A wide-ranging group of theater artists will hold a town hall meeting tonight to address authors’ rights and equitable casting in stage productions. The gathering “is a call-to-action and a response to recent events nationally and locally,” the event announcement said.

Partnering with The Dramatists Guild to host the event are the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Theatre Arts, Bricolage Productions, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania Department of Theater and Dance. The town hall will include interactive break-out sessions led by City Theatre artistic producer Reginald Douglas.

“This is a cultural moment,” said Gab Cody, a Pittsburgh-based playwright and the Dramatists Guild regional representative. “It is our hope that those in attendance will share their challenges, will actively listen to others within the community and will leave the event with practical strategies for honoring authorial intent, and for expanding their casting and hiring practices to include a diverse group of artists.”

Panelists for a discussion facilitated by Diep Tran, journalist and associate editor at American Theatre Magazine, are Ms. Cody; Adil Mansoor, theater artist/director, Hatch Arts Collective and Dreams of Hope; Monteze Freeland, actor/director/playwright, founder and artistic director of The LAB Project; Siovhan Christensen, actor/teaching artist, program manager at The Heinz Endowments; and Sol Crespo, theater artist with Flux Theatre Ensemble and Pregones Theater/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater of New York.

The impetus for the Town Hall includes local artists’ opposition to productions, including Kent University’s production of Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” in which a white actor was cast as Martin Luther King, and what was to be an all-white production of Lloyd Suh’s “Jesus in India” at Clarion University. 

“When I see white actors in roles that were meant for people of color it makes me feel like I don't matter. Like I am invisible. Like my voice doesn't need to be heard. We are tired of being erased from our own stories,” said Ms. Crespo, who took to social media to attack Little Lake Theater’s July production of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna in the Tropics,” a play about Cuban immigrants.

After three months of auditions, Little Lake had cast two Latino actors, but one left for family reasons and the other dropped out. Cancelling the production for a relatively small theater such as Little Lake was not an option, said artistic director Jena Oberg.

"I think it's a discussion we should have in our city, and I think if ‘Anna in the Tropics’ brought around this discussion, that's good, because something was bound to," said Ms. Oberg, whose adopted brother, Carlos Quesada, is Argentinian. “He was very excited we were doing the play,” she said, and added that the North Strabane theater went “above and beyond to try to cast Latino actors, and it was never our intention to do it without them.”

Doug Wright, president of the Dramatists Guild, addressed the situations at Clarion and Kent State, saying, “When a play is still under copyright, directors must seek permission if they are going to make changes to the play, including casting a character outside his or her obvious race, gender or implicit characteristics. To do so without meaningful consultation with the writer is both a moral and a legal breach.”

Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.

First Published: December 12, 2016, 5:00 a.m.