A Truly Global Billy Elliott

As the house lights fell on the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis Friday night, a booming voice announced that Lex Ishimoto would play the lead role of Billy Elliot.

Lex Ishimoto?

Moments later, a skinny boy with black hair and diamond shaped eyes wandered onto the stage sporting a thick brogue and Baryshnikov-like dancing skills.

Based on the movie, Billy Elliot: The Musical is the story of an 11-year-old boy in working class Northern England who longs to be a ballet dancer, much to the consternation of his miner father and older brother.

The producers of this national tour have employed the services of five young actors to rotate the role of Billy. Given the physical demands of the role, that’s not entirely surprising. What‘s surprising are the names of the five actors: Giuseppe Bausilio, Michael Dameski, Kylend Hetherington, Daniel Russell, and Ishimoto.

Ishimoto, a Japanese American from California, would seem like an odd choice to play Billy. It also begs the question: shouldn’t have the producers cast a white actor to play the very white role of Billy Elliot?

Last year, the board of Mu Performing Arts objected to the Minneapolis Children’s Theater casting a white actor in a key Asian role in its production of Mulan.

So why it is okay to cast an Asian American kid as a white English boy and not a white actor as a Chinese general?

It’s a difficult question and in some ways cuts to the very heart of affirmative action in the United States.

Opponents of affirmative action say the policy is little more than reverse discrimination. In a truly race-blind society, merit, not skin color, should be the ultimate factor. After all, didn’t Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have a dream that one day society will judge people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character?

The problem with that argument is that day has not yet arrived…and may never will. Dr. King was speaking of a dream, not of an inevitable outcome. We may never realize that dream but we certainly must try.

In theater, the question is not just about culturally correct casting. It’s about opportunity. The vast majority of actors working in Broadway and national theater are white as is the material they are playing.

While it’s all good to say that a worthy actor can play any role, the sad reality is that you’re more likely to see a white actor portray Hamlet on Broadway or the Guthrie than an Asian American.

Yes, there are more Asian American actors, directors, and playwrights working in theater today. But it’s unlikely their work will boast the commercial appeal of The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables.

(Quick…name a smash hit Asian American-penned musical. That’s what I thought.)

So when a role like the general in Mulan or Song Liling in M. Butterfly comes along, you better believe deserving Asian Americans will want those opportunities.

Does casting Ishimoto as Billy Elliot detract from the role? Maybe it’s a little distracting in the beginning. But as the musical progresses and you see the breadth of Ishimoto’s amazing talent, you start to care less and less.

Did the producers need to cast Ishimoto? No. But I’m glad they did.

In fact, Ishimoto’s background enhances the material. Where else in the world can a skinny Japanese American kid from California wow audiences on a national tour of a smash hit British musical?

Billy Elliot is a show about a kid that seizes a wonderful opportunity despite his background through hard work and talent. It could easily be the story of Lex Ishimoto.

But Billy’s story is the exception, not the rule. While Billy wins an invitation to the Royal Ballet school in London, the rest of his hardscrabble town must cope with broken lives and decaying mines.

“We can’t all be dancers Billy,” Tony tells his younger brother.

I guess that’s why Billy Elliot is a work of fiction, a dream of sorts.

But what a dream.

photo via broadwayworld.com
entry by Thomas Lee