The Nightingale casting controversy

In 2012, the La Jolla Playhouse generated nationwide controversy for the casting of a musical adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen story "The Nightingale," set in ancient China. The play was part of the La Jolla Playhouse's "Page to Stage" program, a workshop series in which unfinished new works are tested and altered during the show's run. Only two Asian American actors were cast, and more than half the cast were Caucasian actors. The Asian American Theatre Community expressed their indignity on this issue.

The casting controversy generated significant response from the Asian American theater and artistic community, particularly because similar controversies have occurred in the past, as when Jonathan Pryce was cast to play the Eurasian lead in the musical, Miss Saigon.

During a public forum to address the debate, the idea for which having been generated by a letter of protest from the Asian American Performers' Action Coalition, Christopher Ashley, the current Artistic Director of the La Jolla Playhouse, stated that it was his effort to follow a "color-blind" casting principle for this play, and to incorporate both western and eastern elements.[1] Ashley and director Moises Kaufman both apologized. Kaufman admitted that he would be "the first to agree that we have been unsuccessful at what we were trying to do."

Speaking from the audience, book writer Steven Sater stated that even though they started out with an all-Asian cast, they eventually decided to go with a multi-cultural cast in order to reflect the "multi-ethnic" world that he knew and lived in. Composer Duncan Sheik stated in an interview after the panel that the discussion had "affected" his thinking of the show and that his "head [was] spinning." Previous readings of the musical included one at Vassar's Powerhouse Theater with a multi-ethnic cast (also directed by Kaufman), as well as one with an Asian American cast at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

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