Something in Mike Frank's rather interesting letter has made me smell the extremely vague perfumes I've been suspecting lie *inside* this discussion of the race of performers playing "racial" characters. It was his off-the-cuff mention of a dog playing a cat, I think, that clearly brought to me a fact we often neglect: in performance, the "being" being played isn't a being at all, but a character. Thus, the idea of worrying about having a metaphorical "dog" *speaking for* a metaphorical "cat" is itself odd, I think; since the metaphorical "cat" isn't a cat in fact, but only a signal for something we all variously interpret as "catness." Othello *is* a Moor; but he isn't an Afro-European, or an African, or an Afro-American, or anything else that any of us on this list might encounter socially in some actual locale. He's a fictive construction, meant to suggest to us these social beings we know or can know. As a student and critic of film and performance who has himself been involved in both directing and performing, I have to say it doesn't really trouble me at all to have a dog playing a cat; or Bert Lahr playing a lion; or, in a "nature" set-up, a trout playing a bass; or a woman playing a man; or a vegetarian playing a cannibal; or a homosexual playing a heterosexual; or a Democrat playing a Republican. I think there is a process called acting, and it specifically involves the overt and intentional production of pretense. Given that we're going to have pretense, why get huffy about particular pretenses? Now, I know some actors are low on work. Indeed, in this relatively racist society of ours, some people of colo(u)r are low on work in general, not just in theatrical areas. Women's work is worse paid than men's generally, still; and this is also the case in Hollywood. Say, now, we offer Sigourney Weaver (just to come up with a name out of a hat) a chance to play Billie Holliday . . . should this be sanctioned because the actress isn't black? Ultimately we're talking about producers' tastes--not the approbation of constituent groups in an audience. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]