THEATER GROUP WANTS MORE DIVERSITY

When Toni Pearson and Camisha Ester appeared in the River City Players production of "Having Our Say" last month, they helped the community theater company break with a tradition its members wanted to get rid of.

The tradition was one of white-only casts performing in plays that usually did not lend themselves to minority casting.

No one had complained about the lack of minorities, but the community theater company reached the conclusion that it was self-limiting, says board member Ann Swanson.

"We realized there were some scripts that had audience appeal that we couldn't do unless we had minority actors for minority parts," she said.

The decision was made to make a change, beginning with "Having Our Say," the stage adaptation of the Delaney sisters' best-selling book. Pearson and Ester, who had little acting experience, pleased audiences with their portrayal of the 100-year-old sisters remembering growing up black women in a white- and male-dominated society.

Swanson will direct the company's upcoming production of "Driving Miss Daisy," which includes a role for an African American as Hoke, the chauffeur.

She credits Lloyd Williams, who had a role in last February's production of "Bus Stop," with awakening the theater company to the need for more diversity in its actors and actresses.

Williams' presence in "Bus Stop" brought black people out in numbers to see an RCP production for the first time. He now is a member of the River City Players board. In June, he will direct a romantic comedy called "Fingerpainting on a Murphy Bed."

In her 10-year association with the theater company, Swanson can remember only one other black actor even auditioning for a role. "They may not have felt comfortable because they knew they would be in a minority situation," she said.

The board was always all-white, but Swanson said there was no attempt to exclude minorities.

Williams says he became involved with the RCP simply by responding to a newspaper item announcing auditions for "Bus Stop."

"I just wanted to read," he said. "I hadn't expected to get a role."

Away from standard fare

Williams appeared in a few college plays when he was an art major at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, including playing one of the leads in "Blues for Mr. Charlie." In the 1970s, he hosted a show for the NAACP that aired on KFVS-TV. He now is a surgical assistant.

He says he didn't join the board for the purpose of broadening the theater company's base, but the plays he is interested in producing are not the RCP's standard fare of the past. He suggested the upcoming production, "Driving Miss Daisy," and is reading "The Colored Museum" as a possible future production.

Williams helped recruit actresses for the roles of Sadie and Bessie Delaney in "Having Our Say." The first cast dropped out because of the rehearsal demands required by the play. Then he found Pearson and Ester through his church.

"I'm sure there are a lot of potential actors and actresses out there," Williams said.

Chuck Ross, president of the RCP board, suggested and directed "Having Our Say."

"It was an experiment," he said. "We wanted to see if it was out there, if we could draw people from other ethnicities. And the audience responded."

But the play didn't draw as well as RCP productions usually do. And Ross said the audiences were primarily black.

Swanson and Ross said part of the lack of diversity has been due to the choice of plays such as "Steel Magnolias" and "On Golden Pond" for recent productions. "It would be a little incongruous to audiences to see an Asian American or Latino in them because they were well known. There were movie versions. People have certain expectations," she said.

Ross said minorities simply had been left out. "We had not given them any opportunity."

Next August, the RCP will present the musical murder mystery "The Butler Did it, Singing." The cast of four men and five women can include people of any color.

For "Driving Miss Daisy," Swanson is seeking two men and a woman. All three must be able to adopt a Southern accent and be able to appear elderly. They age 25 years in the course of the play.

Auditions will be held at 7:30 p.m. today and Tuesday at Port Cape Girardeau. For information, contact Swanson at 243-1450.