Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 267
Martin Sherman’s 1979 Bent received a Tony nomination for its harrowing
tale of the treatment of German homosexuals during the rise
of Adolf Hitler, and it paved the way for the serious—even tragic—
theatrical treatment of homophobia. In this 2006 English revival at
the Trafalgar Studios in London, Max (Alan Cumming, right) and Rudy
(Kevin Trainor) are gay men imprisoned by the Nazis. Max pretends
to be Jewish under the misapprehension that he will be treated less
harshly. Costumes are by Mark Bouman. © Geraint Lewis
Jefferson Mays, as German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and his
treasured antique record player in Doug Wright’s multiple-award-winning
I Am My Own Wife. Charlotte is one of thirty-three roles Mays plays in the
show, which crosses gender, linguistic, and time barriers. © Joan Marcus
employs blind and/or otherwise disabled actors for all of its
productions; in 2014 it traveled to Japan to perform in that
country’s National Festival for People With Disabilities.
The National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut and Deaf
West in Los Angeles are two of several groups that create
theatre by and for the hearing-impaired, employing American
Sign Language (ASL) as their primary verbal dramatic
medium. With Mark Medoff’s 1980 Children of a Lesser
God, which earned the deaf actress Phyllis Frelich the 1980
Tony Award for playing its leading (and deaf) character,
and Nina Raine’s Tribes, about varying degrees of deafness
within a family (and employed a deaf actor in the lead)
which won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding
Play, the challenges of the hearing-impaired reached broad
popular audiences, and hearing-impaired and deaf actors
and actresses were able to find new national recognition
around the country.
NONTRADITIONAL CASTING
Color-blind casting, as its name suggests, casts actors in
roles regardless of their racial or cultural background.
Emphasizing a disconnect between actor and character
can prove helpful in creating this sense of “blindness,”
as many playwrights and directors now invite the
audience to see an actor not as a character but rather
as an actor playing a character. So today a woman can
play a king, a grown-up a five-year-old, a white actor
black and a black one white, the Puerto Rican Lin-
Manuel Miranda can play the founding father Alexander