What Color is Your Voice?
As a filmmaker/producer in 2021, I am very aware of the minefield that can be the perception of opportunity when it comes to race. When I came up through performance, the training for an actor was simply to embody the character - period. My first training in performance was in theatre - where members of the acting company are often limited. My college professor (who was hired to run the black theatre program) found herself in situations where she had to cast non-black actors in black roles simply because the department didn’t have the right demographics. I know this situation is a bit unique because not many schools have black theatre programs. Usually the European-centric shows get cast with European-centric actors and the actors of color are left to fill the small voids. By the time I was teaching at universities, color-blind casting became the hot potato technique that departments threw around - fulfilling opportunities to their acting pool while trying not to confuse or distract the audiences. As time went on, color-blind casting became more and more accepted, but we still had to concern ourselves with NOT accidentally jumping into someone’s cultural pain.
Film and video has a harder time. There is no suspension of disbelief. The audience expects to see what they perceive as reality. This too has been pushed, but to a less forgiving extent. (Also, expected box office draw summons its own culture/color demons). Because of this, I had some students who went to Hollywood after graduation to make it in film and video as voice actors. Their voice talent stood on it’s own and it didn’t matter what color they were. They were able to get back to being able to “embody the character”. One of these students is Asian. He is a vocal gymnast and has done well for himself in The Industry. It was rewarding to see someone succeed on what I perceived to be his talent alone (along with his personality - he’s a really nice guy)!
However, in the past couple of years, he has been getting calls to do voice projects simply because he is Asian. He doesn’t know how to feel about this. His past self is arguing with his up to date sociopolitical viewpoints.
I feel his pain. I just made a storyboard trailer for my new film “Deuce”. “Deuce” is a black success story and the cast is 95% black. Because of this, my instinct was to hire black voice actors for the trailer. And, some black filmmaker friends of mine confirmed for me that this instinct was correct. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to tell an actor friend of mine that I couldn’t use him on this project simply because he wasn’t black. Additionally, the one white voice in the trailer was played by a black actor - because she could ‘act’ white. I don’t know if any of this makes me a racist, but I sure do feel funny.
What is the moral to this story? Be as aware as you can be? Be sensitive to the social situation? Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that I was talking to a composer about the music for “Deuce” and she told me that she couldn’t do it because she was white. That leads me to my next question: “What color is your music?”