The Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors is the national longest-running arts service and advocacy organization…and they are not very happy these days. They are denouncing as “inappropriate” the casting of two non-Latinos in the Latino specific roles of “Jackie” and Veronica” in the Hartford, Connecticut regional production of The Motherf**ker with the Hat.
The most vocal critic is actually Stephen Adly Guirgis, the playwright himself. He recently said, “The two romantic leads in my play were written very specifically as Latinos in their late 30’s—Nuyoricans to be exact. When HOLA contacted me about the casting of the regional premiere of my play in Hartford, it seemed curious to me that Theaterworks had cast two young white actors in their early 20’s to play characters who were quite different from them both age-wise and ethnicity-wise. Since the play was cast in NYC and Hartford, it seemed even more curious to me that actors closer in age and ethnicity could apparently not be found. I believe firmly in casting the best actors for the roles, but when you write a play about two characters who are of a certain age and ethnicity—and it is cast in NYC—it is not unreasonable to expect that the actors who get cast will match up fairly squarely with what you wrote and intended.”
You can read more about the controversy here…and then read even more from political writer Jose R. Sanchez, Chair of the Board of the National Institute for Latino Policy.
Sanchez had been confronted with people asking him, quite simply, “What’s the big deal?” What difference does it make if Latinos are playing Latino roles on stage–or at all? He makes an articulate argument about the importance of seeing Latinos in these roles–a position that’s kind of a fundamental principle behind Se Fija!—in a recent essay on the New Generation Latino Consortium.
“Actors help to change what Daniel Kahneman has called the intuitive, automatic, and largely subconscious part of people’s brains. Actors access that subconscious by offering associations and metaphors that can indirectly confirm or reject existing prejudices. A Latino performer can inform a viewer that Latinos can have talent, be entertaining, offer happiness, engage in intelligent conversation, have distinctive styles, have profound insights, and be human. All of these provide the material for the quick intuitive and non-rational reactions that originate in the right brain and that calls the shots in so much of our actions.”
It’s a good and thoughtful piece about the importants of Latinos in front and behind the camera. You can read the whole thing here.
