Nineteen

I am Latino, born and raised in Chile. So are my parents and their parents. I speak with an accent which I’m working on, but my skin is light. I pass for white until I open my mouth. I don’t actually know if I’m white or a person of color. Or both. Or none. I’ve done my best to educate myself about race dynamics in this country, but they still confuse me.

I’m not what people expect when they think of a Latino. I don’t fit into any of the stereotypes. I look more like a computer geek than a Latin lover, a drug dealer or a guerrilla member. As such, I put some of the teachers at Circle in an odd place. I was uncomfortable to cast. Especially in the world of musical theatre, which, though evolving, is rampant with stereotypes. Our teachers struggled to find any material that would be ‘suitable’ for me.

I was told that songs like “Brother, can you spare a dime?” were too weird on me. Too weird for someone who wasn’t American. Of course, meaning that’s too weird for someone who didn’t sound American. For our industry night scene selection process one of the only ideas that the faculty could come up with for me was to play the Nuyorican felon from “Jesus Hopped the A Train” while one of our teachers gracefully volunteered to struggle through Hispanic plays to see if he could think of another solution. I know I don’t sound ‘General American’, but I for sure don’t sound Nuyorican either.

I’m not stupid. I know that if I worked harder to neutralize my accent a lot of doors would open for me. I do put a lot of the blame on me. I know that school is supposed to prepare us for the real world and in the real world, unless there’s a very specific reason for it, characters don’t have accents. But I also can’t help but think that that is pandering to an industry that decided there is a right way of speaking and the rest are anomalies that need an explanation.

In a country that’s made of immigrants from every country and generation, where there are more dialects than stars and stripes on its flag, why is there one way of speaking that we have deemed as neutral, acceptable and normal? If art imitates life, why have we left this beautiful diversity of sounds outside our art to abide by some sense of false normalcy?

Some members of the faculty are definitely unprepared to deal with students of diverse backgrounds, both because they don’t know diverse material and because their old-fashioned eyes don’t see diverse people in traditionally white all-American roles. But they do follow the industry’s lead.

I believe that it is the responsibility of institutions such as Circle to make a dent in this industry vice that as artists we should be neutralized and tell neutral stories. Especially when ‘neutral’ is so often code for ‘white.’

Circle in the Square Theatre School is a wonderful and terrifying place. I’m incredibly grateful for all the lessons learned and the time I spent with some incredible teachers and professionals. But as an institution it needs to move forward into this century in order to survive and thrive.

— Anonymous