August 17, 2016
Page 5
Art as Social Justice
C ontinued From F ront
from a variety of Asian cultures represent
the range of humanity on stage. There are
so many cultures left out of the way we are
used to seeing Shakespeare; it is a joy to
watch this production play with melding
the beauty and relative rigidity of ancient
traditions as embodied in the first act with
a lighthearted mix of cultures washed up
on a single shore in the second act.
Among this production’s best assets are its
strongly-embodied female characters: Amy
Kim Waschke is a memorably noble and
tragic Hermione; Miriam Laube (who herself
played Hermione in OSF’s last production of
this play) as Paulina embodies courage and
female power wresting transformation from
folly; and Cindy Im floats and sings like an
earthy angel as Perdita, easily inspiring love
in all who encounter her.
My favorite of the outdoor shows this
season is a rare opportunity to see “The
Wiz.” White audience members likely
don’t appreciate either the significance of
“The Wiz” to African American audience
members or the challenges of mounting a
production in Oregon. So much of main-
stream theater is written by white people,
produced by white people, and tells stories
from a white perspective.
As originally conceived in the 1970s,
“The Wiz” took an icon of American mu-
sicals and reset it to be sung and played
by and for African Americans. Its creators
found a way to embody the hopes and hu-
mor and yearnings of African Americans
in a setting that everyone could recognize,
and to add a funky edge that celebrated the
culture riches found among members of
that community. They accomplished some-
thing almost unthinkable in 1975, building
an audience for something new to Broad-
way, and garnering seven Tony Awards in
the process.
That historical backdrop contains inspi-
ration for OSF, a leader in the theater world
set in a state with a troublingly racist histo-
ry. Black exclusion laws existed here until
the 1860s, and for long afterwards con-
veyed a message of unwelcome to African
Americans, reinforced by Oregon’s failure
to ratify the 14th and 15th Amendments for
another century. Now OSF seeks to diver-
sify its audiences in a state that is still one
of the whitest in the union, and where most
of its white citizens remain unaware of our
state’s racist legacy.
Where “The Wiz” built an audience
and an appetite that didn’t yet exist in the
1970s, OSF seeks to build new audiences
and appetite in southern Oregon 40 years
later. This production offers the perfect
vehicle; it is a fitting embodiment of Af-
rican American resilience and playfulness
is easy to miss how we allow certain voices
more agency in defining good art.
Moreover, southern Oregon has much
to learn about being truly welcoming to
an influx of African American actors and
artists; a bookstore near OSF has defiantly
pushed a free-speech narrative as it per-
sists in presenting a display of “Lil Black
Sambo” books alongside “Wizard of Oz”
books, deaf to the expressions of African
American artists who find the display trou-
bling and offensive. When OSF attempted
to back the concerns of those artists, the
cast of loveable characters must struggle
to think clearly and honor their hearts and
locate courage and a place that truly feels
like home. The talented cast of “The Wiz”
pulls off that feat with such grace and guts
and joy that they may yet succeed in easing
the audience they are building down the
road to a world they will help us to imag-
ine. Whether “The Wiz” feels like your
culture and your people or is a new jour-
ney for you, now is the time to head down
to Ashland, cheer on these players as they
deserve to be cheered, and build a theater
photo by d ale r obinette , o reGon S hakeSpeare F eStival
Horatio (Christiana Clark), Osric (Benjamin Bonenfant) and Gertrude (Robin Goodrin Nordli) watch as Hamlet (Danforth Com-
ins) and Laertes (Tramell Tillman) engage in a fencing match.
and badassness, adding a strong flavor of
black gay pride as well. There is so much
intention reflected in the casting, costumes,
and choreography--piece by joyous piece,
OSF has constructed a world that contains
strong pieces of the cultural richness of Af-
rican Americans.
Pulling that off, however, has included
some challenges. White audience mem-
bers often approach the play from a cer-
tain distance that alienates the players, and
may evince annoyance with black audience
members offering what the actors would
experience as more appropriate enthusiasm.
It’s likely that white audiences may miss
some of the richness that appears before
them because they lack the cultural con-
text -- though that doesn’t mean that critics
(who are rarely African Americans) haven’t
felt free to pronounce judgment on artistic
choices from outside their own cultures. It
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local newspapers quickly rushed to the de-
fense of the bookstore and quoted a chorus
of local residents expressing righteous in-
dignation about censorship. It is troubling
to see such a lack of concern or even cu-
riosity about the perspective of African
Americans who found the display hurtful.
It strikes me as ironic that so many of
those artists are performing in a story about
a confusing and alien place, Oz, where a
audience that embodies a community that
transcends our failures of imagination.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on the Ore-
gon Court of Appeals and the first woman
of color to serve in that capacity. She also
serves on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
board. Her movie review column Opinion-
ated Judge appears regularly in The Port-
land Observer. You can find her movie blog
at opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com.