Berkeley Playhouse staff loved the way Pasadena Playhouse in Southern California cast the show “Little Shop of Horrors” in 2019. There, the players in Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s musical weren’t mostly white, as they were in the 1986 Rick Moranis movie about a man-eating plant.

“我t was a very inclusive production,” recalled Kimberly Dooley, Berkeley Playhouse’s executive artistic director. She cited a range of races and ethnicities seen throughout the cast, including George Salazar, who is of Filipino and Ecuadoran descent, as Seymour, the lead role Moranis had played.

So when the East Bay theater last month announced casting for its own production of the musical, which is scheduled to run May 27-July 3, Dooley said she had a similar aim: “broad representation in the casting at large.” The company took a similar approach in staging “Into the Woods” last year, which was hailed as a model in contrast to an all-white version that wasplanned, then canceled,in San Jose.

但是在演员透露揭露后，湾区剧院社区的一些成员尤其批评了一个选择，他们说与伯克利剧院的崇高目标和关于种族的言论相矛盾。该节目的三个所谓的顽童（通常由黑人妇女扮演的一部分），而是去了黑人的卢卡·特劳特曼（Lucca Troutman）。水晶科尔·汤（Crystal Cole Tong），是香港人美国人；克里斯蒂娜·埃尔南德斯（Cristina Hernandez）过去曾特别扮演拉丁裔角色。

In the aftermath of the uproar over their casting, Tong and Hernandez have left the production of their own volition.“They both were nothing but gracious, supportive, understanding and full of integrity,” Dooley said of their involvement with the show.

Tong, through Dooley, declined to comment, and The Chronicle could not reach Hernandez.

这一事件标志着数十年来为剧院种族平等运动的最新一集multiple open letterson the topic from theater artists in 2020 and 2021. These documents arose at both the local and national level, the most prominent a list of demands titled “We See You, White American Theater.”

Bay Area theater artists of color demand bold steps toward racial justice in online documents

Former employee alleges diversity, equity failures at Sonoma’s Transcendence Theatre

A critic responds to criticism: on being mentioned in the ‘Living Document’

Historically, theater artists have often been too financially vulnerable to be vocal about perceived injustices, but these documents have shaken, if not shattered, the industry’s power structure. They have helped to normalize open criticism, to connect a broader coalition of activists, and to increase the rigor, nuance and specificity of conversations about what racial equity should look like.

San Francisco actor, director and teaching artistKatrina McGrawis one of the Berkeley Playhouse critics. In an email to the company, which she later shared with The Chronicle, she called铸造选择“在湾区剧院社区中的黑人妇女的脸上打了一巴掌。…您选择从黑人妇女那里扮演两个角色。”

Oakland actor and director Phaedra Tillery-Boughton, who played an Urchin in a 2016 production with San Francisco’s Ray of Light Theatre, said she and her “god-sister” had watched the movie “over and over and over” as children. The Urchins, she said, were one of the few positive, powerful depictions of Black women they could find in the musical theater canon back then.

的人物,作为一种希腊chorus, know more than anyone else in the show, commenting on the action as it unfolds. They take their names — Chiffon, Crystal and Ronette — from Black “girl groups” of the 1960s. Played by Tisha Campbell, Tichina Arnold and Michelle Weeks in the film, they wear glamorous outfits and, always brimming with confidence, take no guff.

“我T是黑人文化的一部非常重要的电影，因为它们是如此凶猛，” McGraw说，他在《光线生产射线》中也扮演了其中的角色之一。“对于黑人社区来说，那部电影与'Wiz'一起上映。”

对于Tillery-Boughton，McGraw等人来说，顽童特别是黑色，而不仅仅是任何非白人种族或种族。

“They’ve lost all respect,” Tillery-Boughton said of Berkeley Playhouse, “all because they didn’t have a conversation and didn’t really find out what those characters meant to Black women.”

Dooley and “Little Shop” director Ryan Weible confirmed that no Black women were among those making the show’s casting decisions. Dooley told The Chronicle she recognizes now that the original casting hurt Black women.

“我希望我对那种演员的选择做了更多的戏剧性研究，对不起，我没有。”她说。

Official requirements for casting “Little Shop” are somewhat ambiguous. Music Theatre International, which licenses the right to produce the script, states on its web page: “While any actor can play any role in the show (i.e., there are no requirements or restrictions other than to perform the book, music and lyrics as written), it is encouraged that the roles of Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon be played by actors of color.” The script itself, though, says the Urchins are “Black.”

MTI President and CEO Drew Cohen clarified in an email to The Chronicle in that “the notes in the script only reflect what was done in one particular production (i.e., 1982),” when the show was first produced.

伯克利剧场（Berkeley Playhouse）的演员表明，权利持有者对演出的含义没有最终发言权。而且，随着时间的流逝，即使他们拥有限制或扩大其生产方式的合法权利，观众和艺术家也可以将自己的传统附加到文本上。

It also shows just how much conversations about race in theatrical casting have evolved. Producers can’t say they’ve completed the work of racial equity simply by casting more actors of color. Those actors are not a monolith, of course; each race carries a unique culture requiring expertise or lived experience to understand. Increasingly, the industry norm has become that if a producer plans to cast any particular race in a role, someone of that race should be part of the decision-making process.

