Heated discussion

On Thursday mornings, we gather as staff and postgraduates to listen to a paper presented by one of our peers, typically staff or advanced PhD candidates. The paper presented this week was by Bisi who I got to meet before term began when I helped on Noel's show in the Dublin Fringe Festival. (Bisi directed and produced a production of The Kings of the Kilburn High Road.)

In his paper, Bisi discussed the presence of black persons on the contemporary Irish stage. In framing his assessment, he brought up items in the news, assumptions and biases, in order to draw attention to the images and attitudes towards the darker-skinned residents/citizens of Ireland. For me, it was particularly interesting because I have gone through a similar process of awareness-shift/reorientation through my training at UC Santa Cruz and, much later, at SFSI. It seemed many individuals in the room had not considered before the subconscious effects of seeing black people as violent, criminal, asylum-seeking, illegal, or victims, especially if the person seeing these images doesn't know any black people personally and believes what is being seen as true. Not to say that there are not black people who commit crimes or seek asylum or perpetrate/receive acts of violence; but there are disproportionate depictions of negative images on the television.

Bisi talked about the opportunity for theatre practitioners to take an active and conscious role in presenting a more balanced image, to challenge or provide counter-point to the images/scenarios we encounter regularly. He mentioned examples of well-intentioned integration of casts that inadvertently reinforces the hegemonic structure (the culturally-dominant power structure). This made me think of a story I heard about a production of a Shakespeare play in which a character was hung and, through the wonders of "color blind" casting, the only black man in the entire cast had been cast in that role. Also, the current production at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin features on black man in the cast and he is one of three servants.

Bisi was clear to acknowledge that he didn't infer any ill-intent in productions in which there was integrated casting, but did note that the over-all trend kept the black actors in roles that were in keeping with the aforementioned prevalent images on the television (crazy, violent, victims, etc.).

It was very interesting to hear one man's experience and observations about how the contemporary Irish stage does and does not reflect the current population/demographic/issues of a changing Ireland.