Out director, producer, theater critic and playwright Warren Hoffman is pulling back the curtain on issues of race in the world of theater with his new book “The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical,” where he explores how perceptions of race have altered over time and how musicals dealt with those changes.
Hoffman, who is currently the associate director of community programming for the Center of Jewish Life and Learning at Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and was formerly the senior director of programming for the Gershman Y, said the inspiration for his latest book came from his musical-theater geek background.
“The genesis of this project began when I was a student of Angela Davis back in grad school,” he said. “I was taking a class on racial theory and was thinking about how these things were interwoven with musicals and a lightbulb went off. I was thinking about it ever since and here’s the book. I think one of the biggest reasons why I wrote the book is musicals are always about race and have these really important things to say about race and the times that they were created. But what’s interesting is that they rarely say those things very explicitly. So the book looks at shows like ‘Oklahoma,’ ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘The Music Man,’ and people don’t think of those shows as being about race, but they are. My point is, people think of musicals as these frothy entertainments that don’t have much real-world value, but they do. They have a lot to say about the world around us, particularly about race, and that is the point of the book.”
Hoffman said that a big reason for theater addressing and simultaneously tiptoeing around the issue of race lies with shows walking the fine line between making a statement and entertaining the audience.
“On one hand, it might seem too heavy-handed,” he said. “A musical is often thought to be about song and dance. It’s rarely used as a platform to teach a moral lesson. It’s why when Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote ‘You Have To Be Carefully Taught’ in ‘South Pacific,’ it was such a big deal because in that case they were coming out and making a case about race. In other shows, it’s less explicitly talked about. There are shows like ‘West Side Story’ which are about race, but even with cases like that, the show at times literally danced around the topic and don’t really get into what was going on in the different time periods. The challenge is, it’s the form itself, which is light-hearted, has a hard time trying to engage with this heavy topic.”
Hoffman said that, when it comes to modern theater, some strides have been made on the issue of race, but not enough.
“There have been some good steps forward in terms of seeing more diversity in the world of musical theater featuring actors of color or being written by playwrights of color, which has been great,” he said. “But what I found disappointing is actually how white musical theater still is. The musical theater is an artform that supports a very white world view, even now. So there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in the field.”
“The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical” is in stores now. Warren Hoffman discusses his book 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at Headhouse Books, 619 S. Second St. For more information, call 215-923-9525 or visit www.warrenhoffman.com.