The Kalamazoo Civic Theatre is making big strides to try to diversify its audience and get more people of color in the seats. For a place like the Civic that pays the bills through popular, well-known shows - that's a challenge.
Marissa Harrington is the company manager for FaceOff Theatre - a troupe devoted to telling stories about the African American experience.
“Any time I go see a Civic show, if I have to look around and I don’t see a lot of people in the audience that look like me - even if the show on the stage is telling a story that I feel like I can relate to or I see people on stage that look like me - I can’t always look in the audience and see that. And I think that speaks to a greater challenge I think in theatre in Kalamazoo. How do we get people from every demographic - racially, ethnically, socially? How do we get everyone in the theatre?” she says
Harrington says plays like Mary Poppins, Hairspray, and Our Town are sure to bring in large audiences, but they don’t always bring in people of color.
“Part of the challenge is audiences want to come and see what they know. And that’s not a bad…I mean look at Netflix. We binge on stuff that we know, that we’re comfortable with,” says Civic artistic director Todd Espeland.
So how can the theatres like the Civic bring in new, diverse audiences while keeping the ones they already have? Harrington says the Civic will have to make some big changes - to three things: programming, casting, and marketing.
How To Get A Diverse Cast
The Civic has always had an inclusive casting policy, but Harrington says sometimes that’s not enough. She says many times actors of color need to see diverse people on stage to feel comfortable auditioning.
“If I’m qualified as a 32-year-old woman of a certain stature and personality to play a certain role, cast me in that role if it does not mess up the story or the playwright’s intent. I think that’s where it’s kind of like a fine line. So I’m not saying cast me as Anne Frank, because that’s ridiculous. But within reason, cast me as I am and what I fit and as my talent requests,” she says.
Harrington says casting people of color in white roles - like the Civic did in Mary Poppins - is a step in the right direction. For that play, artistic director Todd Espeland cast African American actors Rob Bradford and his son Taye to play the father and son duo in the musical - George and Michael Banks.
“I thought it was important to cast them cause in my opinion - and since I was directing it - they really did a great job for both those roles. And then I thought the extra beauty was to see a father and son playing father and son in the show. They happen to be African American. That was secondary to the fact that they did a good job in auditions,” he says.
Telling Multicultural Stories
Local playwright, actor, and producer Von Washington Sr. says allowing actors of color to play non-traditional roles is great, but theatre diversity has to go beyond "color-blind casting."
“When color blind casting came in, it sort of gave a lot of theatres the opportunity to say well we don’t have to do the shows about African American life, all we have to do is find some African American actors that can be in the stories that we want to do. So there was that particular period and I think it was a very very hurtful thing because it allowed theatres to try to satisfy the desire of African Americans to be involved in the theatre but without their story of life,” he says.
Washington says the Civic actually had a group dedicated to telling African American stories from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The Black Civic Theatre was one of six individual theatre programs as part of what was then called the Kalamazoo Civic Players.
According to current Civic Executive Director Kristen Chesak, each program had its own board of directors and produced their own plays. When the Civic players restructured to become the unified Kalamazoo Civic Theatre, the smaller programs like the Black Civic Theatre disbanded.
Harrington says this void led to the creation of her company, FaceOff Theatre.
“We have tried to tell stories that we feel do speak to the African American experience. Because that is a void that we’ve had in Kalamazoo in theatre since the Black Civic Theatre closed. But coincidentally, our audience is extremely mixed. We have to date had extremely diverse audiences and we’re not necessarily telling stories that everyone can relate to specifically, but you can relate to being human,” she says.
Reaching Out To Communities Of Color
Harrington says even if a theatre has a diverse cast telling diverse stories - that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll have a diverse audience. She says you have to really market your theatre to people of color - and that takes work.
“Go to the communities that you’re trying to attract - you have to go there and get involved in the community, make your presence known,” she says.
Washington says one way to reach out is to partner with community spaces, like churches and schools.
“My company, Washington Productions, we do stories in the schools all the time. And they are, in reference, African American life. So we do have children who are growing up with that view and hopefully when they get there, there will be shows that they can take part of,” he says.
The Civic's Steps Toward Diversity
So far, Todd Espeland says the Civic plans to partner with FaceOff Theatre on a collaborative show - though there aren’t many details yet. Next season the Civic will also produce two plays that deal with racial issues, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and the classic To Kill A Mockingbird.
Espeland says the Civic still plans to put on popular plays, but part of that money will go to pay for smaller, lesser-known works.
“For instance this season, Mary Poppins, we had great audiences. We did almost 11,000 people in attendance and right now we have a show that’s going to open on the Parish stage called 4,000 Miles and 4,000 Miles it’s a brand new play premiered in 2012/2013, Pulitzer runner up. And it’s work that we’re doing…we’re doing that particular piece of work because it’s important, it’s a really good play. It’s not a known play. And so we’re able to program work in such a way that can fund other work,” says Espeland.
Espeland says he hopes that in 10 or 20 years, the Civic can look a lot like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A company known for being inclusive - from the multicultural cast to the pre-shows events in Spanish.
“When audiences go to see shows at Oregon Shakes, they don’t see ‘oh look at the diversity we see on stage or stories.’ Audiences go and they just go to see theatre. And when they see performers on stage, they just see the world as it is. It doesn’t become a specialty or ‘look at the effort that they’re making to be diverse.’ It just becomes the world,” he says.
The Civic’s next play, 4,000 Miles, opens April 8th.
