Benedict A. Dorsey has been directing the Dunbar Baldwin Hughes Theater Company (DBH) since its on-campus inception 10 years ago. Founder of Benedictions Productions, Inc., a Baltimore inner-city educational theater company, Dorsey's life revolves around theater, and he's happy to be a part of the Hopkins dramatic community.
"Dunbar Baldwin Hughes was founded because students of color felt discriminated by other theater companies," says Dorsey. Since most of the on-campus plays called for white actors, excluded students voiced their concerns to Dean Larry Benedict in the early '90s. Thus, DBH Theater began.
This weekend, DBH will put up its second and final show of the year, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. For a company whose previous credits include August Wilson's Two Trains Running and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Miller's story of a white middle-class family seems like an unfitting choice. But that might be the point.
"We were just joking about doing Death of a Salesman," says Dorsey, "until someone said "let's really do it.'" Dorsey's and DBH's thesis is this: since Death of Salesman, like most of Arthur Miller's work, is a story about American life more than anything else, race shouldn't play a factor. If Willie Loman represents the everyday workingman, then he represents the entire American racial spectrum. Says Dorsey, "Personally we chose it because it's the American dream ... and that incorporates all races."
To prove this point, Dorsey initially wanted to racially "reverse" the casting, so white characters would be played by African-American actors, and vice-versa. (A recent production of Othello, with Patrick Stewart, was racially reversed and opened to rave reviews.) Ultimately, however, Dorsey decided on a color blind casting process. As a result, the Loman family consists of three African-American actors -- Howard Turner, Kristin Simpson and Vladimir Cadet -- and one white actor, senior Tom West.
Dorsey isn't concerned with any negative responses the public might have. "I don't care at all. [DBH] loves to challenge and start controversy," he says. When DBH put on Douglas Turner's Day of Absence, a comedy about every non-white person disappearing for a single day, they advertised with big, bright posters depicting their actors with white painted faces. But the color-swapping and race relations aren't Dorsey's goal. His message is that the theater if for everyone, regardless of race. "My dream is that all the theater companies on campus should work together on a show ... a giant musical or something," he says.
