By Conor Amrien

Senior Portia Brummitt was supposed to be in the musical “Guys and Dolls” for 6th grade drama class, but she quit before the musical even began rehearsing. Brummitt still wanted to do something in musical theater; the musical “Hairspray” was her last chance.

“I saw the advert, the flyers on the wall, and I had seen the movie so I knew what it would generally be about,” Brummitt said. “It intrigued me because there was going to be a large cast of people of color and it’s not really normal. It’s something else and I didn’t want to miss out on it. I don’t think there has been any kind of production or musical like that at the high school.”

“Hairspray” centers on Tracy Turnblad, an overweight teenage girl. Tracy auditions as a dancer for “The Corny Collins Show” and gets the part after being ridiculed for her weight. She then becomes an instantaneous celebrity. After winning the job, Tracy starts a campaign to racially integrate African-Americans into the show.

“Hairspray,” which ran from Feb. 4th to 7th, was directed by dance teacher Christien Polos. The main cast had 40 actors, singers and dancers.

Senior Suzanna Jack, who is white and was in the ensemble, said she was both excited and nervous about doing “Hairspray,” especially because she knew the drama department did not originally have the number of African-American actors and actresses needed to do the show.

“I was interested and honestly a little concerned at the beginning how Polos was going to pull that off just in terms of getting people to audition and what that would mean for the show,” Jack said. “I was also excited because I thought this would be a very good thing for the drama program by having a very diverse musical which, unlike ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ [last year’s musical], was pretty positive in its racial portrayals. And I thought, in the wake of everything that has happened in the past year, it would be really valuable to have a conversation about this.”

Jack said while she had issues with casting, she knows that casting a musical based on race can be tricky.

“When you do a musical in high school that is based on typecasting, we just don’t have the groups of people for that,” she said. “And that can be really difficult.”

Polos, who has directed 16 musicals at the high school, including “West Side Story,” “The Wiz,” “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Ragtime,” said that every show has its own cast requirements and that this is what makes the process of casting so difficult.

In order to match the racial demographics, Polos, who is white, said he used personal relationships and spoke at African-American and Latino Scholars Program classes to encourage students to audition.

“It was only difficult in that the voice of the black experience was not being heard specifically on the stage,” Polos said. “My aim in doing ‘Hairspray’ was to bring that voice to the stage.”

Polos said there is more diversity in regards to race in “Hairspray” than in any show he has ever done before.

There were nine African-American students in this year’s musical, compared to two in last year’s musical, “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

According to actress and assistant choreographer senior Hannah Weighart, who is white, the outreach to students of color was an overall success and the cast of the show was representative of the student body at the high school.

“I would say there are more white students in the show because that reflects the demographics of Brookline High School,” she said. “And, of course, we always wish there were more people of color in the show, but that’s what we got, and we’re really happy how it turned out.”

Brummitt, who is African-American and played a Dynamite and a Maybelle Kid in the show, said that in the end the cast lacked African-American students to fill the roles but was able to continue on.

“Mr. Polos couldn’t find enough who would audition and all the Black kids who did audition got a role. He made cuts for others because there were more white people who auditioned,” Brummitt said.

In the original Broadway cast of the musical, 12 out of the 28 cast members were African-American. In the high school’s production, nine out of the 40 cast members were African-American: two boys and seven girls.

Senior Queen-Tiye Akamefula, who is African-American and played Motormouth Maybelle, said the lack of actors of color in the musical reflected the need to produce shows where students of color can play roles regardless of their race.

“There are hardly any people of color in the Drama Society or musical because they are told that they can play these minor roles,” Akamefula said.

Junior Talia Roland-Kalb, who is white and played the lead role of Tracy Turnblad, said that all the actors fit their roles well. She said the cast was not chosen solely based on race and that the outreach to students of color created a talented and diverse pool of actors.

“People were worried that we wouldn’t get enough people to fill the roles that are played by African-Americans,” she said. “We did get everyone we needed to and it’s not like we threw people in just to fill roles. We tried to gather a talented cast and there aren’t people who are in the show just because of their skin color. A lot of people did the show because Christien had to reach out to get people because we did need people to fill those roles, but I don’t think anyone’s there that doesn’t want to be there.”

According to Akamefula, Tracy is supposed to be fat, but Roland-Kalb was not cast based on appearance. For Jack, while Roland-Kalb fit her role very well in all aspects besides her physical appearance, the difference between how Tracy was cast and how the characters of color were cast could be seen as problematic.

“I think the actress who played Tracy is incredibly talented,” Jack said. “She has the voice for the part and she has the acting and personality. She did an incredible job and I am so proud of her. However, I think it kind of seemed hypocritical in a way that [Polos] was typecasting certain roles very strongly, but when you have this big aspect of the musical in that Tracy is supposed to be a pretty curvy and husky girl, you pick someone who is really not that.”

Roland-Kalb acknowledged that she does not look like Tracy and said she had mixed feelings about being cast as a character that is supposed to be overweight.

“I know that Tracy needs to be the weight that Tracy is for the whole thing to make sense,” she said. “What’s amazing about the character Tracy is that her life is so hard and she’s faced with oppression because of her weight. For me to say that somebody of average size would go through the same things she does would be disrespectful to her.”

Polos said there were different criteria for what it meant to be overweight in the 1950s and 60s and he considered this when casting Tracy.

“There wasn’t fast food. People ate good meals, exercised in gym class from kindergarten through high school, and the average person didn’t eat bags of chips and coke,” Polos said. “Overweight at that time was someone 10lbs over weight.”

Akamefula said that the play should reflect the group of actors in the drama program, both in terms of appearance and racial demographics.

She said it is frustrating when shows recruit black actors just to fill certain parts. Besides fulfilling a set of roles, actors of color add diversity and perspective, and the drama department should actively seek them out for all productions, she said.

“If you want a lot of people from different backgrounds to audition, you have to advertise the show more widely,” Akamefula said. “However, don’t just do it because you need black people in the show; do it because you want your ensemble to be more cultured and appeal more to a wider audience. I’m also not saying that you should immediately give a person of color the title role when they don’t deserve it just so you don’t seem racist.”

Jack said there should have been more conversations about the themes of the musical.

“We always have this meeting at the beginning of the show where we talk about the show and what we want it to be,” Jack said. “That sets the tone for the rest of the production. There were so many opportunities to really talk about what doing the show meant. There was so much left unspoken about people wondering these things. Like, ‘What does it mean that I was typecast? Or that my friend was typecast, but this person was not typecast in this way?’”

Akamefula said she thinks the problems with the casting of “Hairspray” extend far beyond the high school. For her, the lack of diversity in the entertainment industry and the issue of casting based on race are deeply ingrained and have lasting repercussions for young people of color.

“We have so many problems with not having enough people of color in Hollywood or getting nominated for awards, and some of it comes from how they are perceived in high school or even younger,” Akamefula said. “Honestly, just be more aware when casting. Understand that you’re not just dealing with a fictional play or musical, but rather the world at large.”

Conor Amrien can be contacted at [email protected]