[KristinT]

When 'Miss Saigon' premiered in Australia back in the early 90s, my city missed out on the tour. We finally got to see it last year. Hurray! And now we're about to get our first non-professional production aftera the amateur rights have been available for how long now? Again, hurray!

However, I've seen my share of big non-professional shows and musicals in my town, have a general audience-perspective idea of the pool of talent and how it's utilised, and I am concerned that some of the Asian roles may be cast with actors who aren't, you know, Asian. As an Asian myself, I would find it disturbing and offensive if a company undertook to put on a production of 'Miss Saigon' and then chose to cast a non-Asian performer as Kim (or any of the Asian roles, to be completely honest) with or without "yellowface" makeup (I hate that term but you know what I mean).

I love 'Miss Saigon' but I just feel, I don't know, that if a non-professional company is going to do it, it should do everything it can to cast the Asian characters Asian. There are plenty of amazing "white" musicals out there that are traditionally cast "white" and I'd be pissed off if a white girl plays Kim, with or without a black wig, excessive eyeliner and lots of bronzer. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, I don't know.

Does anybody else (I'm meaning American forum members, where I'm figuring the rights have been out for much longer) know of non-professional productions where companies have cast white actors as Asian characters and whether or not it caused problems or was distracting for the audience? Or have any opinions on the subject at all?

[The Very Angry Woman]

http://musicals.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56946

http://musicals.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73674

http://musicals.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=52851

[ActingDude17]

OP, I've never seen a performance of Miss Saigon, but if I did I would hope all the Asian characters would by played by Asian actors and Caucasian characters by Caucasian actors. I agree with you completely. Race is a central theme to the story of the show and it would be an artistic crime to use color-blind casting in a show such as MS. In a show like Rent, for example, race is not central to the story. In Miss Saigon, it is.

[kiwitechgirl]

I worked on the New Zealand premiere, which was a semi-professional production. We brought in a Korean American to play Kim, but we couldn't find an Asian to play the Engineer (who of course is half-French, half-Vietnamese anyway), so cast a slightly darker-skinned Caucasian. There were long discussions about his makeup, and we ended up with a darkening wash over his face, upper body and hands, but his eyeliner wasn't much heavier than guys would normally wear on stage. You'd probably have guessed that the actor wasn't Asian, but in a big theatre we got away with it. In terms of the rest of the company, we had a lot of Polynesian actors - Thuy was Polynesian - and that worked just fine.

[KristinT]

I've always figured there's more leeway with the Engineer as it is explicitly stated that he is Eurasian - although the American actors union clearly begged to differ, when the show opened there originally. Then again, I've seen some photos of Jonathan Pryce where it looks like he's barely using any makeup at all and others where... to be honest, it was kind of offensive looking, a little bit. I'm guessing the make-up went through different designs as the show progressed.

I'm not sure why way more people are reading on this than commenting - whether it's just not an issue or it's not considered appropriate on this forum to discuss things like this. If so, apologies. As I say, I am enthusiastic that a local company is putting on this show, I just wait with interest to see how they handle the casting. I've seen a few school editions of Miss Saigon (there's another entire issue? Why?) on Youtube and obviously the casting considerations there are entirely different but it was a little jarring for me, personally, to see obviously non-Asian actors playing the Asian characters. But like I say I know that's an entirely different situation.

[The Very Angry Woman]

[KristinT]

Very Angry Woman: Underage boobies? Yeah. Exactly. Sorry, I didn't make myself clear, that's what I meant by "Why?"