Who's Afraid of Suspending Disbelief?, or Total Nonsense

I was trying to formulate why exactly this Albee situation bothers me so much, aside from the fact that it’s just pure insanity to have a dead playwright’s estate not only make money on that person’s work after they’re dead (Yes, I’m aware this is how estates work, but I still find it ludicrous)—but to also assert how a playwright would have felt about the casting of a particular production on the basis that they’re somehow “protecting” the work.

Aside from all that—what bothers me is this:

Why are we discussing “believability” when it comes to casting in theater?

When you walk into a theater, aren’t you asked to suspend disbelief?  Aren’t you asked to look at half a kitchen and pretend it’s a full kitchen that’s attached to a house that sits in a neighborhood somewhere?

When you see a production of “King Lear” and it’s set in a supermarket and everyone is wearing uniforms, aren’t you being asked to believe in the duality of what the text says and what the production staff has conceived?

When you see an actor playing a character, aren’t you being asked to believe that actor is that character when you know full well it’s not?

The idea that it wouldn’t make sense to have an African-American actor playing Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? because the characters mention Nick having “Aryan features” and that an interracial relationship would have been remarked up on at the time seems at best, far-fetched and limited in its thinking, and at worst, an excuse to perpetuate rigidity in non-traditional casting, and, you know, racism.

Look at the relationship argument—Aren’t we going down a pretty scary rabbit hole if we start talking about what characters would and wouldn’t “remark upon” in a play?  And what on what basis are we arguing that?  Are we saying “Well, a normal person at the time would have said [this] about [that]?”  Because there are about a thousand things a “normal person at the time” could say about George and Martha in that play that might grind the action to a halt.  It’s even suggested that Nick and Honey might be “normal” characters, who, for whatever reason, don’t point out how unusual the evening is.  For Edward Albee, a genius who wrote plays where men fall in love with goats and lizards befriend retired couples, an African-American playing Nick should not have been that difficult to get behind, and if his estate is right, and it was, then honestly?  Screw him, his goats, and his lizards.  He, above all people, should have been able to understand how important it is that we, who make theater, do not get bogged down in realism or “taking the audience out of the story.”

I’m guilty of this myself.  I was once at a play where the lead character was supposed to be blonde and everybody kept remarking on his dark hair.  Why didn’t they dye his hair, I thought.  Why didn’t they get permission to change the lines?  Why didn’t they cast someone else?  It bothered me so much, I talked to the woman sitting next to me about it at intermission.  Do you know what her response was?

“I guess I didn’t notice because I was too busy watching the play.”

If playwrights and their estates need something to occupy their time, they should focus on getting their work produced as much as possible so people can be exposed to it.  And if part of that process involves letting people reimagine it, through casting or set design or by setting it in a supermarket, then they should welcome that kind of creativity as it applies to their work.  It’s a compliment.  It means the work is inspiring people in some way, begging them to engage it.  I’m sorry, but theater is no place for purists.  There’s nothing pure about it, and there shouldn’t be.  It’s called a play—Play.

I’ve gone off here, and I realize that, but for crying out loud, this entire issue maddens me.  We accept when we go see Beckett that we have to let go of our preconceived notions of what’s real and what isn’t.  When we see Our Town, we’re told—There’s a tree here—and there isn’t.  And we accept it.  Yet playwrights and producers and directors and audiences seem to be looking for obstacles where there don’t need to be any, and so they settle on ‘believability.’  Next to ‘likeability’ it’s my second least favorite ‘-ability.’

Theater is looking at something that isn’t there and saying there is.  It’s about the agreement between artists and audiences to imagine.  To create.  To play.

That’s not part of the fun—that’s all of the fun.  So why take it away?