A Research Project on the Impact of Race on Casting in Musical Theatre

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This research project explores racial bias in musical theatre.

Research Project

Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
Research Aims and objectives..................................................................................................3
Research Question.....................................................................................................................3
Hypothesis..................................................................................................................................4
Literature Review..........................................................................................................................5
Race and Ethnicity.....................................................................................................................5
Musical theatre industry...........................................................................................................5
Impact of race on musical theatre industry............................................................................6
Analysis and Discussion................................................................................................................7
Methodology.................................................................................................................................15
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................16
References.....................................................................................................................................17

Introduction
The report will be highlighting the factors involved in the music industry and the needs and
characters involved in the kind of role played by an individual. The major aim to conduct this
report is to study the historic concept and current structure of the organization and making
effective application of all the knowledge to determine the cause of racism and changes in race
structure in the organization. A race can be understood as a group of people having different
physical and social appearance and preference as compared to the current society. The report will
study why the certain community is not supporting the ethics and social preference of another
community. The research will be primarily focusing on the music industry and its impact on the
development of social structure and study the outlook of various industries and people involved
in the scenario. The research will be using secondary data sources and will present analysis on
the basis of their experience and the suggestions they might be having in the development of
industry and their resources involved. The research will show an in-depth analysis of the music
industry and their working pattern based on various rules they follow.
Research Aims and objectives
Aim: The aim of this research is to study how race/ ethnicity have affected the types of role you
will play in the musical theatre.
Objective:
1. To identify the factors contributing to the quality of roles given to people of different class and
ethics.
2. To analyse the subsequent impact of the same on an individual and its growth on the industry.
Research Question
Primary Question: What are the major factors leading to the kind of role one play in the
musical theatre and are these factors unbiased and ethical?
Secondary Question

1. How has the music industry been reacting to different kind of race and castes?
2. What are the views of people involved in the music industry about this situation?
Hypothesis
H1: The kind of caste and ethics has a prejudice impact on the people involved in the music
industry.
H2: The music industry has evolved in many ways including caste and race.

Literature Review
Race and Ethnicity
According to Flores, et. al. (2016), a race can be understood as a sense of self-identification
given to an individual or group by other groups. Race can be reported as White, Black or
African, American, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other
Pacific Islander, or some other race. As per the study of Spencer (2014), race can also be
understood as phenotypes and cultural characteristics that are being made on the basis of certain
racial groups. The race can be divided into certain racial groups and the impact and experiences
of each race are different from others. Sometimes the senior members of a community
discriminate certain race from others. This can be done on the basis of skin colour and economic
status. As per Keskinen, et. al. (2016), ethnicity can be understood as a category that determines
whether a person is originating from the Hispanic origin or not. Hispanic and non-Hispanic races
are treated differently. As per Keskinen, et. al. (2016), ethnicity can also be seen as a shared
heritage of a set of cultural rules and policies that distinguish one caste from others.
The way a country treats people with varied race and ethnicity determines the sort of culture
cultivated in a country. As per the study of Nakamura (2013), in the US there are 13% African –
American that is dealing with the issues of racism and inequality. There are around 10 to 12 % of
cases in Juvenile that are African and American. According to Nakamura (2013), many of the
people like Americans have a particular choice for practicing symbolic ethnicity. In many cases,
there has been discrimination seen on the housing features and other services given to people of
different races. There has been discrimination among the black and white Americans and the
dealing with both of them has been done on the basis of racism and prejudice in the perception of
the public.
Musical theatre industry
Musical theatre is one of the forms of art and performance that is performed by the artists
coming from various race caste and cultural background. According to Deer and Dal Vera
(2015), a musical theatre is a form of art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, dance and acting
in a form so as to depict the overall purpose of the performance and depiction of art. As per

Taylor and Symonds (2014), a musical presented in theatres do not have any particular length of
time interval but it just shows the flow of emotions through the musical form. The musical
theatre industry comprises of people that are deep in talent and are very expressive. The impact
of race and ethnicity can be seen in this industry.
Impact of race on musical theatre industry
According to the study of Hoffman (2014), Broadway is one of the most common platforms for
American to show their theatrical talents in the industry. The association has been working
widely on diversity and giving roles to all kind of people. They have been working on pseudo-
diversity as well for example in 2003 the play Wicked was made to represent the concept. They
have been planning to take non-traditional diversity in the industry thus trying to reduce the
impact of race on the work. As per Turner (2013), there have been certain contemporary cast
practices followed in musical theatre thus affecting the kind of roles given to all the people in a
play. There has been a previous case in which a white actor has been coloured black to play a
role of either a villain or an antagonist. In many cases, no black is given a lead role in spite of
being equally talented. As per Khanna (2012), there have been certain steps taken to deal with
the racism in the theatres, now around 35% of roles are being given to people from a minority.
African –American actors are given 23% of roles. There are many non-profit companies eagerly
casting colored people and giving them a chance to show talent.
As per the analysis of Knapp (2018), there has been a lot of stereotyping done for black actors.
The famous example can be taken from the movie the lion king which shows that major star cast
for all the negative characters was dubbed by black characters. This movie depicts that the
industry has been showing that the black people are limited to the roles of “wise old man” and
“sassy momma” or even “zebra”, “giraffe” or “lion”. This depiction shows the mindset of the
people and the kind of roles that are being assigned to black people.

