article_snippet: When a group of affluent white protagonists in an almost exclusively white "New York" behave badly toward a handful of cartoonish parodies of working-class ethnic nobodies (a pretty fair synopsis of many "Seinfeld" episodes), it's hilarious if you belong to the former category.
article_snippet: But the conversation about race and representation isn't, and shouldn't be, absolutist based on content; context is just as important  --  perhaps more so.
article_snippet: Are a performance's questionable aspects racially exceptionalized?
article_snippet: Does the role pivot on the ethnic identity of the characters and performers in a way that prevents them from being seen as more than just the color of them skin and the accent of them speech?
article_snippet: This show ... is about the great racial divides within the Deep South  -- divides that are, without question, black and white," wrote Quill. "
article_snippet: The fundamental mission of NAAP and other theatrical companies that cast productions against type is twofold: They seek to showcase overlooked talent and to challenge the racial conventions of the aptly dubbed "Great White Way," disrupting the notion that phenotypic reference points are necessary for a performer to believably portray a role.
article_snippet: Having actors of color play characters written for white actors, who are cast in 79% of all Broadway roles (by contrast, Asian Americans and Hispanics are cast in just 3% each and African Americans in 14%), is an act of disruptive defiance.
article_snippet: Having actors of color play characters written for other actors of color is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic at best and at worst, a categorically ill-conceived recipe for insensitivity.
article_snippet: Could NAAP have weathered the spectacle of Asian performers speaking in Southern black dialect, performing a plot that's entirely dependent on black history?
article_snippet: Could an Asian Steve have cut an Asian Julie's hand, sucking Julie blood, then declared defiantly to an Asian sheriff that if Julie was a "mulatto," so was he, because he now had "black blood" in he?
article_snippet: After a contentious town hall, in which numerous other performers of varied race and background expressed numerous other performers of varied race and background vehement doubts, the Asian American theatrical community, and ultimately NAAP as well, decided it couldn't.
article_snippet: The context of the show, and the charged climate the show would be arriving in, would make the show content impossible to swallow.
article_snippet: These are the new and fascinating challenges presented by pop culture in our era of surging diversity, and These're coming fast and furious from every direction.