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[dogdogdok]

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[caminadrummer]

i’ve been meaning to make this post for a thousand years but i never seem to get the wording right but i guess i’ll make it anyway rip. 

when people talk about the pervasive whiteness of theatre/musical theatre casts and the imperative need to do something about it, i always end up thinking about next to normal sooner or later (as if i wasn’t already thinking about it 24/7 anyway) and how in an overwhelming majority of major productions, the cast is all white. and the thing is, as it stands now, set in the us, as it was written by white people, it wouldn’t work as well if that wasn’t the case imo? people have talked about how the asian american cast of the recent east west players provides the musical with a whole bunch of new layers of meaning when you recontextualize the goodmans as an asian american family, but i’m not sure it would still work if they were, say, a family of latinxs of colour living in the us, or a black family, to mention just a couple of examples? the stigma of mental illness and everything the show denounces are obviously A Thing regardless of race or ethnicity, but the shape that stigma takes and the way in which it impacts the lives of people living with mental illness is definitely different depending on whether they’re white or not? obviously other people can talk/have talked about this with more authority than me, but the very concept of mental illness, access to mental health care, likelihood of being a victim of police brutality while mentally ill and a probably very long et cetera would be very different for a white woman with bipolar i with psychotic features and, say, a black woman with bipolar i with psychotic features. 

diana has been diagnosed for sixteen years, has been in and out of treatment throughout that time, which means that not only was her disorder acknowledged and taken seriously pretty much from the beginning, but that she has had access to mental health professionals whenever was necessary and that she had more or less of a saying about when to take up or suspend said treatments (though it obviously can be argued that the one who made those decisions was dan more often than not? i don’t know). she has had psychotic episodes in public, presumably on several occasions, and has caused damage (at the very least material damage). as in:

[NATALIE] Alright, fine Here's the headline in the paper When you freaked out at the market Here's the house on Walton Way after the fire [DAN] Natalie [NATALIE] Here's the damage to the Honda When you showed me how to park it [DIANA] Did we crush somebody's cat beneath the tire? [NATALIE] Yes, ours

and if natalie’s worries are based on her mum’s experiences, we can also assume:

[NATALIE] You say that right here But then give it a year Or 10 years or a life I could end up your wife Sitting staring at walls Throwing shit down the stairs Freaking out at the store Running nude down the street Bleeding out in the batht-

if diana isn’t white then some of these things seem unlikely, in the sense that people of colour in general and women of colour specifically are very often either denied access to mental health care or outright forcibly institutionalized? and it’s been proven time and time again that the risk of being a victim of police brutality and other forms of state sanctioned violence increases exponentially when existing as a mentally ill person of colour, especially being mentally ill and black? 

and then there’s obviously the issue of natalie’s substance abuse problems which, unless dealt with in a more nuanced way, can be messy at best and potentially harmful at worst?

all of this to say: obviously i don’t mean that next to normal can only be performed by an all white cast, but that in most cases, to make the story have as much of a significant effect and stay true and respectful to the characters and their experiences and the real world people it aims to represent, it would invariably have to go through some adaptations?

and in any case, people of colour, mentally ill people of colour, deserve to have their own stories told, rather than extending the stories of white people written by white people as some sort of universal human experience, universal mental illness experience or whatever. major/mainstream media, including theatre/musical theatre/broadway need to acknowledge voices of colour and put active effort in portraying and featuring their stories with the respect that they deserve and which is afforded to their white counterparts by default

#obligatory disclaimer i'm white but y'all already know that and i doubt anyone will read this but anyway #long post #jesus it got long indeed #obviously uh. feel free to tear me to shreds if any or all of this is either poorly worded or plain wrong