Walter Dallas and Charles Smith

SEASON PREVIEW CONVERSATIONS

Twain on Race: It’s a State of Mind
In January the New York–based touring group The Acting Company will add a new commission to its repertoire—Charles Smith’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, the 1894 novel in which a light-skinned slave woman switches her baby with her master’s child, who is of similar color and age. Freedom Theatre of Philadelphia’s artistic director Walter Dallas will stage the production, which debuts Nov. 17 and subsequently tours the U.S. before playing in New York in May 2002. Here Smith and Dallas discuss the risky and inventive casting choices they’ve made regarding the principal characters, whom Twain described as “identical in almost every way.”

Walter Dallas: I actually didn’t know Twain’s version until I joined the project. The nature-versus-nurture debate has always interested me, and I think Twain raised some important issues that challenged how people thought about others and, therefore, about themselves.

Charles Smith: Twain was flirting with some pretty interesting ideas about people’s perceptions of race. Judging by the material he cut before the novel was published, it’s clear that he had to temper his exploration because of the time in which he was working. But the questions he posed—the question of exactly what race means and of how we deal with it—are things we’re still wrestling with today. A good example of this is the controversy about racial classification that surrounded the 2000 census.

Dallas: When Americans see a very fair-skinned African American, we move with some confidence to the assumption that there is more than a drop or two of white blood coursing through those veins. In the great debate, the “nature” proponents would suggest that, because of the mixture of blood, both boys in the play share, probably in  equal measure, traits common to both blacks and whites.

Smith: This led to an examination of what it means to be African American versus what it means to be white.

Dallas: When Charles and I initially discussed the idea of how the roles of the brothers should be cast, there was a moment of exhilaration when we realized that our visions were in synch. As the director, I wanted to help Charles push the envelope in terms of challenging notions of race and perception. What if each of these characters appeared, racially, to be at the very extremes of our centrist expectations? What if one were so black he was blue, so black you could almost hear drums, so black that you could almost taste bushmeat and fufu when he entered the room? And what if the other were so white that when he entered the room you could hear Mozart and taste watercress or asparagus? If we were going to challenge notions of race and perception, I wanted to go as far as we could.

Smith: The result is a dark-skinned African-American actor playing someone who, in the play, is thought to be white. The character thinks he’s white, and all of the other characters in the play are told he is white; therefore, when the other characters in the play look at him, all they can see is someone white. Likewise, we have a white actor playing someone who, in the play, is thought to be an African-American slave. Basically, it says that race is a state of mind.

Hopefully, audiences will realize how desensitized we’ve become to a very brutal period in American history and understand that a lot of the fallout from that period still permeates not only parts of the African-American community but all of America today.

Dallas: That reminds me of something Jimmy [Baldwin] would often say: “An artist is sort of an emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive.”

Smith: It’s the quote by which I live my life.

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