Dooley said Berkeley Playhouse intends to revise its show development procedures, but its plans are still vague.

“We need to commit to doing more dramaturgical research and seeking more consultation in the area of cultural competency, everywhere from choosing shows to developing concepts during the casting process, during rehearsal, production — that’s an area of growth for us that we’re committed to,” she said, adding that“what I hope will happen in the future is that we are able to hire consultants that are relevant to each specific show.”

Underlying the Urchins controversy is just how few roles in musical theater, even in 2022, are specifically written for any non-white race. Latin American and Asian American actors have far from a glut of opportunities, though titles ranging from“在高度”to the forthcoming “KPop” and “Bhangin’ It” represent incremental progress.

At the same time, critics and activists say, casting directors must look at who benefits and who loses when any particular choice is made, and to specifically aim to ensure that Black people, who along with Indigenous people have faced a unique history of racial oppression and violence in the United States, don’t lose more still.

Adrienne D. Dixson, a Black professor in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Education who studies race, class and gender, notes, “What generally gets sacrificed in the world of diversity are things that are perceived to be for Black people only.” She cites her own research into historically Black colleges and universities showing a trend away from Black science, technology, engineering and math faculty members toward professors who are white and of East Asian descent.

“In the abstract, it’s nice to see a multicultural cast in a traditionally predominantly white production,” she added. “There are just so few spaces that Black people have.”

旧金山州立大学的非洲研究助理教授马克·艾伦·戴维斯（Mark Allan Davis）指出，尽管剧院作品的赌注似乎相对较小，但伯克利·佩勒豪斯（Berkeley Playhouse）的演员表现出了关于黑人生活问题的更广泛的对话。

“The fact that the theater is thinking about the idea of multiculturalism and then trying to shove it into this show means they’re not taking into consideration what the whole point of Black Lives Matter in a white supremacist, white patriarchal society really means,” said Davis, who is Black. “The whole point of what happened in the summer of 2020 was to listen and regard and see.”

他在长长的音乐剧院传统中找到了“小商店”的顽童，绘制了黑人“女孩团体”。此类角色也在“ Caroline或Change”和“发胶”中。他说，“小商店”的电影“represents the glamour and the talent and the exuberance of Black women.”

McGraw said she was surprised the theater missed the significance of the Urchins, since it reached out to her about the implications of casting the show’s female lead, Audrey, with a Black actor.

最初的演员宣布之后的第二天，剧院试图道歉。它部分地读到：“为了破坏我们认为有问题的叙述，创意团队选择了针对顽童的不同铸造配置。”但是这种语言进一步激怒了伯克利一些剧院的一些批评家。

“My sister sat in the front row of that show opening night and cried and sang every note with me,” Tillery-Boughton recalled of her own “Little Shop” performance. “You’re telling me that that’s a problematic character?”

Asked what the theater meant by “problematic,” Dooley explained: “The show was traditionally done with a primarily white cast and three Black women as the Urchins. Greater representation in the cast at large and Black representation in other roles, as well as other women of color as Urchins, was a choice we had seen in other productions that we felt was empowering and aligned with our vision.”

After the backlash, director Weible said the theater did not plan to cancel the show or to fire the two non-Black Urchins but to “incorporate them into the ensemble in creative ways” and to add two Black actors as Urchins to the cast.

“We hope that this choice contributes to an ongoing repair process,” the director said.

在2月底,伯克利剧场也发出去a series of surveys about what it should do next. One went to its cast and crew; another was posted on Facebook, to which any member of the theater community could respond; and another to its EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) and Belonging Committee, which, according to Managing Director Mary K. Lins, comprises board members, teaching artists, actors and staff among others.

麦格劳确认她得到了电子邮件调查。

“这是一个警察：要求有色女性免费为她们做这项工作。如果他们想要帮助，他们应该聘请EDI顾问并为他们的工作付款。”她说。

但就在剧院公司试图修复the damage, the show’s two non-Black Urchins withdrew from the show completely in late March.

Pacifica actor Kennedy Joy, who is Black, is one of the new Urchins. “Little Shop” is just her second professional production; her first was also with Berkeley Playhouse, in “A Christmas Story” in 2019.

“我recognize that my victory is someone else’s loss, so I’m trying to go about this in the most respectful way while also being really happy that I have a gig,” she said.

乔伊（Joy）在接受该角色之前先阅读在线批评，她说，“给我一种冒名顶替综合症的感觉。”

“我希望这样做有所不同，以便我们不必经历这个。”

For McGraw, proceeding with the show in any form doesn’t feel right.

她说：“我认为他们应该与同一演员一起做不同的演出，因此那些被演员的人不会丢失合同 - 薪水，健康保险等等 - 但也有机会再次尝试。”

Tillery-Boughton对Berkeley Playhouse如何前进没有任何建议。

“我’m not even interested in having those conversations,” she said.

“Little Shop of Horrors”:Book and lyrics by Howard Ashman. Music by Alan Menken. Based on the film by Roger Corman. Directed by Ryan Weible. May 27-July 3. $23-$44. Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. 510-845-8542.tickets.berkeleyplayhouse.org