{"id":73963,"date":"2021-10-11T02:28:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T09:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=73963"},"modified":"2021-10-11T02:28:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T09:28:07","slug":"nontraditional-casting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2021\/10\/11\/nontraditional-casting\/","title":{"rendered":"Nontraditional Casting"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have more casting news for the Broadway <\/em>revival of Funny Girl<\/em><\/strong>.  Nicky Arnstein will be played by Ramin Karimloo <\/strong>\u2013 who is not only a gifted actor and lovely singer, but possesses one of the most stupendous physiques to ever grace God\u2019s green Earth.  While Funny Girl<\/em> is not typically laden with nudity, I am hereby lobbying for the seduction scene to be done shirtless (and perhaps pantless).  The role of Mrs. Brice will be played by Jane Lynch <\/strong>\u2013 which I\u2019m sure comes as a shock to people who assumed Rosie O\u2019Donnell <\/strong>was a foregone conclusion.  And under the heading of colorblind, the role of Eddie will be played by the talented Jared Grimes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And so we come to an issue nobody seems to agree upon.  When \u201ccolorblind casting\u201d began, the intent was good \u2013 cast actors of diverse ethnicities, races, and even genders in roles where those attributes were unimportant.  It\u2019s often called \u201cnontraditional casting\u201d.  Conversely, many people feel that only gay actors should play gay roles, only black actors should play black roles, etc.  Recently, Sarah Silverman <\/strong>joined the discussion (apropos of Kathryn Hahn <\/strong>being cast as Joan Rivers <\/strong>in an upcoming Showtime <\/em>series) by saying that only Jewish people should play Jewish roles.  I, again, look at the flip side \u2013 if only Jewish people can play Jews, does this mean Jewish actors cannot play Gentiles?  Eventually we\u2019ll be back to a point where gay actors can only be cast in gay roles.<\/p>\n

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Who would think that Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber <\/strong>would be the voice of reason in\u2026well, in virtually any discussion?  He was asked about casting trans actors in musicals.  \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have any issue casting them, provided they could perform the role.  One\u2019s got to think that if you had written a high coloratura soprano part, you\u2019ve got to have somebody who can sing it.  If you\u2019ve written a part for a deep bass voice, you\u2019ve got to have somebody who can hit those notes.  But provided they could sing the role and you wouldn\u2019t have to change the music, I\u2019d have no concern at all.\u201d  While that all sounds peachy, later in the interview he gives this critique of Madonna <\/strong>as Evita<\/em><\/strong>: \u201cTo this day, I don\u2019t think anybody else could have done it better.\u201d  Oh my!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have more casting news for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl.  Nicky Arnstein will be played by Ramin Karimloo \u2013 who is not only a gifted actor and lovely singer, but possesses one of the most stupendous physiques to ever grace God\u2019s green Earth.  While Funny Girl is not typically laden with nudity, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73964,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73963\/revisions\/73964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}