Comments for New Beans

Comment on Bloody Sunday by Frank

Frank — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:19:38 +0000

I notice this when I was dividing my time between California and France. The murder rate in America is, of course, many multiples of European countries. The Los Angeles Times, on Monday, would publish a summary of the murder incidents in the city over the weekend which was often in double digits. In France any murder is a page one story. The American reports have an unstated premis: most of those killed and injured are drug dealers, the poor and minorities, therefore less important for “the rest of us.” The story becomes relevant when the under-classes accidently involve “us” in their killing. This racism and class superiority degrades the human race, runs counter to Christian priniciples and is a consistent ugly underbelly of American society.

Comment on Bloody Sunday by New Orleans and Many Hands Make Light Hearts | August Schulenburg

New Orleans and Many Hands Make Light Hearts | August Schulenburg — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:31:37 +0000

[...] isn’t New Orleans Mother’s Day parade shooting a ‘national tragedy’? and Bloody Sunday for why. It makes me all the more grateful to Jody Christopherson for the video that we’ve [...]

Comment on Bloody Sunday by Clayton Lord

Clayton Lord — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:53:58 +0000

Hi Geoff, I was indeed more trying to portray the general dismissiveness of the media response, and not as an accurate representation, but I do take your very important point. New Orleans is an incredibly diverse and vibrant city, and I certainly did not mean to imply that I believe otherwise.

Comment on Bloody Sunday by Geoff Watland

Geoff Watland — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:34:21 +0000

Thank you for your thoughts. I feel compelled to tell you as a resident of New Orleans and a personal friend and acquaintance to many of the people in attendance that your summation of the Second Line incident as “perpetuated by three black men against a bunch of black people in a southern city” is inaccurate. Perhaps, you were trying to illustrate the dismissive tone that many people take when referring to incidents of this sort, but the crowd was decidedly mixed race I can personally confirm blacks, latinos and plenty of white folks were in attendance. I make that distinction not in an attempt to imply more or less tragedy given the presence or lack of different racial representation in the crowd, but as an insistence for accuracy. New Orleans isn’t a haven of racial tolerance by any stretch of the imagination, but I would like for people who don’t live here to know that we live, work, play, love, and struggle together.

Comment on The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre by Sarah Bellum

Sarah Bellum — Sun, 12 May 2013 22:36:02 +0000

A chart of age ranges would show a very similar pattern, with actors and staff skewed young, and audiences skewed geriatric. Again, economics is the most obvious way to account for this.

Comment on The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre by Sara

Sara — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:05:27 +0000

Theater audiences are also getting older. When I look out over the audiences at my husband’s one-man shows, I see white hair. I’d say the average age of his audience members is about 70. Will there be future generations of theater goers who seek out new and challenging shows? Today I think people tend to flock to spectacles with Las Vegas-y effects.

Comment on The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre by stevo

stevo — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:39:34 +0000

looks like we need more white actors

Comment on On (in)Appropriate Cultural Appropriation by Cayo Hern

Cayo Hern — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:22:35 +0000

I’m tired of all this furor over political correctness….The show introduces new cultures to a mass audience and does so in a respectful way. It also does more to awaken curiosity about these peoples and civilizations than ANY other source I’m aware of….Sure it’s entertainment….but what’s wrong with that? Most people aren’t even aware of fhese other indigenous groups and this goes a long way toward educating them that’s there’s a lot more going on in the world than their local neighborhood. The Italian “buffoon” comes from a long history of Italian clowns….and his routines were damned funny! If this type of homage bothers you, DON’T GO and leave more room at the shows for the rest of us!

Comment on The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre by Angel

Angel — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:14:29 +0000

Thank you for posting this! Over here on the East Coast, the group I’m part of, AAPAC (Asian American Performers Action Coalition), has taken statistics on the New York theater scene as well, although we didn’t take all the same “measurements” when factoring our numbers. If you’d like to compare, our website is http://www.aapacnyc.org, and on the homepage click on “Stats Report”.

After holding several discussions with theater artists of all levels, in forums both large and small, about exactly this issue (but especially as it pertains to Asian American actors), the reasons given to us about why these numbers are the way they are are manifold. The collision of entrenched history with a rapidly diversifying population has resulted in a bizarre blindness – and resistance – to change. White writers, for the most part, continue to write about what they immediately know, which is their own history. Then it’s mostly white writers who are championed by the major theater production companies, mostly white directors hired to direct the plays, and mostly white actors hired to tell the stories. After a while, audience members of color start to ask, “Where am I on that stage, other than as a token, or in a play about my people that happened 2 years ago?” But In Broadway houses, there are numbers proving that when a play about a specific ethnic group is produced, audience members of that ethnicity suddenly appear in DROVES. Producers are missing out on goldmines and don’t even know it…

Obviously there’s much more to discuss than I can encapsulate here, si for time’s sake I’ll leave it with this: the US population numbers are going to flip very, very soon. By 2043, the U.S. will no longer be majority white. If theaters want to grow and diversify their audiences, it’ll behoove them to find ways to reach out to diverse audiences – and telling, then advertising, stories that include people of more races and ethnicities will be a great way to start.

Comment on The Untenable Whiteness of Theatre by mkt

mkt — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:12:36 +0000

The line at the bottom, for actors, looks incredible to me. Is that really what the distribution of actors in the Bay Area is? The “other” category is slightly smaller, but aside from that it looks like practically equal numbers of White, Asian, Hispanic, and Black actors. It’s been decades since I’ve attended a play in the Bay Area, but Los Angeles, which is as diverse as the Bay Area, has a theater scene where the actors are still overwhelmingly white. At least in the plays that I attended. Obviously there were exceptions such as the East West Players.