Reasons We Write Letters

A few nights ago Stephen and I were talking and he said, remembering when he came so many years ago to HK, "This was essentially an apartheid system. I had to make a conscious decision, as a British person, as a white person, how I would negotiate it. I couldn't stand most of the attitudes here. And everyday, it's (still) my obligation to educate or to start conversations or to show people or to demonstrate on some level a different way of thinking."

I agree, but it does get tiresome. But...still, one goes on. After all, the choice otherwise is to shut down completely (my frequent choice) or to join up with the narrow-minded, or to just get pissed off (another frequent choice of mine). Sometimes it is hard to be level-headed.

So, Keohi attended, briefly, a one week, two hour a day theatre camp this summer. I thought about writing this letter a long while before sending it. Mainly because, frankly, I was feeling apathetic. Why should I bother? It's a camp, he will never attend again. And it's the American South and entrenched ways are hard to battle. But I decided in the end to do so. Why? Because the camp and the people were nice and community minded. So they deserved to know...maybe what people might not tell them ordinarily. Anyway, in the US, these are simply issues that children of color face. By now, I might have more of these issues if were were not in ASia and/or if Keohi was not attending a local Chinese school.

We face these complications here too, but the dynamic is different as there becomes the strange issue of living in a relatively new (1997) post-colonial society. And the majority is, of course, Asian.


The Letter to the Community Theatre Camp...

Hi XXXX,

Since I am now again overseas, I probably should be taken off the mailing list and will simply look up what is going on before we visit next summer. I wanted to thank you for your summer program. I believe that Keohi enjoyed it.

I hesitated to mention this at the time, but decided to do so as however sensitive this may be, I think it may very well be an issue in the future given the changing demographic of the XXXXXX community. What was once an all-white community when my family first moved to Memphis in 1980, has shifted as much of the population of Memphis has also changed. I was a little taken aback by some of the children's theatre casting decisions. As an educator (having taught K-12 and now university) and having studied acting, I am aware of the complications of casting, but figured within the context of a children's theatre, that there might be a few considerations regarding how such decisions are made.

I'm speaking of James and the Giant Peach, which we attended with Keohi after the summer school session. It was a charming production. The children all did a fine job, but of course, myself, as an Asian American, I could not help but notice that the roles of the two "ugly" sister/aunts were played by young girls of color. They were both, rather visibly, the only minority presence in your cast. I realize that they both had fairly good physical acting abilities, though at times, the diction of one girl was not as clear as some of the other cast members. Casting is complicated and requires not only the problem of skill level, but especially with children's theatre, one must take into consideration the diversity of the audience. Yet, the message sent by having young minority girls play these roles in the context of an otherwise all-white children's theatre production is uncomfortably clear and sends a not-so-subtle message out to the audience, mainly one of children and their families.

There are, of course, a multitude of studies done on standards of beauty and attraction and role modeling. I'm fairly certain that even the girls themselves might not have noticed that their roles as the "ugly" sisters were not an indictment of their own status of young girls of color, but I would hazard to guess that looking back as adults, they may potentially rethink how they came to form opinions of their own physicality as young girls. Such casting may also reinforce ideas in impressionable minds who not only participated in the project, but who watched the show. Children and many adults often do not understand differing standards of beauty and appearance, and the complexities of images of television, theatre and mass media, and how this shapes our ideas of society, beauty, and women.

Again, overall, it was a truly enjoyable production and I thank you for your time and consideration. Keohi enjoyed the camp and the show very much. We hope in the future, to attend further productions of the XXXXX theatre group when we come back to the States for a visit.


Cheers,


Stephanie