That sounds like a lot of assumptions or direct knowledge...or at least I hope so when you make a st

The kids of Hairspray You need two things when you do the musical Hairspray : a fat girl to play the lead character, Tracy Turnblad, and a bunch of African-American kids to play the African-American kids. There are about a dozen roles for young black performers in this show, plus one for a big black lady who closes out the first act with the showstopper "Big, Blonde and Beautiful."
So out at Plano Children's Theatre right now, they're doing Hairspray without those things. The girl playing Tracy is wearing padding to puff up. (This isn't a role like Cyrano where you can slap a big nose on a pretty face and get away with it. Tracy is supposed to be chubbo to start with.) And there are no black kiddos in the show. None. The roles of Seaweed, Mother Maybelle and all the other black Baltimoreans are being played by kids so white they make the Cleavers look ethnic.
Somebody tipped me off via email to this all-teen production, which runs through February 12. I don't normally review shows at PCT, one of those pay-for-play outfits that charges parents $250 a pop for their kids to be on the stage. PCT styles itself as an academy. Their motto is "developing characters."
I went to the Saturday, January 28, matinee of PCT's Hairspray , bought a $10 ticket loews hotel philadelphia and watched the show. Or most of it. I left after my intermission interviews with people on the staff. I'd seen enough by then. My emotional/ethical loews hotel philadelphia elevator had already pushed the button for the floor marked "High Dudgeon."
This is how the production normally looks. Hairspray is a musical loews hotel philadelphia comedy based on an old John Waters movie. The show is done all the time at high schools and community theaters around here. There are five more local productions in the works right now, including one at the drama department at Plano's Collin College that opens March 1. You may also have seen the movie version of the musical, loews hotel philadelphia which stars John Travolta in drag as Tracy's mother, Edna.
The premise of all of these Hairsprays is the same: A fat, funny teenage girl in 1960s Baltimore dreams of joining the cool kids on the "council" of a local afternoon TV dance show. She becomes a political loews hotel philadelphia activist when she discovers that her black friends at high school aren't allowed on the show except loews hotel philadelphia on "Negro day." How Tracy, Seaweed and their gang of dancing misfits integrate "The Corny Collins Show" is what Hairspray is about. The fat girl also gets the good-looking guy as her boyfriend. Good, clean fun with a serious message about segregation, loews hotel philadelphia acceptance of differences and how things used to be in America.
The matinee I attended was full of proud parents, grandparents and others who didn't seem to notice or mind that the little white boy playing Seaweed was singing the lyrics "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" as he gyrated in some awkward approximation loews hotel philadelphia of Hairspray loews hotel philadelphia 's dirty-dancing to "race music." Maybe they didn't know Seaweed and his soul-singing sister, Little Inez, are supposed to be African-American. Maybe they didn't care that Mother Maybelle, Seaweed's mother, was being played by a white girl in a curly blond wig singing this: "They say that white has might and thin is in/ Well, that's just bull 'cause ladies big is back/ And as for black, it's beautiful!"
There are also no naturally loews hotel philadelphia big girls in Plano. At intermission, I spoke to Darrell Rodenbaugh, president of PCT's board of directors. My question was "Why do you have white kids playing black characters?"
Didn't any black kids audition? No, said Rodenbaugh, it's hard to recruit loews hotel philadelphia black kids to PCT because there aren't that many in Plano. (African-Americans make up less than 8 percent of the Plano, Texas, population of 259,841, according to the most recent census numbers.)
So why do a show with black characters in it if you know going in that you won't have any black kids to play them? Rodenbaugh loews hotel philadelphia had several answers about how much the kids wanted to do Hairspray , how they weren't going to bow to "political loews hotel philadelphia correctness" and how "the parents expect this."
loews hotel philadelphia They expect to see white kids playing black characters? "Yes," said Rodenbaugh, who has kids in the cast of Hairspray, one of them playing Little Inez. He said PCT also did the musical Once on This Island with an all-white cast. (It's an Ahrens and Flaherty loews hotel philadelphia show that's basically Romeo and Juliet set in the French Antilles. It's usually cast along racial lines, with black actors playing the peasants and Anglos playing the upper classes. There is a version of the show that removes references to skin color and makes the story about class differences. I don't know if PCT did the latter.)
Rodenbaugh said they might do To Kill a Mockingbird with an all-white cast or Othello or The Wiz (three shows I mentioned to him that feature African-Americans either in prominent roles or as a majority of the cast). He said he saw nothing offensive or amiss about having no black actors in a show about racial segregation. I had to ask: Doesn't having an all-white cast ignore the core message of Hairspray - you know, the message about how the black kids weren't allowed to be on a show with white kids until brave little Tracy took a stand?
