‘Hamilton’ stands poised to land top awards – Broadway embraces diversity

This news has been read 5391 times!

NEW YORK, June 8, (Agencies): This season, the theater community is celebrating how Broadway has finally become the Great un-White Way.

Black actors have taken center stage in “The Color Purple”, “The Gin Game”, “Eclipsed” and “Shuffle Along.” A Latin cast shines in “On Your Feet!” and Asian-Americans told a bitter story from America’s past in “Allegiance.” The season’s megahit “Hamilton,” of course, has multi-racial leads in its DNA.

At Sunday’s Tony Awards, 14 of the 40 nominees for acting in plays and musicals — 35 percent — are actors of color. And more non-whites are nominated on the other side of the stage, including choreographer Savion Glover, director George C. Wolfe and playwright Danai Gurira.

But this season’s diversity may be more a coincidence of timing than Broadway stages consistently providing an accurate reflection of America’s melting pot.

“The aligning of the stars has occurred this year where a lot of really spectacular work featuring multi-racial casts and a true photograph of what the world and America really looks like is performing on Broadway night after night after night,” said “The Color Purple” producer Scott Sanders. “Will we see this being the norm moving forward? I’m not so sure.”

Neither is Pun Bandhu, an Asian-American actor and a member of The Asian American Performers Action Coalition’s steering committee. The group is the only one that collects data on Broadway’s diversity — it started collecting it nine years ago — and it offers a sober outlook.

According to its latest report, non-white actors haven’t ever in the past nine years represented more than 26 percent of all Broadway roles. Though numbers for the current season aren’t ready yet, the numbers for minority roles last season actually dipped to 22 percent, down from the previous season’s 25 percent.

Prove

“What last year’s numbers prove is that while we may be having an extra diverse year this year … that’s not usually the case,” said Bandhu. “It hasn’t changed that much actually on Broadway.”

The numbers suggest improvements one year, then a drop off the next. The 2013-14 season was rich with roles for African-Americans, including “A Raisin in the Sun” starring Denzel Washington, Audra McDonald channeling Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” and the dance show “After Midnight.”

There were also African-Americans in nontraditional roles, like James Monroe Iglehart as the Genie in “Aladdin,” Nikki M. James and Kyle Scatliffe in “Les Miserables,” and Norm Lewis becoming the first black Phantom on Broadway in “The Phantom of the Opera.”

That season, black actors represented 21 percent of all roles. But the next season, the number fell to 9 percent.

This ebb and flow is nothing new to Stephen C. Byrd, a veteran Broadway producer behind this season’s “Eclipsed .” He recalls a diverse Broadway when he produced an all-black revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 2008.

Back then, Morgan Freeman was starring in “The Country Girl,” Laurence Fishburne was in “Thurgood” and such shows as “Passing Strange,” “In the Heights” and the original “The Color Purple” were playing.

“That was a time of great diversity on Broadway,” said Byrd, who produces minority-driven works with Alia Jones-Harvey. “We’ve been at this for 10 years and it’s taken from that time to come to where we are today to see that same diversity on Broadway.”

This season, Byrd is watching as Broadway is cheered for its inclusiveness at a time when the film industry has come under heavy criticism for a lack of diversity in the Academy Awards. There’s even been the bragging #BroadwaySoDiverse to rival #OscarsSoWhite.

But next season isn’t shaping up to be as diverse as this one.

While black actresses will lead “Cats “ and “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 “ and African-American actors will be represented in “Motown” and August Wilson’s “Jitney,” the lead actors are so far all white for the upcoming “The Cherry Orchard”, “Heisenberg”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “The Master Builder”, “The Present”, “The Bandstand”, “Hello, Dolly!”, “The Little Foxes”, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” and “Falsettos.”

Of the six leading parts in “Holiday Inn,” only one will be played by an actor of color. All six leading roles in a revival of “The Front Page” will be played by white actors.

History

At the Tony Awards this Sunday, Broadway musical “Hamilton” is widely expected to walk away with the top trophies. If it does, it’ll cap an extraordinary year that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop version of American history has spent at the epicenter of the zeitgeist. But despite the frenzy, Alexander Hamilton’s rise and fall won’t be migrating to the big screen anytime soon, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

It’s not for a lack of interest. Beyond “Hamilton’s” watercooler cache, there’s a financial reason for studios to snap it up. It’s a hot time for Hollywood musicals. “Into the Woods” and “Les Miserables” scored at the box office, fueling a revival of a genre that many observers had left for dead a decade or so ago. Television has been equally receptive. “Glee” may have ended its run, but NBC continues to find success filming live versions of musical classics such as “The Sound of Music” and “The Wiz.”

Now studios are rummaging through their Playbills in the hopes of finding their next song-and-dance hits. “Gypsy,” “Cats” and “Guys and Dolls” are making their way to screens, and Miranda’s Tony-winning “In the Heights” will finally get the movie treatment thanks to a new deal with the Weinstein Company.

Studios have been salivating at the thought of landing the “Hamilton” movie rights, but Miranda isn’t even taking meetings. For now, the creator and star is focused on finishing out his run with the Broadway production (set to end next month) and mounting a stage version in Chicago, according to a source close to the show. At the same time, “Hamilton” backers — a select and greatly enriched group that includes producers Jeffrey Seller, Sander Jacobs, Jill Furman and the Public Theater, where the show originated — are focused on launching a national tour that will originate in Los Angeles in March 2017. They are also hammering out plans for international engagements.

This news has been read 5391 times!

Related Articles

Back to top button

Advt Blocker Detected

Kindly disable the Ad blocker

Verified by MonsterInsights