Holding Back: The Theatre's Resistance to Non-Traditional Casting

Abstract

In February 1986 when the Non-Traditional Casting Project (NTCP) began its advocacy work to help forge a truly American performing arts, it was not without a great sense of irony. That an organization had to be formed in the mid-Ig8os to advocate for the full participation of AfricanAmerican, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, native American, female, disabled, and other disenfranchised artists in the performing arts was a testimony to our society's failure to acknowledge and accept people of these various groups as individuals and as Americans. This was, after all, over 30 years since the advent of the civil rights movement and more than 20 since the contemporary women's movement began. If these movements, important as they were (and are), had succeeded in re-forming our institutions, rather than merely bending them a little, a Non-Traditional Casting Project would have been superfluous. Unfortunately, although ethnic, female, and disabled persons have been accommodated to an extent in the greater society, their complete acceptance is long in coming. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the performing arts, particularly the theatre.