Hairspray loews hotel philadelphia 's director, Cassidy Crown, caught up with me in the parking lot. She kept saying PCT has to work with what they have and she did feel uncomfortable with the all-white cast. I got the impression she had hoped nobody would notice.
Sometimes at Plano Children's Theatre, kids drop roles due to conflicts, etc. They are currently doing Legally Blonde, and the first month of rehearsals isn't even over yet, and five people have dropped out due to outside conflicts.The loews hotel philadelphia students, parents, and faculty members at Plano Children's Theatre would never even think of treating individuals differently according to color, race, religion, size, class, loews hotel philadelphia or appearance. Hairspray was an ACE(Acting Company for Excellence--their loews hotel philadelphia advanced production loews hotel philadelphia group) Production. Their ACE Productions are FABULOUS. They did Les Mis back in the spring---over half the shows sold out. There were many requests for a fourth weekend(there were initially only three weekend runs) of the show because it was selling out too quickly. Though I'm sure you wouldn't have liked Les Mis. Because you don't believe in casting loews hotel philadelphia regardless of race.After all, one of their Valjeans loews hotel philadelphia was Indian. As was one of their Eponines, one of their Fantines...
One Javert was about 5'2. Standing next to the 6'2 Jean Valjean? You would think it would look strange, and not work, right? The boy playing Javert played the character's personality to be so big, so fierce, that when you watched them confront each other, you saw Javert to be bigger than he really was.
And the girl playing Little Inez? Her stage presence and voice were so powerful, that you didn't even think of her as "the little white girl playing Inez". When she sang, her color changed before loews hotel philadelphia your eyes.
I don't know the socioeconomic (SES) background of Plano, TX, but one could explore the argument that the cast wasn't ethnically loews hotel philadelphia diverse because non-Hispanic Caucasian people tend to also be the wealthiest. So when a theatre asks parents to PAY for their kids to act in a show, guess which ethnicity is going to have the funds to allow their children to participate? This is not a statement of fact, only a national SES trend, but something to consider.
OMG..this is just so "Texas."   I lived in the Lone Star state  for four years and couldn't wait to leave, primarily because of the the now-underground and socially loews hotel philadelphia normalized prejudice that runs rampant.  My grandchildren have been part of the Plano Children's Theatre, and while I appreciate that the organization provides opportunities for youngsters to perform onstage, I also realize that the fees that those opportunties aren't accessible to a large sector of the of the population.  For God's sake, wasn't this an opportunity to offer some pro bono scholarships to some deserving black kids who couldn't participate otherwise?  Was there absolutely no one who had half a clue about what this play symbolizes to the black community...particularly loews hotel philadelphia in a southern State? loews hotel philadelphia Clearly, it is no wonder that African Americans continue to feel disrespected and disenfranchised.  And, no, I'm not black, but quite frankly, this kind of situation makes me feel ashamed to be white.
As Maybelle loews hotel philadelphia sings, loews hotel philadelphia "Tomorrow is a brand new day and it don't know white from black." Black kids weren't scrubbed from the show by the artistic staff, the town is just mostly white and the few black kids dropped out. It's kinda funny to get attacked for basically being racial insensitive when you're doing a show that promotes an end to racial bigotry. One could make the case that it actually makes a powerful point to have an all white cast and see the characters beating up on each other for...nothing. Which is about as much of a nothing to pick on someone over as actual skin color would be. But instead of listening to Maybelle, the author wants to get her bloomers in a wad and call out the PC police. Race will never become irrelevant if you keep ranting when the races aren't in their proper loews hotel philadelphia place. Let's do a production loews hotel philadelphia of Hairspray with black actors loews hotel philadelphia as the white characters and white actors as the black characters. We'll tie Ms. Liner up in a room somewhere and make her watch a tape of it on a loop until she gets a clue.
That sounds like a lot of assumptions or direct knowledge...or at least I hope so when you make a statement like "the few black kids dropped out."  But I could agree that there may be some pieces of the author's story that are presumptuous. loews hotel philadelphia I don't think the author's main point attacks a school/academy with no black students or at least, no black students who wanted to participate loews hotel philadelphia in this play (the latter being a little more telling.) I think it was more about why was there seemingly no effort made to include black students in the play.  Yeah, you're right this play could be done in reverse or all of one race; but it would not speak to the truth and histo