SF Chronicle Asks Actors to Envision A Role for Themselves
Excerpt from Lily Janiak's article in the SF Chronicle:
To help write “The Shipment,” Korean American playwright Young Jean Lee asked her black cast to create the roles they’d always wanted to play but never got the chance to, at least partly because of conscious and unconscious discrimination. One male actor said he wanted to be Hedda Gabler; another said he wanted to be a bulimic cake decorator. Lee wrote the living room section of the play in response to their requests.
Recognizing that racial inequity in casting is hardly limited to the time and place of the premiere of “The Shipment” — 2009, in New York — The Chronicle asked prominent black actors in the Bay Area a similar question: If you could create any role for yourself to play, what would it be, and why?
Lauren Spencer
“Penelope in a rock opera, with a multicultural cast, that’s inspired by ‘The Odyssey,’ focusing on how the badass women of that epic hold it all down while the menfolk gallivant around at sea. The ways in which Penelope has to outwit the constraints society places on her in order to survive on her own terms is, I think, very relevant to women today — especially women of color.”
Read the full feature here
To help write “The Shipment,” Korean American playwright Young Jean Lee asked her black cast to create the roles they’d always wanted to play but never got the chance to, at least partly because of conscious and unconscious discrimination. One male actor said he wanted to be Hedda Gabler; another said he wanted to be a bulimic cake decorator. Lee wrote the living room section of the play in response to their requests.
Recognizing that racial inequity in casting is hardly limited to the time and place of the premiere of “The Shipment” — 2009, in New York — The Chronicle asked prominent black actors in the Bay Area a similar question: If you could create any role for yourself to play, what would it be, and why?
Lauren Spencer
“Penelope in a rock opera, with a multicultural cast, that’s inspired by ‘The Odyssey,’ focusing on how the badass women of that epic hold it all down while the menfolk gallivant around at sea. The ways in which Penelope has to outwit the constraints society places on her in order to survive on her own terms is, I think, very relevant to women today — especially women of color.”
Read the full feature here
Lauren Featured in Theatre Bay Area's "Keep An Eye On" Column
From the interview:
“New plays are my heart and soul, for a couple of reasons,” she says. “As an actor, I love having a living playwright in the room and being able to converse around the play. There’s a sense of ownership and collaboration that happens. And then in what I want theatre to be able to do, I think new plays are really important, because we need to give representation to underrepresented voices. I mean, why are we doing plays anyway if we’re just going to rehash old tropes? It’s really important to me to give my energy and my heart and my talent and my time to plays that are about stories that we’re not encountering in everyday life because people don’t want to talk about them, or about people who feel like they don’t get to have a voice.”
She cites Idris Goodwin’s Blackademics, and the difficult and heart-baring conversations that came up in talkbacks during Crowded Fire’s run last year, as exactly the kind of experience she craves more of.
“I came across this journal entry where I wrote, ‘Blackademics really scared me, and that’s how I knew I wanted to do it. I only want to do work that scares me,’” Spencer says. “I think that’s what’s next; if it doesn’t ask me to confront my fear, then I don’t know that it’s worth my time or my energy. I think that might a good place for us to go as a community, to just hold an empathetic space to say, ‘You’re afraid of these things, and I’m afraid of these things. How can we support each other in surmounting that?’"
Read the full interview here
“New plays are my heart and soul, for a couple of reasons,” she says. “As an actor, I love having a living playwright in the room and being able to converse around the play. There’s a sense of ownership and collaboration that happens. And then in what I want theatre to be able to do, I think new plays are really important, because we need to give representation to underrepresented voices. I mean, why are we doing plays anyway if we’re just going to rehash old tropes? It’s really important to me to give my energy and my heart and my talent and my time to plays that are about stories that we’re not encountering in everyday life because people don’t want to talk about them, or about people who feel like they don’t get to have a voice.”
She cites Idris Goodwin’s Blackademics, and the difficult and heart-baring conversations that came up in talkbacks during Crowded Fire’s run last year, as exactly the kind of experience she craves more of.
“I came across this journal entry where I wrote, ‘Blackademics really scared me, and that’s how I knew I wanted to do it. I only want to do work that scares me,’” Spencer says. “I think that’s what’s next; if it doesn’t ask me to confront my fear, then I don’t know that it’s worth my time or my energy. I think that might a good place for us to go as a community, to just hold an empathetic space to say, ‘You’re afraid of these things, and I’m afraid of these things. How can we support each other in surmounting that?’"
Read the full interview here
COMING UP:
Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley
By LAUREN GUNDERSON and MARGOT MELCON
Directed by MEREDITH McDONOUGH
Nov. 25 - Dec. 18
Marin Theatre Company
TICKETS
By LAUREN GUNDERSON and MARGOT MELCON
Directed by MEREDITH McDONOUGH
Nov. 25 - Dec. 18
Marin Theatre Company
TICKETS
