Theatrical Tokenism

A few months ago, I attended a great performance of "A Christmas Carol" in which I remember my grandmother asking me if there were any characters played by people of a race besides Caucasian. When I asked her why she wanted to know, she proceeded to defend her question by explaining that it was not a racist stand point because any race other than Caucasian would not be true to the setting and original portrayal of the story. I kept this in mind when I went to see the cast of Les Miserables in downtown Chicago, and noticed that the lead character, Jean Valjean, was African American. Another principle character, Eponine, was also African American after her parents in the show were Caucasian, and the younger version of herself earlier in the show was also white. I thought about my grandmother's question during and after the show, trying to decide whether or not it was racist.

Sure, it was not typical to portray Jean Valjean or Eponine as African American, considering the show takes place during the 1800's in France. I thought about my past theater experiences, and all of the times I had been told that you have to "look the part." For example, when auditioning for the famous show "Guys and Dolls" I was told that the character Adelaide was traditionally portrayed as a blonde. Is discriminating by means of skin color the same as by means of hair color, body shape, height, or voice range?

At the same time as wondering whether their races were true to the story, I also asked myself whether Jean Valjean and Eponine's race actually took away from the credibility of the show. I tried to create arguments for both sides. On one hand, like I said before, African Americas were not common among the French at the time. But both cast members also had incredible voices and as the show continued, the thoughts of race in my head eventually dropped and I no longer separated the cast members by race on stage.

I also recently put in to question the tokenism that may have been involved in the show. The character of Jean Valjean is a former convict, who changes his identity, as well as his morals, and eventually becomes the mayor of Paris. He is close to a saint with all of the sacrifices he makes for others and his positive moral direction. He is the center of the show, seen as the protagonist, and is a very complicated character. Of course the story of Les Miserables was written many years ago, probably with the assumption that there would be a white Jean Valjean. I have never heard of a Les Miserables with a black Jean Valjean, and in fact, out of all of the professional productions I've ever seen, a black male or female has never been the center character of the show. After studying examples of tokenism in AS for a solid week, my first thought was that the casting directors of the show were trying to use Lawrence Clayton (Valjean) to draw an audience to show how diverse they were, therefore casting an African American Jean Valjean. However, the story is so old that there is little to tamper with when it comes to creating a token character. What do you think?