Black actor surprised to find ‘room for me’ in Snow White

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This article was published 11/10/2023 (1072 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Snow hasn’t fallen yet in Winnipeg, but Snow White is coming to the Manitoba Theatre for Young People stage, with a former Winnipegger returning to her hometown to star in the company’s season-opening production.

But before she was cast alongside Tom Keenan in the revisionist, two-handed retelling of the classic fairy tale, Toronto-based actor Beverly Ndukwu came with all sorts of reasons why she shouldn’t even try. One in particular stuck out.

“I saw the post for auditions and I automatically dismissed them, if I’m being honest,” says Ndukwu, who made her stage debut in 2015 in MTYP’s Danny, King of the Basement.

“It’s Snow White and they don’t need Black people for Snow White. That’s literally what went through my head, so I didn’t even look into it.”

It was a gut reaction and a gutting example of the way decades of Eurocentric and racist casting practices in the performing arts have warped the self-perception of generations of skilled artists belonging to marginalized communities.

Ndukwu is no slouch: she has featured in and stolen scenes at MTYP, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse (Kat Sandler’s Bang Bang) and the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, where she starred in an adaptation of Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel.

Still, she had trouble envisioning herself as the princess who eats the poison apple.

Then, surprise: MTYP called and asked her to audition and she sent in a tape to director Stephen Colella. Initially, the company offered a different actor the role — it happens — but when that performer declined, Ndukwu’s phone rang again, paving the way for a return to the stage where her theatre career began.

“I think we always end up with the actors we are meant to end up with,” MTYP artistic director Pablo Felices-Luna says with a smile. “I couldn’t imagine this play with anybody other than Beverly.”

And once she was cast, Ndukwu started to agree, seeing a space for herself in a role that once felt as though it would never belong to her, in a show that rouses the familiar Brothers Grimm fairy tale awake in exciting ways.

“It’s completely different than a traditional Snow White,” Ndukwu says of the 65-minute production aimed at kids between the ages of five and 12. For example, she and Keenan, who co-starred with Ndukwu in Bang Bang, play every single role, passing each character back and forth like a steaming-hot potato.

The seven dwarves don’t have names like Sleepy, Bashful or Doc — instead, they go by numbers.

“Theatre to me is about expanding the mind and making us question beliefs,” Ndukwu says. “Things never have to be one way.”

Children’s theatre in particular has always embodied Ndukwu’s point, mostly because its audience is more open, imaginative and emotionally pliable than an adult audience. While a 46-year-old might have trouble understanding that an evil queen could be played by a man, a five-year-old accepts that truth with open arms and enthusiasm.

“Kids’ imaginations are so expanded,” Ndukwu says. “They are going to go for it and believe it and engage with it.”

When Ndukwu explained to her nine- and 11-year-old nieces that this version of Snow White — written by Greg Banks and originally produced at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis — was a little different than the one popularized by Disney, they had no problem grasping the concept. “They just said, ‘OK!’”

Perhaps if more adults had that same open approach, then performers of colour like Ndukwu would be less likely to be excluded from roles that have been gatekept for white actors. With more representation, they’d certainly be less likely to automatically dismiss the idea of even auditioning, Ndukwu agrees, pointing to recent live-action adaptations of movies such as The Little Mermaid as examples of that concept in motion.

“I had a preset notion of who Snow White was,” she says. “I didn’t think there was room for me in the story.

“I hear so much that representation matters, but to actually see someone who looks like you in a role you thought was only meant to be a certain way will always affect you in some way,” she adds.

Her experience with Snow White, she says, has reaffirmed her commitment to acting, and to continue to audition tirelessly and with confidence for the roles she wants.

“If there’s a role I truly do want to play, I am going to go for it,” she says, a few days before performances begin. “Because the worst thing that can happen is I don’t get it, but at least I put myself out there.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com