Dharmik's THTR 7922 Blog

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime ! I remember reading the book during my Freshman year of high school. Soon afterward it became a Broadway show. I wasn't at all familiar with the show and had always assumed that the lead was actually autistic or had Asperger's syndrome. That is until Andrea pointed out to me this morning that a "normie" was cast as the lead.  This morning, we were discussing how the lead in our version of the play should cast someone who is on the spectrum and Andrea pointed out that it was actually another company that set that precedent. She also noted that the real question is whether we will stick with the precedent or go back. So to answer Austin's question; Swine Palace.  In all honesty though, Indiana Rep is the first to cast a person on the spectrum for the lead in TCIOTDITN. Shockingly, this show opened LAST YEAR, while my naive ass was thinking - "yeah, they totally cast an autistic dude on Broadway." ...

I have a cousin who is deaf. I've only ever known her as deaf and when I was a younger I actually understood ASL. I've since forgot because I'm completely out of practice and only know a few signs. But this one time when she had a party at her home. I think it was around the time she got married, but my memories are blurry. My cousin wasn't born deaf. From what I was told, it was an accident during a surgery years before I was born - tonsil removal (I'll let you figure out what happened).  Her husband, though, was born deaf as is most of his family (some are not deaf). I remember being around them and not being able to tell what they were saying. I knew ASL, but since I didn't "need" it I was a bit slow. So it was exactly like speaking a foreign language that you're not quite comfortable with yet. Some of the kids tried signing to me and it was so fast that I couldn't understand so I felt stupid. In a way my ability to speak and hear made i...

In order for there to be a truly universal play I think that all gender norms need to be removed. So from that technical standpoint the answer to whether there is a gender neutral play/movie/show is, no. What I mean is, that the very idea of gender can't exist. We would just be people and not "perform" our genders. And I think that's impossible. So, there are inherent differences between male and female bodies. From that we learn how to behave. So, how would this work in a void or if we were given a do-over? Would human sexuality be more fluid? Would males still be hunters and would females still be caretakers? But then this is still thinking in binary terms. The majority of the worlds population is either male or female. There are definitely transgender people as well, but to a lesser extent. In my opinion, even in a void, there would be gender and we would behave in a certain way because our bodies are built a certain way. Of course, this would be to a lesser exte...

This is such a hard question to tackle because there is no true answer. At least that's what I think. I believe that Herrera's coalition casting approach sounds good, but it won't happen (to the level where it would benefit everyone). So, ultimately it's just "hogwash," to use Osi's word. So here are my thoughts based on a few statistics from the U.S. Census website for 2016. White alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (a) 76.9% Black or African American alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (a) 13.3% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (a) 1.3% Asian alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (a) 5.7% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (a) 0.2% Two or More Races, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) 2.6% Hispanic or Latino, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) (b) 17.8% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) 61.3% So according to this chart, it...