Analysis and Discussion
Impact of race in musical theatre
The race is highly impacted the musical theatre and affect the industry of musical theatre. The
Lion King movie confirmed that musical theatre is racial in nature. The black musicals and
black roles are impacted the music industry and make the system problems while considering the
presentation of the characters played by the black actors. As per the history of the American
musical, the chorus has remained a key component in the foundation of the form. The many
intrinsic situations will create in the musical theatre as the singing and dancing of men and
women. This situation creates a spectacle. The many issues are created in the musical theatre
industry like the issues of sexuality, gender, race, and class. This process affected the overall
development of the musical theatre industry.
The race is the process in which the partiality has been created among the actors having black
and white in colours (Aleman and Aleman, 2016). Theatre has been carrying different
viewpoints and experiences affecting the race in the theatre industry. The race created among
white and black people played a vital role in the theatre industry. The race has greatly impacted
the musical theatre and their actors as this is a very bad influence on the overall industry. The
differences in the white and black are affected the theatre perspectives in a large manner. Race
relations have directly influenced the development of the musical theatre. The musical and
theatre are interrelated with each other as these are the two main forms of artistic expressions
which are blended together to teach, stimulate and provoke.

Source: (etd.ohiolink, 2016).
The above graph shows the diversity in the musical theatre in US. The graph shows the situation
of the performing arts in the US. As the race is mainly impacted by the US musical theatre
industry so the white artists give more importance as compared to Black or African artists. As
per the graph, the blue part shows the performance of the white artists which captures a large
area of the graph. As compared to the white artists, the other artists cannot perform as much in
the musical theatre (Beng, 2015). This shows the race and ethnicity in the US musical theatre.
The black artist’s part is very small in the graph which shows the ethnicity feature in the US
musical theatre industry.
Musical theatre industry
The musical theatre is a large part of the industry which includes the theatrical performance that
involves the songs, dance, dialogues, and acting. The musical theatre is greatly connected to the
entertainment in which love, anger are communicated by the words, music, movement and
technical aspects. As per the knowledge, music becomes a part of the dramatic presentations.
Musicals are performed around the world. The musical theatre is a large industry which
presented shows in the large venues. The musical theatre includes three main components which
are music, lyrics, and book. The book defines the play. The music and lyrics collectively make
the score of the musical.

Nowadays, the music industry is affected due to the impact of race and ethnicity. This process
can make differences in the white and black colour artists performing in the musical industry.
This can affect the whole industry and decreases the people and artists work in the theatre. In
American theatre, it is highly indulged because their people only support white people and
dispersed black people (Decker, 2015). So this process can decrease the overall music industry.
The musical theatre authorities affected the role of the artists as per their colour of the skin as
white color people give the better roles and black colour people give the bad roles in the
performance of the theatre play. The musical theatre includes both types of people as black and
white but they differ their roles in the performance and this process influenced the black people
and affected the whole industry.
Source: (qz, 2015).
The above graph shows the impact of race and ethnicity in the musical theatre. The main demerit
of the musical theatre industry is race and ethnicity. This can define the differences occurred in
the white and black people. The musical theatre people make large differences in their roles in
the play which affected the black people. The above graph shows the pink line of white people,
the black line shows the black, sky blue line shows the Asian people and the blue line shows the
Hispanic people.
This graph shows that white people are most of the performer's artists in the musical theatre and
others are less performers in the artist. The data in the graph is from the year 2008-09 till the year

