By Jahnesha Huertas
Finian’s Rainbow was originally produced in 1947. One part of the story is that a leprechaun turns a racist senator into a black person to understand the hurt he has caused. In the original production, the white actor playing the senator wore black-face to show his magical transformation from a white man to a black man. This caused bad press for the show because people thought it was encouraging racism. Not just audiences agreed, but the NAACP was also angered by what they perceived was a negative portrayal of blacks. In the current revival, two different actors have been cast to solve this problem - a white actor portrays the senator before his transformation and a black actor portrays him after the magical occurrence.
Finian’s Rainbow was originally produced in 1947. One part of the story is that a leprechaun turns a racist senator into a black person to understand the hurt he has caused. In the original production, the white actor playing the senator wore black-face to show his magical transformation from a white man to a black man. This caused bad press for the show because people thought it was encouraging racism. Not just audiences agreed, but the NAACP was also angered by what they perceived was a negative portrayal of blacks. In the current revival, two different actors have been cast to solve this problem - a white actor portrays the senator before his transformation and a black actor portrays him after the magical occurrence.
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2 comments:
Woe..that's really interesting.
I have to be honest though, considering the context of the play, I don't really see the big issue in the actor playing the senator wearing black face. It would at least appear the be the same guy right?
It's not that case that he's pretending to be a black man and a separate person, but himself as a black man.
But otherwise, it really gets me how many classic shows and movies had white actors play other elasticities--The Good Earth is a Chinese story and American actors played the roles! At least things have changed and the new version of Finnian's Rainbow seems to be getting great critical acclaim, so the dual actor thing seems to be working.
Thanks for this background info, cool to know.
I had no idea that this is what Finian's Rainbow is about! I thought it was something Irish haha. Well, I get the leprechaun, but hmm. I'm now actually interested to see how this would be.
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