Black is the Badge of Hell
Love Labour’s Lost is the jolly and whimsical tale of four Lords of the French Court who have sworn to not indulge themselves with women for three years while they study. Spoiler: all four of them fall in love with aristocratic women of the monarchy before the King suddenly dies and the play turns very upsetting.
I’m not going to lie, when I first saw the thumbnail for this production on RSC’s website (1), which I have thus made the thumbnail for this blog, I thought “uh oh.” Four women linking arms all smiley and happy sounds like a recipe for yet another production showcasing white actors, playing white characters in a white world. Do we really need another one? I gave it the benefit of the doubt because I thought, “Surely, there are more POCs in this play even if the four central women basically look the same.” I thought, “Well, the other RSC productions I’ve seen are pretty diverse, why should this one be different?” So I started watching in hopes that my aspirations were fulfilled. That somehow, they made up for the fact that their thumbnail was of four women who are almost indistinguishable from one another. Well, that is not what happened. Not even a little bit. I’m not quite sure why I was surprised but not only was I a little shocked, but I was also pretty appalled. The first scene of the play was actually pretty obnoxiously white. The set was bright and expensive and the character’s costumes were of bright white and cream colored hues of the same expensive nature as the set. Now granted, this fit the setting of the play as it takes place in a french palace but as a person looking at this production through a racial equity lens, I found it almost insulting.
It took me a little while to notice because of the various camera angles, but one of the four Lords, Dumaine (played by Tunji Kasim), was a person of color. I thought, “this looks like a token actor to me.” and deemed it perfect material to talk about “token actors” in this blog post. Solidifying my hypothesis, I continued watching and discovered that indeed, Dumaine was the only character in this play that was played by a non-Caucasian. There are 21 characters in Love Labour’s Lost and all but one were played by white people. I thought….”why?” Were they trying to be historically accurate? I did a bit of research and discovered that the performance were paying tribute to The Great War which explained the costume choices but did not answer my question. Are they trying to make a statement which is that most Western European monarchies are almost exclusively white people? Were they just not thinking about racial equity during the casting and creative process? Are any of these possibilities an excuse to not cast people of color in this theatrical production? In my opinion, no. It is not an excuse. And it is harmful to subsequently token a black or brown actor to be in your play just so that your play isn’t entirely white people. Alas, it is still so common in all mediums of storytelling entertainment.
Think of your favorite Hallmark movie or perhaps your favorite Disney channel show growing up. Perhaps think of a movie where the premise is along the lines of a cohort of people who go off on an adventure. Now how many black people are in that cohort? Maybe one. How many Asian people? That probability is lowered. This character is probably the friend character in all likelihood. This concept is called “tokenism” or “the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly (2).”The sole purpose of this choice is usually is to “diversify” the project when in reality, it’s not diverse at all and it’s mostly done for the wrong reasons. This trend was especially bad in the 90’s and is still bad today - and apparent in this show.
From a theatrical standpoint and in the context of this show, casting a bunch of white people in these hoity-toity elitist roles only solidifies the reality that systemically, white people have built this socioeconomic structure to benefit them and that nobody will be able to break it. This does not do anybody any good, especially since, while theater is an imitation of life - it doesn’t have to be completely by the book. The team behind this production of Love Labour’s Lost had the opportunity to inspire their audiences with the idea that perhaps there can be a world where the black people or Asian people can be the most proper and wealthiest person in the story. Productions like this only enforce the notion that the white people will always be the one with the power and the money. This production very much perpetuated that and that is why I would not recommend it from a racial equity perspective.
(1) "Love's Labour's Lost." , directed by Robin Lough. , produced by Kevin Fitzmaurice, and Royal Shakespeare Company. , Royal Shakespeare Company, 2014. Alexander Street, https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/love-s-labour-s-lost-3.
(2) https://business.vanderbilt.edu/news/2018/02/26/tokenism-in-the-workplace/