2014-15. In the 2009-10 years, the black performers are a little bit increased and then decreased
in the next some years. As per the graph, in the year 2014-15, the Asian people are increased as
performers in the musical industry. The diversity is very much affected the whole music industry
in recent years and this created the misconceptions in the performers of the industry.
Effect of ethnicity on the roles played in the musical theatre industry
Ethnicity is greatly affected by the musical industry. Ethnicity means the differences in the white
and black performers (Hayward, 2013). The different roles are given to the white and black color
as per their differences. Approximately 13 % African faces the issues of racism and ethnicity in
the US musical theatre industry. These issues can impact the whole music industry and
decreasing the performers in the play. This process overall decreases the plays conduct in the
theatre. The race issues are very much increasing day by day in the musical industry. The main
story is related to the bad guys, but it has been analyzed recently how racism occurs throughout
the industry. The black people can share their situation in the musical theatre as they face many
problems related to the role play they get in the theatre's play. The racism issues can destroy the
play created in the musical theatre. In the Broadway perspectives, it has been analyzed that they
did not document race problems due to their place in the theatre market. The Asian-American
actors and actress lack their opportunity in the theatre due to the issues of racism and ethnicity.
The black people can affect due to the roles offered in the theatre play. They get disappointed
due to the roles and deny the acting in the play.
The US musical industry gets more indulge in the racism issues as they can give the options to
white actors and actress only. This process can decrease the industry of musical theatre in the US
(Howe, et. al., 2016). In the recent season of 2015-16, the people of color nominated in 14 of 40
Tony award categories. The music revival has been celebrated in which deaf and wheel-chair
performers are involved. The Hamilton has been ascended, the mega-successful hip-hop musical
that includes a multi-ethnic cast in the American role of white founding fathers. The diversity is
highly impacted in the Broadway process. The Broadway cannot collect the demographic data
due to the performers because they get affected as per the ethnicity spread in the musical
industry. Broadway doesn’t have accurate data because their representatives rely on the self-
identification of ethnicity.

Source: “The Demographics of the Broadway Audience” by the Broadway League Research
Department.
The above data has been described the audience of the Broadway which impacts all the function
of the award. There is a large difference in Broadway audiences due to the frequently changing
the performers as per the issues of racism. The four categories are described in the above data
which are international, domestic, New York City and NYC suburbs. In the international
perspectives, the white people percentage will be 75.3%, Asian people percentage will be 8.5 %,
black people percentage will be 1.8 % and Hispanic people percentage will be 9.0 %. The
domestic part has white people percentage approx. 83.0 %, Asian people percentage has 3.9 %,
black people percentage is 4.8 % and Hispanic people percentage is 4.9 %. In the perspectives of
New York City, the white people percentage is 71.4 %, the Asian people percentage is 9.1 %, the
black people percentage is 7.0 % and the Hispanic percentage is 6.8 %. In the perspectives of
NYC suburbs, the white people percentage will be 84.5 %, the Asian people percentage will be
4.2 %, the black people percentage will be 3.4 % and the Hispanic people percentage will be 5.1
%. The mixed-race percentage of each perspective will be according to the given percentage
(Kalvin, et. al., 2016). The partiality has been done on the white and black people in the US
music industry. The musical theatre industry gets decreased due to the issues related to racism.
The racism and ethnicity will be affected the overall development of the music industry and the
performers are greatly affected by these issues. This aspect can decrease the matters of the
performers and the performance in the overall industry.

Evolution of racial bias in modern Musical Theatre
There are different ways found to incorporate the various ideas into the artistic process of media.
Out of the artistic media outlets, musical theatre is the biggest outlet that has never been any
exception (Quaye and Harper, 2014). Musical theatre creates several straight plays which are
different in various factions of art. The one major social issue has been a rise in the industry of
musical theatre that has been occurred as the time to time which is the multiculturalism and
racial issues. The several musical plays show the different aspects of the racial views which
affected the overall development of the theatre industry. The people give the roles as per their
color white or black. When the ethnic character has been entered in a musical theatre, every
perspective gives an idea of the race or ethnicity occurrence. Every aspect of musical play is
affected by the racial issues which are the costume, dialogue, the effect of the storyline, other
characters treatment and any other angles of racial views in the industry. The racial and ethnicity
problems are related to the society, this societal constant is related to the history of musical
theatres.
According to time, racial and ethnic prejudices are evolved and changed. So these conflicts need
to be removed from the musical theatre to maintain the proper development in the process. The
foreign culture and treatment of characters are included in the evolution of racial and
ethnocentric bias. It has been determined that racial and ethnocentric issues need to be handled
within a time period. As per the report, the African-American community is no means because of
the facing f the prejudices related to the racial issues. The modern times of musical plays
directly show that the musical characters living in the world of racism. But most of the people of
America need to avoid being called racist but it has been clear that racism is a real problem
which affects the proper development of the musical theatre in the US.
Nowadays, the musical theatre moved away from the background of racist and put efforts to
become very clear in the process (Taylor and Symonds, 2014). The lyrics related to the racists
are removed from the old plays. As per the knowledge, the plays are making with the casts of
ethnic performers, for example, The Lion King. The African-American performers were
removed from the racial issues and ethnocentric problems which decreasing the musical theatre
industry in the US. The African-American people are facing fewer problems in playing non-