Black skin, white pioneer: non-traditional casting in an Israeli school pageant

Abstract

The casting of a black Ethiopian Jewish girl to play a white Zionist pioneer character in an Israeli school pageant causes feelings of discomfort among the teachers, especially the vice-principal. The vice-principal uses theatrical and historical reasons to justify her opposition to the casting which can actually be perceived as new/colour-blind racism. The term non-traditional casting and its subcategories are the analytical concepts through which this case study is observed. I argue that although the vice-principal finally agreed to this unusual casting, she succeeded in shaping the situation into an essentialist, racial and national hierarchy and maintained, in this manner, the conformist order.

Piel Negra, Pionera Blanca: Reparto no tradicional en la Marcha de una Escuela Israelí

La elección de una niña negra Etíope Judía para interpretar al personaje de una pionera Sionista blanca en una marcha de una escuela Israelí causó una gran incomodidad entre los profesores, especialmente a la subdirectora. La subdirectora usa razones teatrales e históricas para justificar su oposición al casting que realmente pueden ser consideradas como un nuevo racismo daltónico. Los conceptos analíticos por los que este caso de estudio es observado son el término reparto no tradicional y sus sub-categorías. Arguyo que aunque la subdirectora finalmente accedió al inusual reparto, tuvo éxito en convertir la situación en una jerarquía nacional y racial y mantuvo, a su manera, el orden conformista.

黑色皮膚，白人先驅 一所以色列學校慶典中非傳統的演員安排

在一所以色列學校的慶典表演中，一名埃塞俄比亞猶太黑人女孩被安排扮演一名白人的猶太複國先驅，這一角色分配引起了老師們，尤其是校長的不滿。校長列舉了戲劇與歷史的理由反對她對該角色安排，她認為人們實際上會視這一安排為新的色盲種族主義。本案例研究在觀察過程中運用了“非傳統演員安排”這一術語及其分類作為分析性概念。筆者論證了：儘管校長最終同意這一非同尋常的角色分配，她依然成功地將這一情況納入本質主義，種族和國家的等級觀念的考量，並借此維護了因循守舊的秩序。

Keywords:

• school pageant
• non-traditional casting
• race
• Israeli-Ethiopian Jews

Notes on contributor

Naphtaly Shem Tov is the coordinator of The Unit for Theatre Teaching Certificate, School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. His research interests include applied theatre, educational theatre and improvisational teaching.

Notes

1. The theatre teacher was my student in the Unit of Theatre Teaching Certificate Program of Tel-Aviv University. This school pageant was part of his practical experience in theatre teaching. He gave his permission to write about this case and he provided me an interview, the script and other materials. I intentionally use the titles and functions, who is involved and did not mention any identified details of the persons (teachers and pupils) and the place (school and city).

2. I relate to French and American theories about racism, because in the Israeli academic mainstream discourse, the concept of racism is mostly connected to research of the Holocaust and Nazism. Recently, an Israeli research group from the Van-Leer Institute published a book, ‘Racism in Israel’ (Shenhav and Yona 2008), which deals with racism in many areas in Israel. Theoretically, this research mainly makes use of French and American theories as a framework to analyse this phenomenon in Israel.

3. Wilson argued that colorblind casting is a practice that has assimilated black actors and artists to the white American mainstream and has hindered the development of a black theatre culture. Burstein saw that colorblind casting was a part of a social effort to liberalise and allow equal change by integration, not only in the field of theatre but also in society as a whole (Brown 2008, 26–27; Catanese 2011, 32–71; Pao 2010, 9–10).

4. Urian distinguishes between Arabs who have Israeli citizenship and calls them ‘Israeli-Arabs’ and Palestinians who live in the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza). The term Israeli-Arab, is mostly not accepted by the Arabs and they identify themselves as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in order to emphasise their common national identity with the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

5. Only the teachers attended the meeting, so the Ethiopian pupil was unaware of this debate of her casting. What is particularly interesting is that the other pupils accepted the casting of this pupil as natural.