Every time arts leaders cave to racial pressure, they deal creativity another blow

From a new polemic by Heather MacDonald:

… The next step in imaginative emasculation is obvious: Only elderly actors can play King Lear, only hunchbacks can sing Rigoletto or play Richard III, only fat people can play or sing Falstaff, since using stage make-up and body suits to transform non-old, non-handicapped, and non-fat actors into those roles represents ageism, fat-shaming, and ableism. Certainly no straight actor will ever be able to play a gay or “trans” character, as Sean Penn recently observed. But then again, maybe only Falstaff should be able to play Falstaff, since surely between a fat actor and Falstaff himself there are significant differences of identity. Jorge Luis Borges could have figured this puzzler out, but not the rest of us.

Ultimately, theatre itself may have to be segregated, since to claim that a white audience can identify with a black-themed work is a more subtle form of cultural appropriation. A recent play, lauded twice by the New York Times, asked white audience members to leave the theatre before the play’s conclusion so that black attendees could experience undisturbed racial solidarity….

Read full article here.