportunities for actors of color, so we wanted to create our own opportunities,” he explains. “We do colorblind casting. We believe whoever’s right for the part should get it, regardless of who they are.”
Playing against types
Colorblind casting helped Long upend a different stereotype in “South Pacific” last spring at Candlelight. “I loved playing Bloody Mary, not only because it’s a plum role but because it’s normally done by an Asian actress,” says Long. She didn’t view Bloody Mary as a caricature, but as a clever woman who plays the clown to achieve her goals. As a black woman, Long believes she was able to play the character more three-dimensionally.
“Someone from a non-ethnic background might approach the role very stereotypically,” she explains. “So when you see, say, a Caucasian woman doing the role, they will go more for that twangy (sing-songy kind of talking) before someone who is African-American would, because we’re already in a minority.”
“If there were enough roles out there where you could show all different aspects of African-Americans (and other people of color), if there were enough to show that we are multidimensional people, I don’t think this would even be an issue,” says Michelle Williams, an actress who is black. “But we’re still grappling with (the fact that) there’s still not enough roles out there that show who we really are from our point of view. It’s usually from somebody else’s point of view, and a lot of times it’s wrong.”
Williams has turned down roles she found insulting. But she has played a maid on stage twice: in Neil Simon’s “God’s Favorite” and in “Another Part of the Forest” by Lillian Hellman, both in Kansas City, Mo.
“It depends on how it’s written,” she explains. “Because those particular roles weren’t the shuffle walk, the `I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies’ kind of role. It depends on the view that the writer has of the character.
“For example, I wouldn’t do the Butterfly McQueen role in `Gone With the Wind,’ but I would do the Hattie McDaniel stuff. That was a smarter character. She’s the one who knew what was going on. She kind of knew everything. But I can’t fault Butterfly McQueen, because that was the only avenue she had open to her at that time.”
Williams did try out for “Show Boat,” which opens in March at the Auditorium Theatre. She was surprised that only one other black woman showed up for the audition that first day. “We’re like: Where are we? Why are we not here? They need tons of black people in the show, and it’s a thousand dollars a week. Where are we?”
About half of the 73 roles in the musical are for people of color. Norman Zagier, spokesman for Livent Inc., the producer, said that of more than 600 actors who auditioned in Chicago, about a quarter were non-white.
“The show is a plea for understanding and tolerance,” Zagier said. “The actors’ portrayals are imbued to give them tremendous dignity.”
Starting to rebel
Long, however, said some black actors she knows boycotted the audition. After all, the musical opens with the ensemble dancing and singing: “Colored folk work on the Mississippi, colored folk work while the white folk play.”
“African-Americans in the business are starting to rebel, as far as stereotypical roles go, and they consider this to be a very stereotypical, Mammy kind of show,” says Long, who got a part in the ensemble.
“However, my problem with that is that they haven’t done their research. The show might be stereotypical as far as the type of roles we’re playing, but (Jerome) Kern was also making a statement on the situation, he was coming against it. I can understand (turning down a role) if it’s not going to do anything for our people, if it’s going to be in some way degrading. However, this one is putting it in their faces.
“You can’t go forward without knowing where you’ve been. . . . You have to remember that some of these plays are period pieces, and the period is not always pleasant to look at. By reviving some of these musicals you make other people remember and say, let’s not let this happen again.”
